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| By JOHN DOYLE From Monday's Globe and Mail NBC is the network that knows no shame. It's brash, sneaky, snippety, underhanded and Machiavellian. For a start, we're all here at the late end of TV Hacks on Tour (TVHOT) because NBC shifted from mid-TVHOT to the end of the darn thing. That's because NBC president Jeff Zucker's wife was going to have her baby about the time that Big Jeff (who is actually a very little Jeff) was scheduled to tell fibs to TV critics. So everything got switched. But that's nothing. Just about the first thing that Big Jeff announced was that Joey from Friends was getting his own spinoff show. Big bloody deal. That news was in the papers on the day Big Jeff made his big announcement. The show is to be called Joey and what happens is that Joey moves from New York to L.A. Even bigger bloody deal. "I spoke to Joey last night," Big Jeff said. "He's over the moon, as are we." NBC is also shamelessly going ahead with its TV movie about Jessica Lynch. It doesn't own the rights or have Lynch's co-operation. It does have the co-operation of an Iraqi fella named Mohammed, who claims he saved Jessica's life. Big Jeff described it as "an action/adventure story" and said, "Quite frankly, Jessica's part of the story is probably the smallest part of the story." Okey-dokey, then. It's not actually about Jessica Lynch. It will air during the November sweeps period, when the network really needs a grabber. And then there's the business of The West Wing, Rob Lowe and Lowe's new show, The Lyon's Den. In order to figure out what the hell is going on, you have to read between the lines. It's insanely duplicitous. Lowe walked away from The West Wing last summer. His Sam character had been one of the show's anchors. There were rumours of fights about money. There were rumours that he wasn't getting along with Aaron Sorkin, the show's creator and main writer. Sorkin walked away from The West Wing a few months ago. The show was already looking strangely tired, anemic and tedious. NBC didn't offer up the staff or stars of The West Wing here at TVHOT. It merely announced the names of 11 writers for the show this season. Sorkin must be laughing. It takes 11 writers to replace him. Of course, The Lyon's Den is being promoted with fanfare. It's a lawyer show with Lowe as the young idealistic lawyer who takes over a big, prestigious firm in Washington. Lowe got a lot of questions about The West Wing. He was asked, in different ways, why he left the show. He called Sorkin a genius. Eventually, however, he crumbled under interrogation. Asked to be more specific, he began by saying, "Well, you know, I just. . . ." That's when the producer of his new show interjected and muttered, "Just say it." So Lowe did, and it went like this: "Sam was just getting less and less. And I want to be really clear that it wasn't about screen time. I had a story line about getting people to wear seatbelts. It was hilarious and really funny but at the end of the day, I wanted Sam to have the President's ear. Because I love Sam." So it was about screen time. The guy wasn't getting enough scenes where he talked to the President. It only took 45 minutes of questioning for Lowe to admit that. The Lyon's Den is a crock. It's slick and tricky, brimming with almost-interesting characters, but it's still a crock. The really interesting aspect of the pilot is that although Rob Lowe is the cool, clean hero, he's less interesting than what's happening on the fringe. It's the women who come alive. Best of all, there is Frances Fisher as Brit, a 50-ish woman with an agenda. The most memorable scene has Brit slapping her boy toy (Rob Lowe's rival) in the face and telling him to get with the program. Rob Lowe is the executive producer of The Lyon's Den, so don't expect anybody else to get much screen time. Big Jeff Zucker also announced that NBC has two — count 'em, two — Shania Twain specials coming this fall. Big Jeff's hip to the music scene. The foregoing was written in a dyspeptic stew during day one of NBC's presentation at TVHOT. At the end of the day, NBC threw a little bash. It was just NBC staff and TV critics. I watched Big Jeff go from table to table, critic to critic, talking up his new shows. Eventually, he came to talk to me. He didn't devote much time to talking to a critic from Canada, but that's understandable. Canada is a separate country and we don't factor into the U.S. Nielsen ratings. I told him that last month I'd spent time at the Banff Television Festival with Steven Moffatt and Sue Vertue, the writer and producer of Coupling, the BBC show that NBC has bought and remade, as "the new Friends." I told him that Moffatt had wondered why the pilot episode of Coupling had cost the BBC about £20,000 (about $32,000 U.S.) and the NBC version, which he wrote, cost about $700,000. "Where does all the money go?" Moffatt had asked. So I asked Big Jeff. He laughed and said it cost money to hire the best talent. And, if they were the best, they deserved it. In the end, I had a sneaking admiration for Big Jeff. I've never seen a Canadian TV executive take the trouble to talk freely and enthusiastically to the press. Maybe Big Jeff tells big lies, but at least he tells them to your face. |