← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
From 'Severance' to 'The Pitt,' What to Expect from TV in 2025 (Review/Preview)
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We preview 2025 in new TV.
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WNYC Studios Announcer
WNYC Studios is supported by Carnegie hall presenting the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nezes again in a program of Mahler's 9th Symphony and Songs for Murdered Sisters written in collaboration with Jake Heggie and Margaret Atwood. January 15th. Tickets@carnegiehall.org.
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Listener supported WNYC Studios.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's wrap up the hour with some television shows like Hacks, Shogun and Baby Reindeer all won awards a little over a week ago at the Golden Globes. They're nominated for Screen Actors Guild awards. So we know they're pretty good. Right. And normally shows would be ready to premiere in the new year, but with the California, with California experiencing explosive fires, question about the industry's future? It's not really clear. Vulture TV critic and friend of the show Katherine von Arendajk joins us for an update on how the wildfires are affecting Hollywood and some of the premieres that are still on the horizon. Hi, Katherine.
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Katherine von Arendonk
Hello.
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Alison Stewart
So we have a lot of talk about in terms of premieres, but I have to ask what productions have been delayed or canceled due to the wildfires?
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yeah, quite a number of productions have been delayed. So award shows are some of the first that were immediately announced would be shut down because obviously, you know, these massive productions and they require sort of immediate turnaround. But all different kinds of shows are delayed or experiencing sort of, you know, they're gonna be pushing out productions and sets have been affected as well. I have a feeling the list of shows that will get delayed, it's not that long at the moment, but it will continue to grow. A lot of these big empty sound stages are kind of out in the middle of like Santa Clara and these big empty spaces in California. So it is, it is going to continue to be incredibly devastating for this industry.
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Alison Stewart
How is the entertainment industry stepping up to support those who've been displaced or experiencing difficulty because of the wildfires?
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yeah. So we are already seeing, you know, obviously, I think across my social media and I am sure everyone's social media, just this incredible call to action to support the industry. It is happening on the level of these large donations that are being announced from celebrities, but also it's kind of smaller scale celebrities announcing that they are, you know, dropping off food and clothing and anything else that they can do to, to support people. But I mean, one of the realities also of these fires is that it has hit sort of middle class Angelenos who live in Altadena, but it has also hit a lot of These sort of industry players, large industry players who lived in places like Pacific Palisades. So I think three weeks from now, six weeks from now, it will be a little easier to see kind of what the whole scope of this looks like.
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Alison Stewart
It's obviously a developing story. Let's get to some of the new shows. One of the new shows on your list you're really excited about is a new Mac show called the Pit, which is a medical drama. What should people know about this medical drama? What's new in medical dramas?
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yeah, well, what's new in medical dramas is actually what's old in medical dramas. This show feels remarkably like one of my favorite shows of all time, which is er. And that is, there's a reason for that. It stars Noah Wylie, who is one of the stars, original stars of er, and it is created by some former ER producers. And to me it feels like ER in a way no medical drama really has since then. It has a longer season than most streaming seasons are allowed to have, 15 episodes. Although actually the Pit is one of the shows that has had to pause production because of the fires. So I have only seen 10 of them and I'm really hopeful that they will be able to make the rest of them because I had more fun watching the Pit than almost any of my other sort of pre screener viewing of the past several weeks. I found it so compelling, so magnetic and really hit this kind of really fast paced, realist emotional, the kinds of intense medical crises, but also this huge range of human experience that you got with a show like ER does not have that Grey's Anatomy gloss to it. It is just Noah Wylie, like glasses looking at a pair of parents who've lost their kid and there's nothing he can do. And you are just, you're just devastated. And it's so good.
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Alison Stewart
I saw the first two episodes are labeled 7am is the title of one episode, 8am is the title of other. Is that expected through the whole show?
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yes. So the structure of the series is that it follows one 15 hour shift in an emergency department in Pittsburgh, which is why it's called the Pit. And also they call the emergency department the Pit. And so it has this kind of 24 esque structure to the series. I'm a little bit mixed about it for the most part. I think that structure actually works remarkably well because you follow patients who just come in and out, but then you're also following patients who are there for, you know, the whole, the whole shift. On the other hand, it does mean that like the hospital administrator character has to come downstairs and give everyone a talking to about like how they all need to meet their numbers and then she does it several times in the course of a couple hours. And you're thinking this doesn't really seem like how this should work. Other than that though, I think that structure works so well for that show.
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Alison Stewart
That is called the Pit and It's premiered on January 9th. So you can check it out. Now we're going over to Apple tv. You have two shows on your list from Apple tv. They have shows like Severance and Shrinking and Silo. First of all, I'm curious about their lane in the streaming industry because they really do have a small audience but they keep pumping money into these shows.
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Katherine von Arendonk
They do, they do, yes. And that it really is the lane. The lane is we are going to make pretty well funded versions often of shows that you, you already know a little bit. Look, I love Silo. I like the two shows that are on this, that I included on this list here, which are the Studio, which is a very insidey Hollywood look at a studio head, and Prime Target, which is kind of a classic. And I'm going to, I say this lovingly, pretty stupid conspiracy thriller type show. I love a stupid conspiracy thriller type show. And nobody is going to watch Prime Target and be like, wow, this is brand new. Nothing like this has ever been seen on television before. But they love to make these really competently produced glossy versions of them with fairly big names. And there is something that just feels nice often about the, the kind of mid plus level competence that that an Apple show tends to hit.
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Alison Stewart
All right, let's talk about the studio starring Seth Rogen. He is back with his longtime collaborator, Evan Goldberg. Tell us about the studio.
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yeah, so the one of the things that I think is most interesting about the studio is we have seen lots and lots of inside Hollywood shows in the past. Hollywood loves to make a show about itself, a movie about itself. One of them this last year was the franchise which was on HBO Max. And it is less common for the protagonist of those types of stories to be a studio head. They are, they are perpetual villains. They tend to be the person who's coming down on the side of like, you have less money and you have no creat. And in this case, Seth Rogen plays a recently minted studio head who all he loves is movies. All he wants is to make great artsy movies and instead what he is handed are the kinds of absurd IP plays that have driven him absolutely batty his entire career. And it is really. It's an interesting place to position that kind of story because you are. He is stuck between the rock and the hard place of his ambitions and the fight financial realities of the industry. And. And it plays it sympathetically in a way that I think is incredibly plausible. And the rest of the cast is great. Ike Barinholtz is kind of his number two guy who's fantastic. Catherine O'Hara is, I mean, always, always great. But she plays the kind of the studio head who was booted out in order to make space for him. And. And man, is she so great. It is so fun and insidery, full of great cameos.
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Alison Stewart
Let's take a listen to a little bit of the trailer from the studio. So how do you feel in all this?
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WNYC Studios Announcer
You know, I got into this because, you know, I love movies, but now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them.
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Alison Stewart
The job is a meat grinder.
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WNYC Studios Announcer
Sing, sing, sing, sing. Everybody start to sing. At Continental, we don't make artsy, fartsy films. We make movies.
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Katherine von Arendonk
Movies.
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WNYC Studios Announcer
Being the head of Continental is the only job I've ever wanted. Just so much harder than I thought it was gonna be.
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Alison Stewart
I love the way they say we make movies.
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
That's the studio premiering on March 25th. My guest is Katherine von Arendonk. We're talking about premieres to look forward to. Let's talk about Prime Target. It premieres on January 22nd. Another Apple TV. I understand there's a conspiracy at the plot of this.
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Katherine von Arendonk
There is. So Prime Target stars Leo Woodle, who you may recognize from lots of things, but I particularly think of him from season two of White Lotus. And he plays a young and hungry mathematician who believes in his heart of hearts that the key to all of the world's computers and what he claims is, quote, God's cipher for everything is prime numbers. And wow. It's a dumb premise and it's a silly show. And it reminds me a lot of a show that I actually loved very, very dearly, even though it was also quite, quite dumb, which was the Dan Brown's the Lost Symbol, which was on Peacock. I have a real fondness for these things. You may also have seen the procedural numbers from years back. There is just something about a guy who's standing in front of a blackboard and is like, everyone knows that Newton saw the apple fall and he thought about gravity. But does anyone think about how many seed casings there were inside that apple? It was five. Which is a prime. Again, it's just so Stupid. But. But sometimes in January that's what you want, you know.
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Alison Stewart
Got a couple of texts I want to read. The first one says, hey, don't forget the below the Line crew being affected by these fires. As the industry has lagged and coming back to pre strike production, many of these workers have already been struggling with employment, are now facing the struggles associated with these massive fires. Thank you for that text. This text says, and I don't know if you know the answer, it says, I keep hearing rumors that Ted Lasso is going to release another season. Any truth to that?
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yeah, these are rumors that have absolutely been around. And they are not rumors, by the way. I mean, those are. These are rumors that the people who have worked on Ted Lasso continue to also hint at themselves. So it's not like they are coming out of absolutely nowhere. From what I understand, it is something that the people involved with the show are trying to make happen. I personally am a little dubious about what that season might be like. I think the end of Ted Lasso was not as strong as the beginning of Ted Lasso. And so I am kind of reserving enthusiasm until I have a sense of what the thrust of that season might be. But it definitely is something that seems plausible.
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Alison Stewart
Well, I think they call it shrinking now, right?
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yeah, Ted Lasso wishes. But that is, you know, part of what is curious about. About what Ted Lasso's future will be or who the showrunner would be because Bill Lawrence is working on both shrinking and Bad Monkey on and was not really involved with the later Ted Lasso seasons.
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Alison Stewart
All right, let's talk about reappearing shows. White Lotus Thailand is returning for its third season. What's new about White Lotus?
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Katherine von Arendonk
Well, as you mentioned, Thailand is new about White Lotus, but it is also, if you're familiar with this series, it is an anthology show, which means every season is its own distinct story. It is always about wealthy people at a incredibly luxurious resort in some. In some exciting vacation spot. And in this case, the cast is really. I'm excited about the cast. Carrie Coon is in it. She's always fantastic. My man Walton Goggins, who I love in basically anything that he shows up in is in it. Parker Posey, Patrick Schwarzenegger, who I think is actually really interesting and a lot of his stuff. Leslie Bibb, Jason Isaacs, I don't have a great of kind of who these characters are yet and what the world of this show will be, but I mean, Carrie Coon in a Mike White show, like, come on, pretty good.
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Alison Stewart
Let's Listen to a little bit of the White Lotus trailer.
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Katherine von Arendonk
So, Adika, welcome to the White Lotus. In Thailand.
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Alison Stewart
In Thailand, I'm on an exchange program.
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Katherine von Arendonk
I'm starting to feel like something good's gonna come out of this stress management meditation.
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WNYC Studios Announcer
Yeah.
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You need gluten free rice and coconut balls.
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Alison Stewart
What do we eat?
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WNYC Studios Announcer
A fat horn.
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Katherine von Arendonk
Everyone runs from pain towards pleasure, but they get there only to find more pain. We should do something fun today.
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Alison Stewart
She literally lives off male attention.
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WNYC Studios Announcer
It's pathetic.
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Katherine von Arendonk
If everybody it gives into base instincts.
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Alison Stewart
It'D be total depravity, like a race to the bottom. Someone stole my lorazepam. I'm gonna have to drink myself to sleep.
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Katherine von Arendonk
Got really bad feelings.
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Alison Stewart
Something is off. What the is this place? Oh, they got me on that one line. That is White Lotus, which I believe is premiering on February 16th. Okay. Our last last show that you want to talk about is the Traitors.
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Tell me about. I keep hearing this everywhere, that it's a good show.
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yes. So Traitors is a reality series. It is based on a UK format. It is now in its third season. The host is the ever incredible Alan Cumming. So you always have that to look forward to. But the premise is sort of like a party game. It is a bunch of people in a house and many of them are so called faithfuls. And then a few of them secretly are the traitors. And the traitors are trying to murder off the faithful and the faithful are trying to figure out who the traitors are and eliminate them. A lot of what makes the traitors so compelling is that it is cast with reality personalities from all kinds of other franchises. And this can sound incestuous and hard to watch if this is not a genre that you already know well. But what it means is that these people are professionally good at first of all being charismatic on camera and second of all playing the kinds of weird interpersonal games that you have to be able to play to be really good and fun. At a premise like this, if you do know some of these people already, then it's even more fun because you're like Bob the drag Queen. What are you doing? And it just, you know, I think it has that kind of magic reality formula of being super trivial, super light and yet so completely into its own world, so completely committed to the bit of itself that it is really once you're in it, it is. You cannot stop watching it. It is so magnetic and fun.
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Alison Stewart
Alan Cumming is a great host.
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Katherine von Arendonk
Yes. So good. And the outfits are so good.
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Alison Stewart
That's what it is.
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Katherine von Arendonk
And the accents are so fun. And it also has this veneer of like we're in a castle and you know, they're not in the castle, but they are there in the castle and they're all sneaking around and wearing hoods and saying just the most absurd things to each other. But also, the gameplay is legitimately it is like Survivor in the sense that while you're watching it, you're like, oh, this is actually about how humans work.
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Alison Stewart
I've been speaking with Vulture TV critic and friend of the show, Katherine Van Arendonk. Thanks a lot, kva.
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Katherine von Arendonk
Oh, my pleasure.
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Alison Stewart
There is more, all of it on the way. Stay with us.
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WNYC Studios Announcer
WNYC Studios is supported by Carnegie hall presenting the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nezes again in a program of Mahler's 9th Symphony and Songs for Murdered Sisters written in collaboration with Jake Heggie and Margaret Atwood. January 15 tickets@carnegiehall.org.
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Alison Stewart
Here's a way you.
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WNYC Studios Announcer
Can support WNYC in our centennial year. Donate your used car. We'll turn your old car into the news and conversation that we've been serving to the community for over 100 years. Many listeners have already donated their cars to WNYC. It's an easy way to support the station, and you'll get a tax deduction. Learn more@wnyc.org car.