How to Navigate TV’s Sunday Chaos

TV Tattle

How to navigate TV’s Sunday chaos
Game of Thrones, Veep, Silicon Valley and the MTV Movie Awards join a Sunday night already packed with quality TV options.

Fox developing Aftermath, a flu pandemic event series
The limited series is set in the wake of a worldwide flu pandemic.

Report: Showtime hasn’t given up on David Lynch for the Twin Peaks reboot
That co-creator Mark Frost hasn’t spoken out may suggest that the budget issues between Lynch and Showtime can be resolved.

Watch Dwayne Johnson in HBO’s Ballers teaser trailer
Johnson joins Rob Corddry in a comedy about a group of retired football players.

Why Fox’s Rocky Horror remake is a bad idea
“It mostly feels redundant,” says Laura Bradley, “to take a movie this agelessly weird and attempt to update it, especially when there is not really anything in the film that has been rendered ‘obsolete.'”

The Leftovers is moving to Austin
With production shifting to the Lone Star State, the HBO series’ setting will be moved from New York to Texas.

Jon Hamm would make a terrific anti-bullying advocate
The Mad Men star could put his arrest in college for fraternity hazing to good use.

Mad Men‘s pink box may have been historically inaccurate
Did pink boxes exist in NYC in 1970?

Nurse Jackie boss says Jackie doesn’t need to die
As Nurse Jackie begins its final season, showrunner Clyde Phillips says, “The finale needed to feel complete. The ending needed to be shocking and surprising, yet if you play it backwards it all makes sense.”

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is getting a TV adaptation
A TV adaptation is part of a “multi-platform adaptation” that would bring the King franchise to movie screens.

Here’s an idea: Make Brian Williams the new face of MSNBC
The disgraced NBC News anchor could host a nightly primetime show that would mix news and “Daily Show”-type comedy.

True Detective‘s June 21 2nd season premiere date means it won’t be eligible for Emmys until 2016
If the HBO series had moved its premiere date to early May, it could’ve avoid battling Fargo at the 2016 Emmys.

Happy 68th birthday, David Letterman!
Dave started hosting a late-night talk show at age 34, and on Sunday he celebrates his final birthday as Late Show host.

Wolf Hall has sparked interest in Elizabethan music
The PBS drama has brought interest to the soundtrack.

How much does Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt‘s Tituss Burgess have in common with Titus Andromedon?
Burgess did once live in a basement apartment in NYC. PLUS: How to get the Kimmy Schmidt look.

Check out the trailer for Syfy’s Dark Matter
Based on the comic book, “Dark Matter” follows the crew of a “derelict spaceship” who don’t know where they are.

Veep should’ve run out of steam by now, but it’s still hilarious in Season 4
“Remarkably,” says Hank Stuever, “the show returns for a fourth season Sunday night … with the same wall-climbingly hilarious command of awkwardness and public humiliation, not only for President Meyer but her ever-expanding staff of buffoons. Half of them are assigned to the West Wing; the other half are trying to keep Meyer’s election campaign afloat.” PLUS: What Hillary Clinton can learn from Selina Meyer, Timothy Simons on Veep‘s “fuddy-duddy cast, why Catherine Meyer is Veep‘s best character, creator Armando Iannucci talks making Selina stronger and less of a bumbling idiot, and Anna Chlumsky says Iannucci’s exit is exactly what happens in Washington.

Silicon Valley confronts its woman problem in Season 2
In the 2nd season, the Peter Gregory role is essentially replaced by a woman, actress Suzanne Cryer, who is “fascinating, and fantastic” in the role, says Sonia Saraiya (who, incidentally, apologized for mistakenly confusing Kumail Nanjiani with Kunal Nayyar from The Big Bang Theory in her review). Saraiya says Cryer’s character is “not neatly mediocre; nor is she particularly maternal or an object of flirtation. If anything, she’s even more socially awkward than Peter was. She is, in short, the polar opposite of Monica.” PLUS: The Peter Gregory role has essentially been split in two, the problem with Silicon Valley is that it’s hard to mock something already over-the-top, real Silicon Valley workers are still loving it, and Thomas Middleditch is no longer a struggling actor.

Game of Thrones Season 5 is sure-footed and unafraid with its divergence from George R.R. Martin books
Last season, says Richard Lawson, it “seemed like the show was spinning its well-built wheels, unsure how fast and how far it wanted to steer away from the books to truly become its own thing. But now, in the first four episodes of the fifth season, it’s clear that the show has made its decision, and is asserting itself fully as its own entity, keeping Martin’s intricate framework intact, of course, but now unafraid to tell new stories.” PLUS: GoT is feeling like too much of a good thing, producers have found they could avoid the mediocre later books by throwing them out, Season 5 is more exciting because the fictional universe is contracting rather than expanding, there’s an overall feeling of recharging and regeneration on the generally grim show, there’s a greater sense of urgency this season, Game of Thrones is finally ready to conquer television in the most conventional way possible: as a more normal TV show, George R.R. Martin presents a Lil Thrones cartoon for kids for Conan, advice to book readers: chill out, Sophie Turner found the Littlefinger romance talk “really weird,” here are your preseason power rankings, meet the new characters, watch a Season 5 primer, spend 240 hours in Westeros, and the creators don’t think it’s possible to “spoil” Martin’s books.