Matthew Macfadyen returning to his spy TV roots / Daniel Radcliffe joins Tracy Morgan's NBC comedy pilot / NBC to keep Olympics through 2036
PLUS: Everybody's Live with John Mulaney felt aimless in its debut episode.
Matthew Macfadyen returning to his spy TV roots in John Le Carré-based Legacy Of Spies series
The Succession Emmy winner, who gained fame on British TV in the early 2000s playing MI5 agent Tom Quinn in the BBC espionage series Spooks (AKA MI-5), is attached to star in a drama series based on le Carré’s A Legacy of Spies as the career intelligence officer George Smiley. Legacy Of Spies is being made by The Ink Factory, which will shop the series in Britain and in the U.S. As Deadline's Nellie Andreeva notes, "Macfadyen follows a long line of actors who have previously portrayed (George Smiley) on-screen including Rupert Davies in 1965’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Gary Oldman in 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Alex Guinness in the 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy TV miniseries, among others."
Daniel Radcliffe joins Tracy Morgan's NBC comedy pilot
In the comedy pilot, Morgan plays Reggie, a disgraced former football player on a mission to rehabilitate his image, in the comedy pilot from Tina Fey, Robert Carlock and Sam Means. Radcliffe will star as Arthur Tobin, described as “an award-winning filmmaker who moves into Reggie’s mansion to film an immersive documentary about the former star running back.”
Comcast inks $3 billion deal to keep the Olympics through 2036
The deal includes the 2034 Winter Olympics, which are set to be held in Salt Lake City. As The Wall Street Journal's Joe Flint points out, "Comcast extending Olympics deal for 2033-2036 cycle for $3 billion shows a) belief in live sports and b) that Peacock needs as much live sports as possible to become a viable platform going forward. In many ways, the NBCU approach seems similar to Fox in its approach. Fox bets big on sports and news and less so on entertainment fare and sold bulk of their cable portfolio to Disney. Comcast/NBCU is spinning off bulk of its cable portfolio in favor of broadcast and streaming. In this case, Bravo is their Fox News and by that I mean a strong brand with low-cost content that is still somewhat valuable to the traditional cable bundle as well as help drive streaming (Peacock)"
Kiernan Shipka and Toheeb Jimoh are among four joining Industry Season 4
The Mad Men alum and the former Ted Lasso star, Amy James-Kelly and Jack Farthing are the latest additions to the HBO series. Shipka will play Haley Clay, an executive assistant at payment processor Tender. Jimoh will portray Kwabena Bannerman, trader at Mostyn Asset Management.
Nikki Glaser to return as Golden Globes host in 2026
Glaser returning for a second year isn't surprising since Deadline reported the morning after she hosted the Globes in January that she had already inked a three-year deal to host last year. Glaser is expected to get a significant pay bump from her $400,000 salary. “Hosting the Golden Globes this year was without a doubt the most fun I have ever had in my career,” said Glaser in a statement. “I can’t wait to do it again, and this time in front of the team from The White Lotus who will finally recognize my talent and cast me in Season Four as a Scandinavian Pilates instructor with a shadowy past.”
Everybody's Live with John Mulaney felt aimless in its debut episode
"There were lots of moments when it seemed like Mulaney was trying hard to deconstruct all the tropes we have come to expect from traditional talk shows – from the chummy announcer/sidekick to calls from viewers, just like the phone-ins venerated CNN host Larry King featured," says Eric Deggans of Mulaney's new weekly Netflix variety series. "But the offhand, randomly eccentric vibe distilled in Mulaney's debut Wednesday didn't feel so much like a bold reinvention of talk shows as an uncomfortable middle ground between parody and mimicry. And instead of lending an air of danger or anything-can-happen excitement, the show's live element just added an overarching pressure which seemed to stifle the proceedings rather than elevate them. A lot of the show's vibe was first revealed in Netflix's six-night experiment last year, John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in L.A.: the roomy set with ornate doors for guests, announcer/onstage foil Richard Kind, appearances by the autonomous delivery drone Saymo and the spot-on choice of theme music, Wang Chung's 1985 hit To Live and Die in L.A. But while last year's debut was an entertaining jumble of esoteric ideas – kicked off with a masterful monologue on the absurdity of Los Angeles – the first episode of Everybody's Live on Wednesday felt a bit more aimless."
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Thankfully, Everybody's Live didn't stray too much from Everybody's in L.A.: "The ‘70s-inspired set on a Hollywood soundstage proved a metaphor for the transition from one-off experiment to a three-month run of a dozen weekly episodes: mostly the same, with minor tweaks only apparent to a small subset of nerdy aficionados," says Alison Herman. "That’s great news for fans like myself, having named Everybody’s in LA one of the best shows of last year in my annual roundup. It’s nonetheless surprising how non-expository Wednesday’s technical debut was. The presence of Saymo the delivery robot, for example, went unexplained. Mulaney’s four-wheeled friend needed no introduction for those who watched the bug-eyed apparatus develop into a full-fledged character last spring, but neophytes dropping in on a major launch from a worldwide streamer may have been left scratching their heads. Mulaney may have cracked that the name change came after focus groups showed audiences didn’t like LA, but nothing else about the show felt focus-grouped or planned with mass appeal in mind."
Everybody's Live's first episode was marred by subpar execution: "The first show was a bit of an awkward mess—not that he seemed too concerned about it," says Chris Murphy. "Wearing a maroon blazer and shirt, Mulaney came out to deliver the monologue while inexplicably holding a clipboard. As the show went on, it became clear that he was crossing things off along the way—suggesting that the clipboard provided some type of road map for the show." Murphy adds: "Though his attitude was decidedly laissez-faire, Mulaney really did seem to be opening up, letting us into his life and his (pretend) home. The show’s warm and comfortable set—modeled after a Los Angeles living room with a grand piano, a telescope, and a view of the city—contained framed photos of Mulaney and his wife, actor Olivia Munn. Rather than going for topical humor in the monologue (though he made one solid Luigi Mangione joke), he veered toward the personal....Thankfully, opening up about his personal life didn’t stop Mulaney from doing what he does best: telling jokes, and edgy ones at that."
Everybody's Live picks up where Everybody's in L.A. left off: "Everybody’s Live’s spark comes from the tension between that warm, welcoming atmosphere and the barely-constrained chaos of its production," says Garrett Martin. "Guests don’t always gel, the celebrities don’t always have anything interesting to say about the night’s topic, the expert tries to relay facts while the famous people around them barely pay attention, comedians try to get their jokes in, and Mulaney intentionally keeps everybody off-balance, routinely jumping from guest to guest with unexpected questions, abruptly cutting to pretaped segments, or patching in live callers who nominally have something to say on the topic. (The live calls would be the first thing dropped from the show if it had any other host and aired on any other network.) In last night’s monologue Mulaney joked that a show like this is the only way to get his heart rate up now that he’s famously clean and sober, and he takes palpable delight in a format that bucks the tightly regimented structure usually enforced by the TV industry."
Whatever Everybody's Live sacrificed in looking a skosh more coherently produced, it gained in looking more comfortable with its quirks: "It didn’t look like it was straining to re-invent the format; it mostly looked like a rearrangement of the atoms," says Bill Carter. "A little Letterman here, a little Conan there, a notable strain of SNL, mixed with Donahue taking live calls and Suze Orman telling you how to spend your money. The genre familiarity worked to ease a viewer through the slightly bent, consistently appealing style. Mulaney possesses every element needed for a strong late-night host: charm, charisma, playfulness. Most importantly, he can be counted on to be funny."
Everybody's Live is eerily similar to Everybody's in L.A.: "Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney is an odd duck of an interview show that could either redefine the way viewers consume late night television or just another of Netflix’s iffy experiments to bring live content to subscribers," says Matthew Creith. "Mulaney leans heavily on his relationships with former Saturday Night Live colleagues like (Fred) Armisen and Tracy Morgan, the latter appearing on tonight’s episode as a fictional African leader named King Latifah. Like Graham Norton, Mulaney delights in bringing on a mixture of guests to regale his audience with humorous stories from their past, but the other segments simply don’t land as much as the host wishes they would. Much like Everybody’s in L.A., the whacky approach that Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney takes is an acquired taste that ignores its studio audience by relishing in its own absurdity."
It's okay that John Mulaney dialed down the weirdness of Everybody's in L.A.: "Having a loose housing for Mulaney’s eccentric ideas served Everybody’s in L.A. quite well, and losing the city as a centerpiece for Everybody’s Live suggested the new series could be broadening out," says Ben Travers. "After all, this isn’t a limited week-long run anymore. This is a 12-episode order. A full season. A new series. And with an extremely popular comedian at the helm, Netflix executives undoubtedly see an opportunity to attract a wide audience — one more shot at reinventing the late-night talk show for the streaming age, a la Chelsea, The Break with Michele Wolf, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, and others. So if dialing back the weird a little means dialing up the viewership (and keeping Mulaney around, season after season), why not give it a go?"
John Mulaney brought back his entire Everybody's in L.A. writing staff and added two more writers for Everybody's Live
Joan Baez derailed Everybody's Live's first show by attacking President Trump
Simu Liu hosting Hulu’s escape room-inspired reality competition Got to Get Out, pitting reality vets vs. rookies
Omarosa, Spencer Pratt, Cynthia Bailey, Demi Burnett, Val Chmerkovskiy, Kim Zolciak-Biermann, Susan Noles and Clare Crawley are among the reality vets competing against reality TV rookies for a $1 million prize. "Lies and lunacy collide in this competition series where a mix of reality icons and crafty gamers must conspire to get out. In this house, time is money," according to the official description. "As the clock ticks up, so does the prize money. The longer they stay, the greater their chance to earn more. They can split the money equally in the end, or at any point, try to escape with the accumulated money all for themselves, leaving others to start again at $0."
Dexter: Resurrection recruits David Dastmalchian
The Oppenheimer star will guest as a character named Gareth, joining a cast that includes Uma Thurman, Peter Dinklage, Neil Patrick Harris, Krysten Ritter and Eric Stonestreet.
Peter Sarsgaard boards Apple TV+'s Neuromancer
The former Presumed Innocent star is returning to Apple to play John Ashpool in the series starring Callum Turner, Briana Middleton, Mark Strong, Joseph Lee, and Cleménce Poésy.
Conan O'Brien originally planned an Oscars opening spoof of him appearing in all the top films: “It starts with me and I’m in Wicked and I’m all green”
“It was the idea that, ‘Oh, Conan’s now going to goof on all the movies,'” Conan said of his Billy Crystal-esque opening in recapping his hosting stint on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend with his head writer Mike Sweeney. “It starts with me and I’m in Wicked and I’m all green, finishing ‘Defying Gravity’ or one of those songs. And I finish it and then you cut to the next thing, which is Gladiator II and ‘clang, clang, clang’ with swords and you see that I’m a gladiator but then you notice that I’m still green,” said Conan. “And then you go on to Conclave and you see people voting with their ballots and one of the hands is still green.” Conan ultimately ended up appearing in one movie spoof: The Substance. (When Conan hosted the Emmys in 2006, he did something similar, with cameos on Lost, 24, The Office, House, South Park and Dateline.) Also, Conan recalled the Academy objecting to a promo in which the Oscar statue sits on the couch. “One of the people from the Academy came forward and said, ‘Oscar can never be horizontal.’ And that blew my mind. Like, wow, this is like the thigh bone of St. Peter. This is a religious icon," said Sweeney.
Shondaland Netflix murder-mystery The Residence to compete as a comedy for the Emmys
The whodunit starring Uzo Aduba and Randall Park "has a strong comedic bent in the vein of Hulu’s Only Murders In the Building," says Deadline's Nellie Andreeva. "Actually, in what is likely a first, we have three murder mysteries among the strong Emmy series contenders in the comedy categories this year, returning nominees Only Murders In the Building and Peacock’s anthology Poker Face, joined by The Residence. All three have a female single lead or co-lead."
Reacher has its biggest premiere yet
About 54.6 million viewers watched the Season 3 premiere worldwide in the first 19 days of release.
Dean Norris says Law & Order: Organized Crime gets to be “edgier” on Peacock: "We can say the F word"
“There’s a lot of family stuff between me and my good buddy Chris Meloni, and I think you guys are going to love it," says the former Breaking Bad star. "I’m really excited because it’s on Peacock. We can say the F word. It’s a lot edgier, it’s a lot more intense, and so it’s been kind of freeing in a way, creatively, to be on streaming, on Peacock, instead of on the network.”
Taxi stars reunite for Danny DeVito tribute
Tony Danza, Marilu Henner, Judd Hirsch, Carol Kane and Christopher Lloyd met up Monday night to watch their former co-star Danny DeVito accept the Jason Robards Award for Excellence in Theater in New York City. Taxi co-creator James L. Brooks was also in attendance.
Netflix shines a light on kid influencers in the trailer for Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing
The three-part investigative docuseries, premiering April 9, delves into YouTuber Piper Rockelle sand her friends and allegations of exploitation and cult-like manipulation from their momager Tiffany.
Black Mirror unveils its Season 7 trailer and premiere date
Awkwafina, Milanka Brooks, Peter Capaldi, Emma Corrin, Patsy Ferran, Paul Giamatti, Lewis Gribben, Osy Ikhile, Rashida Jones, Siena Kelly, Billy Magnussen, Rosy McEwen, Cristin Milioti, Chris O’Dowd and Issa Rae, Paul G. Raymond, Tracee Ellis Ross, Jimmi Simpson and Harriet Walter are among the stars of the six-episode Season 7, which includes a sequel to "USS Callister." Season 7 premieres April 10.
BMF gets a Season 4 teaser and premiere date
The Starz series' fourth season, premiering June 6, will follow the Flenory brothers as they struggle to expand their business in Mexico.
Netflix releases the trailer for North of North, following a modern Inuk woman trying to build a new life for herself
Anna Lambe leads Netflix's first Canadian original series, premiering April 10.