Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Tuesday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best show currently on TV?” can be found at the end of this post.)
This week’s question: What is the worst show you’ve ever reviewed? Why was it so bad? Did you waver over the grade or rating you gave it?
Daniel Fienberg (@TheFienPrint), The Hollywood Reporter
I’ve compared “Mixology” to contracting TV herpes, “Fuller House” to exhuming a bloating, gaseous corpse and called “Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders” the perfect xenophobic TV show for Trump’s America. Still, there’s little doubt that no show has ever made me so irate for its mere misguided existence than a little show called “H8r” on The CW. If you don’t remember “H8r” the premise was this: Mario Lopez drives his F-list celebrity...
This week’s question: What is the worst show you’ve ever reviewed? Why was it so bad? Did you waver over the grade or rating you gave it?
Daniel Fienberg (@TheFienPrint), The Hollywood Reporter
I’ve compared “Mixology” to contracting TV herpes, “Fuller House” to exhuming a bloating, gaseous corpse and called “Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders” the perfect xenophobic TV show for Trump’s America. Still, there’s little doubt that no show has ever made me so irate for its mere misguided existence than a little show called “H8r” on The CW. If you don’t remember “H8r” the premise was this: Mario Lopez drives his F-list celebrity...
- 9/12/2017
- by Hanh Nguyen
- Indiewire
Starved
Showcase Inventory
Created by Eric Schaeffer
Produced by Daniel Hank
Aired on FX for 1 season (7 episodes) from August 4, 2005 – September 15, 2005
Cast
Eric Schaeffer as Sam
Laura Benanti as Billie Frasier
Sterling K. Brown as Adam Williams
Del Pentecost as Dan Roundtree
Show Premise
A group of four New York friends, each suffering from eating disorders, attend meetings at “Belt Tighteners”, an independent support group that uses shame based techniques to help improve their eating habits. The group centers mainly on Sam, a commodities trader who is anorexic who compulsively overeats a special brand of chocolate snack. He is in love with his bisexual friend Billie, a local singer/songwriter, who is an alcoholic as well as an anorexic bulimic. They frequent a local diner with pals Dan and Adam to discuss their food issues after their meetings. Dan is a novelist who is afraid that his weight is affecting his marriage,...
Showcase Inventory
Created by Eric Schaeffer
Produced by Daniel Hank
Aired on FX for 1 season (7 episodes) from August 4, 2005 – September 15, 2005
Cast
Eric Schaeffer as Sam
Laura Benanti as Billie Frasier
Sterling K. Brown as Adam Williams
Del Pentecost as Dan Roundtree
Show Premise
A group of four New York friends, each suffering from eating disorders, attend meetings at “Belt Tighteners”, an independent support group that uses shame based techniques to help improve their eating habits. The group centers mainly on Sam, a commodities trader who is anorexic who compulsively overeats a special brand of chocolate snack. He is in love with his bisexual friend Billie, a local singer/songwriter, who is an alcoholic as well as an anorexic bulimic. They frequent a local diner with pals Dan and Adam to discuss their food issues after their meetings. Dan is a novelist who is afraid that his weight is affecting his marriage,...
- 12/5/2015
- by Jean Pierre Diez
- SoundOnSight
Today we are talking to a supremely talented triple-threat who has carved out an astonishingly impressive career thus far onstage with her string of stupendous performances ranging from her blazing debut in the late-90s revival of The Sound Of Music and Wonderful Town through to Swing, Into The Woods, Nine, The Wedding Singer and her Tony Award-winning work in the recent revival of Gypsy - the alluring and simply phenomenal Laura Benanti. Touching upon many of her past stage and screen roles and expressing candid insights into many of her most celebrated characters to date, Benanti opens up about the productions and properties which have made her one of the most exciting and in-demand Broadway crossover performers of the 21st century. In addition to all about her many Broadway bows - including her most recent runs in In The Next Room Or The Vibrator Play and Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown...
- 9/9/2013
- by Pat Cerasaro
- BroadwayWorld.com
Laura Benanti has been cast opposite Matthew Perry in NBC's upcoming single-camera comedy Go On, a show about a sportscaster going to mandatory group therapy. Deadline reports that Benanti will play Lauren, the head of said therapeutic gathering. Based on our ongoing theory that audiences generally root for characters with the same color hair to get together, we're guessing that Benanti will eventually be Perry's love interest. Weirdly, this is Benanti's second sitcom set in a support group — in 2005, she co-starred in FX's short-lived, deeply strange eating-disorder comedy Starved, too. (The show had its moments.)...
- 3/14/2012
- by Margaret Lyons
- Vulture
In an obvious piece of cross promotion for her upcoming NBC series "The Playboy Club," actress Laura Benanti announced she'll be on the cover of the October 2011 issue of...wait for it....Playboy.
The 32 year-old actress plays Carol Lynne, the seasoned veteran of the original Playboy Club in 1960s Chicago. Of her impending revealing photo she tweeted, "So excited to shoot the October cover of @playboy for @NBCPlayboyClub! Carol Lynne is coming to a news stand near you."
Benanti, best known for her Tony Award-winning role as Louise/Gypsy Rose Lee in "Gypsy," is a relative TV neophyte. She previously had stints on the ABC series "Eli Stone" and the short-lived FX comedy "Starved" before landing her role on "The Playboy Club."
While the details of the photo are unknown, it's a safe bet that it'll involve bunny ears, a bow tie, a cotton tail and a lot of skin.
The 32 year-old actress plays Carol Lynne, the seasoned veteran of the original Playboy Club in 1960s Chicago. Of her impending revealing photo she tweeted, "So excited to shoot the October cover of @playboy for @NBCPlayboyClub! Carol Lynne is coming to a news stand near you."
Benanti, best known for her Tony Award-winning role as Louise/Gypsy Rose Lee in "Gypsy," is a relative TV neophyte. She previously had stints on the ABC series "Eli Stone" and the short-lived FX comedy "Starved" before landing her role on "The Playboy Club."
While the details of the photo are unknown, it's a safe bet that it'll involve bunny ears, a bow tie, a cotton tail and a lot of skin.
- 7/21/2011
- by editorial@zap2it.com
- Zap2It - From Inside the Box
Deadline reports that Laura Benanti will take the lead role in NBC’s drama pilot Playboy. The series is set at the Playboy Club in Chicago in 1963. Benanti will play Carol-Lynne, a 30-year-old bombshell and an established star at the Playboy Club who knows that her days as a Bunny are numbered. Benanti, who won a Tony for Gypsy, co-starred on ABC’s Eli Stone and FX’s Starved.
She would join the already in talks Amber Heard as would play a new hire at the club, originally an orphan from Fort Wayne, an inquisitive young woman with an untethered sexuality and a dark past. Alan Taylor, who directed the pilot for…wait for it… AMC’s Mad Men, is going to shockingly direct Playboy from a script by Chad Hodge.
She would join the already in talks Amber Heard as would play a new hire at the club, originally an orphan from Fort Wayne, an inquisitive young woman with an untethered sexuality and a dark past. Alan Taylor, who directed the pilot for…wait for it… AMC’s Mad Men, is going to shockingly direct Playboy from a script by Chad Hodge.
- 2/17/2011
- by Kevin Coll
- FusedFilm
Exclusive: Tony-winning actress Laura Benanti is set to star in NBC's drama pilot Playboy. The project, from 20th TV/Imagine TV, is set at the Playboy Club in Chicago in 1963. Benanti will play Carol-Lynne, a 30-year-old bombshell and an established star at the Playboy Club who knows that her days as a Bunny are numbered. Benanti, who won a Tony for Gypsy, co-starred on ABC's Eli Stone and FX's Starved. She is with Innovative and Brookside Artist Management. Nancy Lenehan (Worst Week) has been cast in CBS' comedy pilot How To Be A Gentleman, written by and starring David Hornsby. It revolves around a magazine that has changed ownership. Lenehan, repped by Pakula/King & Assoc. and Meghan Schumacher Management, will play Hornsby’s WASPy overbearing mother. Tara Summers is set to co-star in the CBS drama pilot Ringer. The project centers on troubled young woman Bridget (Sarah Michelle Gellar) who,...
- 2/17/2011
- by NELLIE ANDREEVA
- Deadline TV
"Party Down" will be back on Starz in the spring, and it's bringing another round of guest stars along for the ride.
The show about L.A. cater-waiters will premiere on April 23, where it will be paired with Starz's new show "Gravity." Season 2 will pick up a few months after the end of the first season, with Henry (Adam Scott) now in charge of the Party Down team, Casey (Lizzy Caplan) back from her cruise-ship gig and Ron (Ken Marino) having gone off the deep end after his Soup R' Crackers dream disintegrates.
The show will also feature new regular Megan Mullally as Lydia Dunfree, a new member of the catering crew who's moved to Los Angeles in an attempt to make her 14-year-old daughter a star. She takes over for "Glee's" Jane Lynch, who'll return for the season finale as her character, Constance, gets married.
Other guests this...
The show about L.A. cater-waiters will premiere on April 23, where it will be paired with Starz's new show "Gravity." Season 2 will pick up a few months after the end of the first season, with Henry (Adam Scott) now in charge of the Party Down team, Casey (Lizzy Caplan) back from her cruise-ship gig and Ron (Ken Marino) having gone off the deep end after his Soup R' Crackers dream disintegrates.
The show will also feature new regular Megan Mullally as Lydia Dunfree, a new member of the catering crew who's moved to Los Angeles in an attempt to make her 14-year-old daughter a star. She takes over for "Glee's" Jane Lynch, who'll return for the season finale as her character, Constance, gets married.
Other guests this...
- 1/16/2010
- by editorial@zap2it.com
- Zap2It - From Inside the Box
Starz has assembled the cast of its upcoming half-hour dramedy "Gravity."
Krysten Ritter, Ivan Sergei, Ving Rhames and Rachel Hunter are set to star in the 10-episode ensemble series, formerly known as "Failure to Fly." It is slated to premiere in the spring.
Created by Eric Schaeffer and Jill Franklyn, "Gravity" revolves around a group from an eccentric outpatient program of suicide survivors.
Ritter ("Breaking Bad") plays Lily Champagne, a twentysomething clinically depressed outcast looking for the love that her father never gave her. Sergei ("The Break-Up") plays Robert Collingsworth, an ophthalmologist who is despondent following the cancer death of his wife and becomes an Internet celebrity when his suicide attempt goes comically awry.
Multihyphenate Schaeffer co-stars as Miller, an NYPD cop who seems to be everywhere Lily is.
Rhames plays Dogg McFee, the group's leader and a former big-league baseball player who is confined to a wheelchair. Hunter portrays Shawna Rollins,...
Krysten Ritter, Ivan Sergei, Ving Rhames and Rachel Hunter are set to star in the 10-episode ensemble series, formerly known as "Failure to Fly." It is slated to premiere in the spring.
Created by Eric Schaeffer and Jill Franklyn, "Gravity" revolves around a group from an eccentric outpatient program of suicide survivors.
Ritter ("Breaking Bad") plays Lily Champagne, a twentysomething clinically depressed outcast looking for the love that her father never gave her. Sergei ("The Break-Up") plays Robert Collingsworth, an ophthalmologist who is despondent following the cancer death of his wife and becomes an Internet celebrity when his suicide attempt goes comically awry.
Multihyphenate Schaeffer co-stars as Miller, an NYPD cop who seems to be everywhere Lily is.
Rhames plays Dogg McFee, the group's leader and a former big-league baseball player who is confined to a wheelchair. Hunter portrays Shawna Rollins,...
- 10/14/2009
- by By Nellie Andreeva
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Laura Benanti has been tapped to co-star opposite Jonny Lee Miller in ABC's drama pilot Eli Stone.
James Saito also has been cast in the project, from Touchstone Television and studio-based Berlanti Television.
"Eli" is a high-concept legal drama about a lawyer (Miller) who finds out he might be a prophet.
Benanti will play Beth, a single mother and Eli's first love back in college, who is now pleading with him to help her sue her insurance company after it refused to cover an experimental treatment for her autistic child.
Saito will play Dr. Chen, Eli's impostor acupuncturist.
Benanti and Saito join previously cast Loretta Devine (HR 11/10).
Benanti starred on the FX comedy Starved. Her credits also include the features Take the Lead and East Broadway.
Benanti, a two-time Tony nominee, has appeared in such Broadway productions as The Sound of Music, Swing! Into the Woods, Nine and The Wedding Singer.
Saito's credits include The Devil's Advocate.
James Saito also has been cast in the project, from Touchstone Television and studio-based Berlanti Television.
"Eli" is a high-concept legal drama about a lawyer (Miller) who finds out he might be a prophet.
Benanti will play Beth, a single mother and Eli's first love back in college, who is now pleading with him to help her sue her insurance company after it refused to cover an experimental treatment for her autistic child.
Saito will play Dr. Chen, Eli's impostor acupuncturist.
Benanti and Saito join previously cast Loretta Devine (HR 11/10).
Benanti starred on the FX comedy Starved. Her credits also include the features Take the Lead and East Broadway.
Benanti, a two-time Tony nominee, has appeared in such Broadway productions as The Sound of Music, Swing! Into the Woods, Nine and The Wedding Singer.
Saito's credits include The Devil's Advocate.
- 11/21/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Dan Castellaneta, best known as the voice of Homer Simpson in Fox's comedy series The Simpsons, has joined the cast of TBS' half-hour pilot The Jeff Garlin Project. Bob Einstein (Fox's Arrested Development, aka Super Dave Osborne) and Jackie Hoffman (FX's Starved) also have been cast in the pilot, which features Garlin (HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm) playing a version of himself. The project revolves around Garlin's fictional variety show and features flashbacks to the events of the past week that inspired that particular installment of the variety show. Castellaneta will play a snippy bank teller. Einstein plays the uncle of Garlin's wife (who is played by Garlin's real-life, Marla Garlin). Hoffman plays an annoying neighbor.
- 3/16/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
It's good and bad news for two scripted FX comedy series as It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has been renewed for a second season while the ax has fallen on Starved. The network has ordered 13 episodes of the half-hour series Sunny, marking the first time it has moved forward with a second season of a comedy series. Sunny and Starved got off to a slow start when they premiered in a 10-11 p.m. block Aug. 4, drawing 1.5 million and 1.4 million viewers, respectively. Sunny, which centers on three childhood friends who own and operate a bar in Philadelphia, averaged 1.14 million total viewers per episode for the season; Starved, which focuses on four thirtysomething friends in Brooklyn battling various eating disorders, averaged 1.06 million.
- 10/7/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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