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Tuned In+Uncategorized | February 10, 2011

Back Down in the Treme, As of April 24

By James Poniewozik

Since HBO scheduled the debut of Game of Thrones for April, I’ve been wondering when Treme—which went back into production recently—would land back on the schedule, especially since HBO has become flush with series. Dave Walker of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the premiere reporter on the Treme beat, has word today the series will return [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | January 24, 2011

Is Cable News Going to Get Sorkin-ized?

By James Poniewozik

Keith Olbermann may be out of a job now, but there’s a possibility that he—or a fictional character bearing his likeness—may end up getting the Jedediah Josiah Bartlet, or Mark Zuckerberg, treatment on HBO. Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and likely soon-to-be Oscar nominee for writing The Social Network, has told the BBC [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | January 10, 2011

TCA Roundup: AMC, HBO Set Dates

By James Poniewozik

While I shiver at my desk and another snowstorm practices on the South before heading up the East Coast, my TV critic brethren are still sitting through hours of TV executive presentations at the TCA press tour. Who has it worse? You be the judge! Over the weekend, the people-who-write-about-TV heard from the remaining cable [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+December 9, 2010

It's Not TV; It's TV Online

By James Poniewozik

Tuned In’s sister blog Techland covers a couple of TV-biz stories with a common, unstated theme: the slow but gradual fading of TV as something you get exclusively through TV networks on a TV set. First, HBO (like TIME, a Time Warner company) is considering offering its programming through other means besides as part of [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | September 14, 2010

HBO Sneak-Peeks Game of Thrones

By James Poniewozik

Before Sunday night’s season finale of True Blood, HBO aired previews of several upcoming shows, including footage from next year’s fantasy saga Game of Thrones: Cannot. Wait. (Sidebar: Did we see that raven in the Six Feet Under credits, or is that a relative?) I won’t bother parsing the bits of footage frame-by-frame (Winter Is [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | September 2, 2010

Hung's Renewal and the Mystery of HBO Decisionmaking

By James Poniewozik

Yesterday HBO announced that Hung, its dark comedy about a suburban Michigan gigolo and his pimp, will get a third season. I’m pleased and surprised. I don’t think the show has lived up to its potential, but when it’s on—and the past couple of episodes have been strong—it’s an insightful look at people trying to [...]

+TV Networks | August 25, 2010

TV Tonight: Is 'Hard Knocks' the Summer's Best Reality TV Show?

By Steven James Snyder

I know Tuned In is usually a place on Wednesdays to read all about Top Chef – a show that I used to be obsessed with. But in recent weeks, as the cooking competition has skewed more extreme and predictable, another show has risen up to dominate not just the 10 p.m. hour on Wednesdays, [...]

+TV Networks | August 23, 2010

The Fascinating, Fearless Implosion of Entourage: How Far Will They Fall?

By Steven James Snyder

Note: This is less an episode summary than a larger discussion of the series’ surprising change in direction. Oh Entourage, how you confound me. I’ve rarely had such an emotionally turbulent relationship with a TV series – alternating between apathy and sympathy, between eye-rolls and gasps. What once was a great show about a meteoric [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | August 9, 2010

TCA Roundup: The Cable Guys

By James Poniewozik

The Television Critics Association press tour wrapped up over the weekend, with a blast of announcements from various cable channels. Whether it was the swords of Spartacus and Game of Thrones, the gangland pistols of Boardwalk Empire, or the ripped-bicep gun show that is Jersey Shore, they came heavily armed. (And look! Someone’s shooting a [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | July 20, 2010

Straight Out of Brooklyn: Bored to Death Gets a Return Date

By James Poniewozik

I will be the first to admit that my enjoyment of Bored to Death is at least partly based in personal bias. I live in Brooklyn, and while HBO is heavy on shows that love my borough (In Treatment, Boardwalk Empire and Flight of the Conchords all shot there, at least in part), Bored to [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | July 14, 2010

HBO Places Its Bet on Milch and Mann's Luck

By James Poniewozik

And they’re off! HBO, which has been beefing up its regular-series roster heavily in the past year, has ordered to series Luck, a drama set in the horse-racing world, created by David Milch, starring Dustin Hoffman, and its pilot directed by Michael Mann. Given the roster of names in that previous sentence, I would have [...]

+TV Networks | June 28, 2010

David is Now Goliath: Entourage's Urgent Quest to Remain Relevant

By Steven James Snyder

Entourage returned Sunday night – a fact that, in previous years, would have been cause for jubilation around my house. But over the last few seasons, what used to be a witty, cutting, edgy observational drama about four young friends navigating the halls of Hollywood power has instead become a sort of male-oriented Sex and [...]

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Tuned In+June 22, 2010

Not Really News Dept.: A Fourth Season for True Blood

By James Poniewozik

Having gotten the formality of the third-season premiere out of the way, HBO officially picked up its biggest hit, True Blood, for a fourth season. It’s interesting to see where HBO has gone since the days—way back in 2008—of True Blood’s premiere. The writers’ strike had just ended, The Sopranos was gone, shows like Tell [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | June 14, 2010

The Morning After: Rubicon Job?

By James Poniewozik

After last night’s season finale of Breaking Bad, AMC aired a preview of its next drama series, the conspiracy thriller Rubicon, starring James Badge Dale, which begins in August. (Actually, though I didn’t catch the airing since I saw Breaking Bad on a screener, I believe AMC aired the full pilot. Update: They did, and [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | June 14, 2010

Winter Is Coming: HBO's First Game of Thrones Trailer

By James Poniewozik

The first Game of Thrones teaser is out. It’s short; it doesn’t say much; it doesn’t prvoe whether or not HBO will successfully wrestle the sprawling A Song of Ice and Fire books into a series. But damn, I cannot wait to see this.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | April 23, 2010

TV Weekend: Death Becomes Him

By James Poniewozik

I’m not the hugest fan of the kind of biopic film that HBO tends to favor for its original movies: these bio movies (both HBO’s and feature films) are often either straight-ahead recountings of the lives of figures I’m already familiar with or accounts of people I don’t much want to know more about. And [...]

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Tuned In+April 12, 2010

Today in Fictional-Language News: HBO Speaks Dothraki

By James Poniewozik

I don’t usually do blog posts about production details in TV series that don’t air for another year. But most TV shows do not entail inventing an entire freaking language. HBO’s dark fantasy saga Game of Thrones, on the other hand, does. Today the network announced that’s it’s going where James Cameron did with Na’vi, [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | March 3, 2010

HBO Picks Up Thrones, Places Bet on Dustin Hoffman

By James Poniewozik

While I was in New Orleans, visiting the set of Treme and seeing the premiere screening of The Pacific, HBO was keeping  busy on its next generation of series. First came news that Dustin Hoffman will star in the pilot of Luck, the horse-racing drama from David Milch and Michael Mann. It’s not guaranteed to [...]

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Tuned In+Television | January 6, 2010

HBO Adds to Stable With Milch, Mann Horse Drama

By James Poniewozik

David Milch is back in business with HBO, this time writing Luck, a drama pilot, to be directed by Michael Mann, about horse racing. There’s no guarantee that the pilot will become a series—since making Deadwood and John from Cincinnati, Milch made the HBO cop pilot Last of the Ninth, which never made it to [...]

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Tuned In+Television | December 31, 2009

Vacation Robo-Post: What Are You Looking Forward to in 2010?

By James Poniewozik

I may be on vacation, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not working. Depending on how you define “work.” As I write this, I’m already looking at a tall stack of screeners to watch for midseason 2010 (including Big Love, 24 and Chuck for January). And there’s quite a roster of high-profile new projects for [...]