A couple of days ago, for reasons I can't remember why, I was talking about the TV show Green Acres with a friend.  The show ran from 1965-1970, has the general reputation in memory as being one of the corny, hick shows for kids that CBS was running at the time, like The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Mayberry RFD and Hee Haw, all of which got famously "purged: by the network around 1970, to change focus. 

In reality, if you check out the show in reruns -- and happily, it's actually stuck around in reruns after 50 years, unlike most of the others -- you'll see that this was a sly, almost-subversive program for adults that was often very intelligent and wildly clever, filled with sophisticated humor...just wrapped in cornball hokum for those who weren't paying close attention.  It's not just me who recognizes this, of course -- "Amiable madness" is the way a recent article and appreciation on the very good AV Club website described the program.  Green Acres was created by Jay Sommers who in many knowing-circles has been credited for the show's bizarre creativity.  It starred Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor, and featured a cast that was dry as sand in their lunacy.

To show what I meant to my friend, I went online to track down some clips.  I'll show a bunch more of the gems upcoming, perhaps tomorrow, but for now this is an absolutely great 10-minute montage of totally clever ways that Green Acres broke "the fourth wall" with nothing more than just the opening credits. 

Because the montage deals with the opening credits, I thought it was best first to post the main theme song, so that people unfamiliar with the show have a perspective on it all.  (The lyrics have been added over, so you can sing along...)

And now, here is what the show regularly did with the opening credits that came after -- not every week, since they mixed things up enough to keep audiences on their toes.  But every once in a while they'd throw these in to make sure you were all in on the joke.

By the way, it isn't just that they did something like this so often, or that they were generally very funny, but that they were able to come up with SO MANY clever ways to make these jokes.
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Even with the revelations of the Michael Flynn deposition about the seemingly-blatant obstruction of justice from Trump's lawyers and a member of Congress, and news of various material getting unredacted from the Mueller Report from separate judges, I don't want to talk Trump at the moment.  That news will have to stand poised in its importance.  Instead I want to drop several levels and bring up another disaster.  The HBO mini-series on "Chernobyl."

At first I wasn’t interested, but I was visiting my cousin and his wife who were discussing if they set the recorder to get the next episode.  It was nothing more than that, though I knew they were very interested in most things Russia.  (His wife's name is Olga -- you do the math.)  I kept thinking about it, and when I got home I figured I might as well check it out.  I went to the On Demand setting and watched the first episode -- which was spectacular.  Just a seriously impressive production on every level.  The cast isn't well-known -- the two most recognizable actors are Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård -- but everyone is impeccable.  And all five episodes are grippingly written and directed by Craig Mazin (best known for highly-successful goofball comedies and his outspoken, public hatred of his college roommate Ted Cruz), and John Renck (who until the past few years had mostly done commercials and music videos) respectively.  Their work here is substantive and rich.  In fact, surprisingly (if not shockingly) subtle for its scope and epic disaster.  And last night I got up to date just finishing episode #2 which was almost as good.  It goes into levels that most of the public hasn't known, including how close things came to wiping out all of Europe.

If you get HBO, it's exceedingly worth checking out these first two episode before #3 airs next Monday, May 20.  For other folk, put it in your Netflix queue for whenever the DVDs are released.
 
This trailer gives a good sense of the high quality of the mini-series and overall production, but effective as it is doesn't do it justice.  A trailer by its nature quickly cuts together pieces of importance.  The show itself is methodical and absorbing.

Here's a good idea of what I mean.  This is the sequence where the nuclear reactor explodes.  When you think "nuclear reactor explodes" and its aftermath, there are probably a lot of images that immediately come to mind.  I'm guessing few to none would be put together like this, or perhaps as impactful.  And it only builds from here.

Starting this past Monday, Sundance Channel began a new, unique series, State of the Union.  What's unique about it is that it’s a 10-episode series of which each episode is just 10-minutes long, and it airs 10 nights in a row.  Taking a step back, that's basically the equivalent of making a normal movie of 100 minutes and dividing it into 10 parts.  Tough each part has a beginning, middle and end.

The show has serious pedigree, but what I particularly like is that it stars Chris O’Dowd who I like a lot, and he's wonderful here.  It also stars Rosamund Pike who has been very good.  I enjoyed the first two episodes, about a a couple with great affection for each other, but they're in the process of seeing a marriage counselor because she cheated on him.  The two episodes have been nicely written and enjoyable for what so far has basically been two people talking.  My hope (and assumption) is that it will develop further than that, but we'll see.  If it does it could be special.  If it doesn't, it will still be an easy, good way to spend 10 minutes each night, though slight.  
 
I avoided reading much about it so I didn’t know that the terrific Stephen Frears directed it.  (The Queen, Dangerous Liaisons, and High Fidelity -- and also The Grifters which I only mention because I did publicity on it and interviewed for the press kit.)  The only thing I found annoying had nothing to do with the show – but when it was over, the end credits showed the two stars.  And Frears credit.  And then…they did that horrible thing where they start promoting the next show, the screen shrinks, and you can’t read the teensy remaining credits.  So, for this episode that was pretty much two people talking, they didn’t show the freaking writer in a size one could actually read!  I had to look it up and discover that their actions were even worse, hiding the writer, since it was Nick Hornby!  The novelist of About a Boy, High Fidelity, and the screenplay of An Education.  And they bury that??  Seriously, guys???

If you've missed any of the episodes, Sundance has them all embedded on their website so you can either catch up on them -- or just binge.  You can check them out here.
 

Producers of The View publicly slammed one of their co-hosts, Meghan McCain, for faking sick days to avoid talking about her father-in-law who had just been indicted for his time with the Trump administration. And also for being hypocritical not talking about how her family benefits from the administration which she says she hates. And for being hypocritical, as well, always praising conservative values but never talking about her husband (who is the co-founder and publisher of the far-right The Federalist) with a repeatedly ethics-challenged past, always insisting that she likes to keep her private life private...yet regularly talking about her father, mother and grandmother.

You can read about it here.

On the one hand, good for them being so open and public about it. On the other hand, they hired Meghan McCain and should have had a pretty good idea who she was before they did so -- I'd been critical for years, and that's without doing any due diligence, just from the public record. And so now must live with her...which they seem okay with because they've been sticking with her for a while now, despite a range of controversies.

The other day, Disney announced its news streaming service Disney Plus which will launch November 12.  Pricing will be $7 a month or $70 for an annual subscription, which most news reports commented how it compares favorably to $13 a month for Netflix's most popular tier.  The company said that they may eventually bundle Disney Plus with other of their services like Hulu and ESPN Plus.  During the first year, they expect to release 25 new series and 10 movies, documentaries and specials.  Overall, the Disney Plus library will have over 7,500 TV episodes and 500 movies.

It seems like a fascinating venture, with some plus and minuses.  On the plus side, Disney has a huge vault they can draw from, and recently bought the film division of 20th Century Fox, and now have that library, too -- which include the Star Wars franchise, the Avenger franchise and all 30 years of The Simpsons.  And among the new productions for the service are a Star Wars spinoff series, The Mandalorian and prequel to Rogue One (for which Diego Luna will reprise his role of Cassian Andor).  There will be a series Marvel Studios series Loki, that stars Tom Hiddleston reprising his role,; and a Pixar series Monsters at Work, that takes off after the events of the  original Monsters Inc. movie.

On the negative side -- or at least left out of most news stories is that the $7 a month is an "initial" price, most likely to get interest and subscriptions, and it seems probably that that will rise, and the cost-difference with Netflix will narrow.  In addition, Netflix has $9 stream plan, as well, which is much closer to Disney's "initial" offering.  And a significantly larger catalog -- 1,569 TV shows and 4,010 movies. (Keep in mind that the "7,500" figure for Disney is episodes, not shows.  If each Netflix TV series only has two years of 22 episodes each -- and keep in mind that old shows often had around 35 episodes a years and most not only ran for more than just two years, with some like Gunsmoke and Bonanza running for decades -- that works out to 70,000 episodes.

But further, it only compares with Netflix and leaves out Amazon.  An Amazon Prime subscription averages out to $10 a month.  And that not only includes a very large catalog, including international TV shows -- but most importantly includes free 2-day shipping on Amazon (and free next-day delivery on orders over $35), along with music streaming, cloud photo storage, Prime Now with free grocery and restaurant delivery within range, and more.

And no one should expect immediately competition with Netflix.  Disney predicts between 60-90 million subscribers in five years -- while Netflix currently has 140 million subscribers. Disney also says it expect so spend $2 billion a year over most of the next five years, while Netflix spends around $12 billion on content a year.

This is not to say that the Disney Plus service isn't intriguing and won't be a success.  In fact, it's very fascinating and seems poised to do well.  But as a complimentary service to Netflix and Amazon Prime, rather than one that can knock them out of the box.  Mainly, it's to say that most coverage of Disney Plus was pretty sketchy in its description of the landscape.

Besides which, who know how that landscape may be drastically changed in five years.

For fans of The Office -- and I mean the original, the English production with Ricky Gervais that he created with Stephen Merchant (although fans of the U.S. adaptation will enjoy the history behind it all, as well) -- this is a treat.  It's a wonderful, half-hour documentary on how the show came to be, and the story is pretty interesting and a lot of fun.

The documentary features Gervais and Merchant, and though I can't tell precisely when it was done, it appears to have been made before 2010.  At first, I was a bit wary since about 30-seconds in, with an effort to show the series' Grand Importance (which isn't needed since the British show is classic all on its own), the narrator refers to it winning two Golden Globes as "television's Oscars."  That would of course be the Emmys -- but making matters worse, the Golden Globes is a total joke, basically the equivalent of "your office pool's Oscars."  But with that hyperbole out of the way early, the rest of the documentary is very enjoyable.