Television

Philipp Kadelbach, director and co-creator of the series “We Children From Bahnhof Zoo,” says his initial impulse when approached to helm the series was to steer well clear of what he saw as a fool’s errand, given the iconic status in Germany and elsewhere of Uli Edel’s 1981 feature film “Christiane F.,” which – like

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the first season of “Them,” streaming now on Amazon Prime Video. “Them” creator Little Marvin likens horror to a roller coaster ride, during which one’s pulse quickens due to a variety of thrills, in addition to scares. On a roller coaster, one may think

The secret to the enduring success of “Parks and Recreation”? The show excelled at putting characters comically at odds with one another, while building unlikely bonds. It also understood how to play emotional moments with genuine sincerity, using comedy bits to underscore, but not dilute the sentiment. And it celebrated well-intentioned, if not always successful,

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau will star in and executive produce a series adaptation of the Christina Clancy novel “The Second Home” currently in the works at Sony’s TriStar TV, Variety has learned. The story follows the Gordon and Shaw families beyond a fateful summer on Cape Cod. Told through two generations, the story explores how a devastating

Costume designer Brenda Cooper is head down in her upcoming book, “The Silhouette Solution” out this December, a fashion book with a foreword by Fran Drescher. But it’s far from their first project together. Decades ago, it was Cooper who crafted the timeless looks for Drescher on the CBS comedy, “The Nanny” when it began

Netflix has ordered “The 39 Steps,” a limited series based on the 1915 John Buchan novel that will star Benedict Cumberbatch, with Edward Berger at the helm and Mark L. Smith writing. The series will reunite Cumberbatch and Berger, who last worked together on Showtime’s 2018 mini-series “Patrick Melrose.” The at least six-hour series will

The Traveling Picture Show Company (TPSC) has acquired the rights to two series from best-selling author Kennedy Ryan. The company will develop “Hoops” and “All the King’s Men,” totaling six books, into two limited series for television. Kevin Matusow, Carissa Buffel, Luisa Iskin and Johnny Wunder of TPSC are producing with executive producer Sadia Ashraf

The media industry’s go-to authority for measuring audiences acknowledged on Friday that the recent coronavirus pandemic bent its yardstick, but maintained nothing is broken. Nielsen, under fire from the TV networks that depend on it to count the audiences for which advertisers pay, says pandemic conditions resulted in a smaller panel of consumers it relies

For much of 2020, music supervisors found work to be a challenge — ironic considering what they had completed for lms and shows available on stream- ing services, broadcast television and on-demand was being consumed more than ever as audiences had ample time to binge-watch during the pandemic. Once production resumed, music supervisors returned to

The final season of “Younger” premieres April 15, but it’s not necessarily the absolute end for one of its beloved characters. As Variety previously reported, ahead of the seventh and final season, “Younger” creator Darren Star began to develop a spinoff, which would be centered around Hilary Duff’s character, editor-turned-publisher Kelsey Peters. The potential spinoff

Is there still some magic in that Mike? HBO Max will soon find out: The streamer has ordered “The Real Magic Mike,” a reality competition from the producers of the “Magic Mike” movies. Eureka Productions, the prolific unscripted producers behind “Holey Moley” and “Dating Around,” and Warner Bros. Unscripted Television in association with Warner Horizon,

In today’s Global Bulletin, Time’s Up U.K. publishes safety guidelines for auditions, reporting and working with intimacy; Discovery U.K. posts its 10th consecutive record Q1, and RAI and Amazon team on the winning bid for World Cup 2022 rights in Italy. GUIDELINES Time’s Up U.K. has published the “Time’s Up Guide to Working in Entertainment,”

When John de Lancie was first cast as Q on the pilot of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” his expectation was that he was only supposed to play the wily omnipotent being — who challenges Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) with proving humanity’s worthiness — for that single, two-part episode. But three days into shooting,

In the spirit of National Unicorn Day, Smart Dog Media announced “Unicorn Hunters” will premiere on May 10. The pioneering new business series spotlights emerging growth companies working to hit the coveted billion-dollar “unicorn” valuation mark while rallying individual investors worldwide to help fund breakout ventures. Self-defined as “enrichtainment,” the series combines pure entertainment with

Egyptian heart surgeon-turned-satirist Bassem Youssef left Egypt in 2014 and relocated to the U.S. after his megahit show “El Bernameg” (“The Program”), on which he snarked at top pols of all stripes, became too dangerous to produce under the country’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Youssef has since kept busy stateside. But he recently returned to

Leading producers Tony Ayres and Belinda Chayko have assembled an extraordinary Australian cast for Fires, a drama series that presents personal tales from the front lines of the country’s recent catastrophic fire season. The series, which is now shooting in Victoria state is produced by NBCUniversal -backed Tony Ayres Productions and Matchbox Pictures. Australian Broadcasting

The 6th edition of MipDrama, launching Friday as part of virtual conference and market event MipTV, showcases new series – most in post-production, a few wrapped – from some of the biggest and most exciting drama series players in the world. Few events will command more attention from buyers. The following are brief profiles of

WeMake, a thriving production company launched by Bouchra Réjani, Shine France’s former COO, is turning three with a bullish slate of upscale formats and ambitious scripted projects, including drama series “Image,” from Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, the directors of “Bad Boys for Life,” and the variety show “Morphing Singers.” The Paris-based banner has

London-based DCD Rights is launching a brand-new eight-hour second season of Spanish-Portuguese crime thriller “Dry Water.” A slice of Galician and Portuguese Noir, “Dry Water” marks part of a pioneering push by Spain’s Portocabo, producer of Movistar Plus smash hit “Hierro,” to take classic free-to-air scripted in its native Galicia, north-west Spain, into a premium

ZDF Enterprises has boarded the second season of the coming-of-age, pandemic thriller “Sløborn” as co-producer and global distributor. Season 1 of the ZDFneo original series dealt with the spread of a deadly virus across the world that ravaged the island of Sløborn, and the inhabitants’ fight to survive the catastrophe. In Season 2, audiences will

Netflix ushered in a new TV dawn in distribution. In reaction, Europe’s public broadcasters are driving a less vaunted but still significant revolution in production. Few are pushing the envelope more than Germany’s ZDF. After “The Typist” and “Shadowplay,” four-hour limited series “The Winemaker,” a MipDrama entry,  marks another series from the German state broadcaster

Impact X Capital, a Black entrepreneur owned venture capital firm seeking to invest £100 million ($137 million) for underrepresented entrepreneurs, is launching Impact X Studios to fund, develop and package international content with an focus on diversity and inclusion. A creative capital vehicle for underrepresented talent, iImpact X Studios is being launched by Erica Motley,

CBS News veteran Kim Godwin is expected to become the next president of ABC News, a move that would make her the first Black executive to lead a broadcast-network news division in the U.S. Godwin has had an offer from Disney’s ABC for several weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter, but only

Although this year’s edition of the Cannes TV market MipTV is going virtual, the opportunity for distributors to catch the eye is larger than ever as global and regional content are eager to make up for lost time. The MipDrama showcase in particular still provides the ideal place to drum up interest in a series,

Sarah Jessica Parker got a big career boost as a teenager from her starring role in the offbeat, much-praised sitcom “Square Pegs,” which had a one-and-done, brilliant-but-canceled run on CBS in the 1982-83 season. Parker has paid tribute to “Square Pegs” creator and showrunner Anne Beatts, who died April 7 at the age of 74.

The cast of “Glee” reunited virtually to remember Naya Rivera, who died last July at the age of 33, at the GLAAD Media Awards on Thursday. The tribute was opened by Demi Lovato, who had a brief role on the Fox series alongside Rivera. “I don’t have to tell you that this year was a

For the second year in a row, “Schitt’s Creek” won for outstanding comedy series at the 32nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards. Writer-star-executive producer Dan Levy accepted the prize on behalf of the series. “When we set out to make ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ we simply wanted to tell funny and hopefully meaningful stories about personal growth, love,

In playing online pharmaceutical titan and mob boss Richard Wheatley on NBC’s “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” Dylan McDermott gets to go toe-to-toe with Christopher Meloni’s detective Elliot Stabler, chests puffed and expressions snarled. The show marks a return for Meloni’s beloved “Law & Order” character and a return to the primetime procedural beat for

Most late night talk shows nowadays aim to serve an audience that is, late at night, not watching their TV set. The calculated virality of bits from James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” to Seth Meyers’ “A Closer Look” to Jimmy Fallon’s TikTok dances with Addison Rae — all of those things are meant to be disseminated

Natalie Morales (“The Little Things”), Amy Landecker (“Transparent”) and Alice Lee (“Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist”) have been cast in TikTok star Sarah Cooper’s single-camera CBS comedy inspired by her book “How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings.” Cooper serves as co-writer and executive producer of the untitled project along with showrunner Cindy Chupack (“Otherhood”). The