As if we needed more evidence that there's never a slow time of year for significant TV (except maybe Christmas week), here's a mid-August weekend with so many premieres you might think fall had come early — although the new fall season would be lucky to boast shows remotely this interesting.
The greatest buzz, of course, surrounds the beginning of the end of AMC's darkly entertaining masterpiece Breaking Bad (Sunday, 9/8c), which resumes its climactic trajectory with the first of eight final episodes — and if Sunday's blistering hour is any indication of what's to come over the next two months, we're in for quite the wrenching ride. A ride that's teased by an opening flash-forward which suggests catastrophic consequences for the domestic life of Walter White (Bryan Cranston, astonishing as ever in his swings from mensch to menacing) — whose criminal alter ego is now in danger of being exposed by his brother-in-law/DEA agent Hank (Dean Norris, a world removed from the melodramatics of his new gig Under the Dome).
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Question: I, like many others, read the novel Under the Dome and was sorely disappointed with the ending. I read an article about changes that are coming to the TV version. I was glad about that and am now going to give it a try. But I also read that it may become a series instead of a 13-episode miniseries. Is that true? I'd much rather this be a miniseries as opposed to a series lasting multiple seasons. The story doesn't really lend itself well to playing out over several years. Do you know if it will continue past 13 episodes? — Beth
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Remember the old X-Files mantra "Trust No One?" One of its producers surely does, and in creating the new Cinemax spy thriller Hunted, Frank Spotnitz makes it clear from the first scenes that you can't always trust your eyes, either.
"At least...
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In the tradition of all great detectives, Swedish bundle-of-brooding Kurt Wallander can't escape crime no matter where he goes — and that includes the country home he is just moving into with his lady love as the first of three new Wallander movies kicks off a third season on Masterpiece Mystery! (Sunday, PBS, check tvguide.com listings).
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Following, some thoughts on another very busy weekend of summer TV. (At this point, I'm almost looking forward to the fall season starting, so I can catch my breath.)
CHI-TOWN CHICANERY: Corruption, mendacity, a thick smog of cynicism. Ain't we got fun? And so the audaciously downbeat political drama Boss returns to Starz (Friday, 9/8c), anchored and dominated yet again by Kelsey Grammer's tremendous performance as Chicago mayor (aka "boss" man) Tom Kane. A self-righteous bastard and unrepentant bully, this Machiavellian manipulator is notorious for "sacrificing that which is most precious for his political survival" (including sending his own daughter to prison and having his once-trusted turncoat adviser killed). Juggling more baggage than O'Hare during a blizzard, Kane is also beset by demons, manifesting as visions and hallucinations and ghosts, all symptoms of a debilitating brain disease — or maybe it's just good old guilt.
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