Highlights From The Upfronts: Networks Announce Fall TV

Last week we gave you some of the new and returning summer television we are most looking forward to (or otherwise willing to admit that we’ll probably end up watching if there’s air conditioning near the TV).

There’s more where that came from, though, because after summer comes fall (knowledge!) and this week in Hollywood all the major networks are giving their upfront presentations, which means they’re ordering new series from the roster of pilots announced earlier this year, announcing what shows are getting renewed, and canceling other ones. What they decide during the upfronts influences what’s going to be on your television in a few months! As of Tuesday night, NBC and Fox are the only networks that have announced full schedules and put out trailers, but all of the major networks have shared at least some news of what will be on the fall schedule. Here are some of the highlights.

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Summer TV Preview: New, Revamped, And Returning Shows

As we make our way through the last weeks of class and finals and look expectantly towards summer, we have a lot to look forward to — sunshine and other summery things, but also television. Networks and cable alike use summer as a time to put out some of best and worst in visual pop culture.

On the one hand there’s stuff like Arrested Development and Breaking Bad, while on the other hand reality TV and ABC Family roll out their programming. All of it is necessary to create the full summer TV experience. Here is what you have to look forward to.

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Community Season 4 Had Some Gems Among A Relatively Gem-less Season

At this point talking about how the fourth season of Community is different from seasons previous is old-hat. The show is different, with the driving voice behind it — the voice of its creator Dan Harmon — missing from the mix. But a lot of it has still been there, what with the actors still present (mostly) and a valuable chunk of talented writers still writing away.

Maybe looking at the show differently is good, seeing it as a sitcom rather than a crazy exploration of art or humanity. Or maybe it still is that special exploration, just a little. The show’s fourth season ends today, and though a lot of the season was not much to talk about, there were some very special moments where Community Season 4 was a success.

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IFC’s Maron Translates A Good, Sad Podcast Into A Good, Sad Sitcom

It’s been a long time coming for comedian Marc Maron, who started his stand-up career among some of the brightest young faces like Louis C.K. and Sarah Silverman but whose attitude and tone lent him little success in TV auditions.

Years later this would prove to be a blessing, though, as it led to the creation of one of the most influential comedy podcasts currently running. WTF with Marc Maron has achieved huge success over the past few years, and today the series Maron starring the comedian and based loosely on his personal life as he launched his podcast, premieres on IFC, and the network put out the second episode last Friday to give everyone a taste of what’s to come.

Maron isn’t the first podcast-based TV show, with Chris Hardwick’s The Nerdist turning into talk shows on BBC America and, recently announced, Comedy Central, a TBS late-night show currently in development from You Made it Weird host Pete Holmes, and Scott Aukerman’s surreal talk-show sort-of-parody Comedy Bang Bang also on Maron‘s network IFC. What Maron does differently, though, is lose most of the talk show format in favor of narrative sitcom.

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In Season 5, Parks And Rec Follows Through On Being TV’s Sweetest Show

Season five of Parks and Recreation ends today with a season finale that may also be the end of the series. NBC has yet to announce if the show will be renewed for a sixth season, but this season has provided such an emphasis on optimism, cooperation, and goodwill that if this is the show’s final day, it will be going out at a high point. Hopefully, it stays forever though so we can stay in Pawnee a bit longer.

When we last checked in at the beginning of this season of Parks and Rec, we wrote about the true love that overcomes all in the television paradise that is Pawnee. And this was before Ben and Leslie even got engaged! Sometimes it’s hard to predict what will happen in a given show, but Parks and Rec executed an excellent season of TV without any huge twists or turns, and it lived up to our expectations of the show as a sort of Utopia of friendship and happiness in a town overrun by huge sodas, candy, and a strange corrupt city council overpowered by a pushy dentist antagonist.

Here is a review of what happened this season and why Parks and Recreation is number one in our hearts.

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San Francisco Gallery’s NYC Show Celebrates Scorsese Through Fan Art

Spoke Art is located in the San Francisco Bay Area, but even if you’ve never been near the West Coast, you might recognize the gallery from its Internet and ComicCon famous presence.

The collective has previously presented the impressive “Bad Dads” show of Wes Anderson fan art and the Quentin/Coen show whose title is more self-explanatory. These shows celebrate a roster of new painters and artists while also paying tribute the work of cinema mavericks who inspire them. Considering the three directors whose works Spoke Art has celebrated, mastermind filmmaker (and NYU alum) Martin Scorsese is a natural next choice for the artists to praise, and it only makes sense that the gallery travel to New York to pay tribute to the man. Scorsese has painted such beautiful, dark, and distinct portraits of New York City across the broad spectrum of his filmography that honoring him in another town wouldn’t make any real sense.

And the art certainly does pay him the proper respect — the owners of Spoke Art have been posting previews on the Facebook event and the gallery’s Tumblr for weeks now, displaying some of the best Travis Bickles, Bills the Butcher, and Howard Hugheses ever painted or printed. The show will feature around 75 unique artists with vastly different styles showcasing both their favorite and the most iconic characters, settings, and moments from Martin Scorsese’s work, including some you may have forgotten.

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Uniqlo Ads Are The New Gap Ads

Sometime in 2007 advertising executives at Gap came up with a plan. If they put comedians, actors, musicians, and other celebrities in their holiday ads, they’d be able to sell all their products tenfold. Even better, they realized, if they stuffed multiple familiar-faced models into a single sweater or perched a baby on their shoulders. They applied this knowledge to the company’s billboards and to its print and video advertising, too.

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Veep Is The Best Use Of The English Language On TV Right Now

As if you didn’t already have enough quality television coming at you every Sunday, this week Veep returns to HBO. Veep debuted last year at the same time as Girls and went relatively unnoticed compared to the network’s other female-driven comedy, existing somewhere on the plane between Lena Dunham’s show and Mike White and Laura Dern’s critically acclaimed but recently cancelled Enlightened.

Though the show was well-received by critics and got star Julia Louis-Dreyfus an Emmy for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, Veep never seemed to gain wide popularity among a young audience, despite absolutely possessing everything that makes it deserve this attention.

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Some Very Important Questions About Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Impending School of Rock Musical

In case you haven’t heard yet, Andrew Lloyd Weber, King of Cats (unofficial nickname) and writer of hit Broadway musicals The Phantom of the Opera, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Cats, recently announced he’s got the rights to make School of Rock into a musical. Though School of Rock is not the only hit movie in talks to become a Broadway show, it’s interesting to see a man of Webber’s eccentricity try to turn the thing into a musical.   

Local has a few questions about the impending adaptation of one of favorite films. Let’s explore this potentially epic play — more after the jump.

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Six Things That Could Make Or Break NBC’s Hannibal

If it weren’t for the fact that Psycho prequel series Bates Motel premiered on A&E a few weeks ago, it might seem strange that the networks are making a TV show about Hannibal Lecter. Yet we are watching television in a post-American Horror Story world, so maybe it all makes sense.

Tonight NBC premieres new modern thriller series Hannibal, based on characters from Thomas Harris’s novel Red Dragon, which is one book of the Hannibal Lecter series that eventually became a movie franchise starring Anthony Hopkins as the deranged psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer, most notably in The Silence of the Lambs. The series will follow special agent Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and his boss Jack Crawford (Lawrence Fishburne) as they work alongside esteemed but inherently strange psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter and learn more about his particular sociopathy.

To make a series out of something as celebrated and feared as the Hannibal story seems like a tough task, but an incredible one if it actually works out. We thought about it and have compiled three things that support the series and three that seem to guarantee its certain death.

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