Keely's Korner

NBC has leveled the field, breaking CBS’ decade-long hold on the largest audience for the fall season premiere week with its record-breaking Sunday Night Football viewership of 24.1 million who tuned in September 29 to watch the New Orleans Saints end the Cowboys’ unbeaten run this season. NBC averaged 7.5 million viewers during the opening days of the new season, while CBS drew 6.9 million viewers.
(Source: Cynopsis)ABC is checking out of Grand Hotel, with a decision not to renew the Eva Longoria-exec produced drama for a second season. Based on a Spanish format, series is set around a picture-perfect Miami Beach hotel and centers on the family who owns the business, the staff and all the secrets hiding beneath the exterior.
(Source: Cynopsis)

The Black List and Women In Film Los Angeles (WIF LA) selected six participants for their episodic lab, now its fourth year. The program provides mentorship and career opportunities to rising women television writers. Beginning yesterday (October 1), the Lab is running twice weekly script development sessions, peer workshopping and Master Classes with established writers and industry execs including Monica Beletsky (Parenthood), Sono Patel(Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) and Carly Wray (Westworld).
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AMC greenlit two new series, thriller drama 61st Street, and comedy Kevin Can F**k Himself. Both series are produced by AMC Studios. 61st Street, which has been ordered as a two-season series with eight eps per season, is a courtroom drama that follows a promising black high school athlete who’s swept up into the infamously corrupt Chicago criminal justice system. Kevin Can F**k Himself probes the secret life of the sitcom wife, aiming to break TV convention and ask what the world looks like through her eyes.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Ava DuVernay will launch her second project based on a DC Comics property, DMZ, with HBO Max. The upcoming streaming service ordered a pilot adapted from the Vertigo imprint comic about a second American Civil War in the near future. DuVernay will direct, and her Array Filmworks will produce in association with Warner Bros. Television, with showrunner and exec producer Roberto Patino onboard to write the script.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Trevor Noah is developing an as-yet untitled comedy series for Quibi. Produced by Noah’s Day Zero Productions and Comedy Central Productions, series aims to give viewers an “unprecedented peek” at the comedian’s interactions with people he meets and places he visits while touring the globe.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Building off its global “Shore” franchise, MTV greenlit docuseries DJ Pauly D and Vinny’s Vegas Pool Party (working title). Slated to launch in 2020, series follows the dynamic duo as they take over Las Vegas and give their friends a shot at the Vegas life.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Universal TV is adapting Chelsea Handler’s memoir Life Will Be The Death Of Me as a series. Deal comes as Handler prepares to step back into stand-up in November as part of a continuation of her book tour. Her latest Netflix project, It’s Me Chelsea, was released on Netflix on September 13.
(Source: Cynopsis)

TNT renewed Claws for a fourth and final season. Since its launch in 2017, the Niecy Nash-starring series has amassed critical praise and a loyal fan following.
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A handful of new projects are underway at Yap Films, the Toronto-based indie factual content producer. A key supplier of LGBTQ programming, Yap is producing for Canada’s OUTtv new series My Trans Journey, one-hour special Translating Beauty, and true-crime series Murder on the Fringe. Also upcoming are Construction Fails, featuring jaw-dropping mishaps from the world of construction, and Gangster Gold, about gangster Dutch Schultz, who buried a $50 million fortune somewhere in the US, but died before he could retrieve it.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Public television series Playing by the Rules: Ethics at Work is back for a new season beginning this week on select public TV stations, including Thirteen in NY. New season presents investigations into the business practices of ride-sharing app Uber and sneaker giant Adidas.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Nat Geo WILD debuts its newest vet series, Dr. T, Lone Star Vet, on October 13 at 9p. Series follows Dr. Lauren Thielen as she leaves the Sunshine State and Dr. K’s Exotic Animal ER to pursue Texas-sized dreams to lead her own exotic animal clinic.
(Source: Cynopsis)

The Life of Earth, which combines visuals, pioneering research and expedition footage to take viewers on a 4.5 billion-year journey, debuts on Smithsonian Channel on Sunday, November 3 at 9p. Revealing fresh evidence to age-old questions and offering a blueprint to future survival, series examines the earth’s past to help plan for its future.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Disney+ dropped a trailer for upcoming series Marvel’s Hero Project, which spotlights extraordinary and inspiring young people. The series is earmarked for a November 12 debut on the new streaming platform.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Lifetime this month is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its annual public affairs initiative Stop Breast Cancer for Life across the A+E networks portfolio. The campaign stretches across Lifetime, A&E and History, with a PSA featuring journalist and breast cancer survivor Robin Roberts, and stars of upcoming Lifetime film Patsy & Loretta – Megan Hilty and Jessie Mueller. Live PD’s Sargent Sean “Sticks” Larkin will be featured in a PSA airing on A&E and on the live show on October 18, the Live PD crew will discuss the importance of breast cancer awareness. American Pickers star Mike Wolfe, whose mother is a breast cancer survivor, is also featured in a new PSA that will air on History. In addition, every Sunday morning in October at 10a, Lifetime will air original movies centering on real-life stories of survivors and everyday heroes working to end breast cancer.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Ghosts of Sugar Land, a documentary short that follows a group of Muslim Americans in the suburbs of Houston as they trace the disappearance of a friend suspected of joining ISIS, debuts on Netflix October 16. Film premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded the short film jury award, non-fiction.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Agatha Raisin & the Haunted House, a humor- and fright-packed holiday special and the latest in Acorn TV’s original series of movies based on the comedic mysteries by M.C. Beaton, debuts exclusively on Acorn TV on Monday, October 28.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Showtime Documentary Films announced its film The Kingmaker will open in theaters in NY and LA Friday, November 8. The company dropped a trailer for the project, from Emmy-winning director Lauren Greenfield and Greenwich Entertainment (Free Solo), which follows the indomitable character of Imelda Marcos.
(Source: Cynopsis)

A&E Network is looking in Low Places for its latest Biography subject – Garth Brooks, the best-selling solo artist of all time. Garth Brooks: The Road I’m On will premiere over two consecutive nights Sunday, November 24 and Monday, November 25 at 9p. Doc offers an intimate look at Brooks’ life and the moments that defined his career, and features interviews with Trisha Yearwood, Keith Urban and George Strait, among others.
(Source: Cynopsis)

Four-part documentary College Behind Bars premieres on PBS over two nights, November 25 and 26. Directed by Alfred I. Dupont and Lynn Novick (co-director of The Vietnam War) and exec-produced by Ken Burns, project is the result of filmmakers spending four years in maximum and medium security prisons in NY state and capturing the voices of a dozen incarcerated men and women struggling to earn degrees through the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI).
(Source: Cynopsis)

Ryan Reynolds-starring feature 6 Underground will debut on Netflix December 13. The Michael Bay-directed feature follows a team of six individuals from around the world, brought together by an enigmatic leader whose sole mission is to ensure that the actions of he and his fellow operatives will go down in history.
(Source: Cynopsis)