Save Our Shows 2025: See how your TV favorites fared in USA TODAY's exclusive poll
Save Our Shows 2025: See how your TV favorites fared in USA TODAY's exclusive poll
CBS' "The Equalizer," a fifth-season revival of a 1980s drama starring Queen Latifah as a mysterious guardian angel, is the big winner in USA TODAY's exclusive Save Our Shows poll.
You've made your voice heard: "Equalizer" dominated the 28th annual poll, which asked readers which of 17 endangered broadcast-network comedies and dramas deserved another season, and which should face the chopping block. About 47% of voters want the show to return for a sixth season, the highest percentage of any show, followed by NBC's "The Irrational," starring Jesse L. Martin as a case-solving behavioral-science professor, which 44% want to keep.
At the other extreme, Fox's animated comedy "The Great North," the same network's new Denis Leary military sitcom "Going Dutch" and NBC's "Lopez vs. Lopez" earned the lowest support among the 17 series, with 60% of voters – the most of any series – wanting to drop "Lopez," which stars comedian George Lopez and his daughter, Mayan.
"Lopez" is unlikely to continue, while the fates of two other series on the poll was decided after it was published on April 2: ABC's latest Tim Allen comedy, "Shifting Gears," which debuted in January, has been renewed for a second season. It placed third in the poll, as 34% of voters wanted it back. And CBS' "Poppa House," another multigenerational family sitcom starring Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr., was canceled after one season (just 23% of poll respondents wanted it back, while 53% hoped to bury it).
Networks will make their final choices between May 7 and June 30, as they announce schedules for the TV 2025-26 season and decide which shows to cancel.
Status report: Save Our Shows: What's renewed, canceled or 'on the bubble' in 2025?
More than 36,000 readers participated in this year's poll. Save Our Shows has been credited by NBC with "saving" sci-fi drama "Timeless," first for a second season and the next year, for a finale moive, after it led two consecutive polls. Another top vote-getter, "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist," was renewed for a second season on NBC despite low ratings and then for a Christmas movie to wrap up the series on the Roku Channel.
The poll returned from a hiatus in 2024, when monthslong actors and writers' strikes in Hollywood disrupted the rollout of new and returning shows and delayed renewal decisions.
In 2023, rescue drama "9-1-1," then on Fox, led the poll, but was canceled due to cost concerns; ABC, owned by Disney, which produces the series, snapped it up, and this fall is planning a new spinoff set in Nashville. Other top winners were ABC's "The Good Doctor" (renewed for one more season) and "Alaska Daily" (canceled), and CBS' "S.W.A.T.," which was renewed but canceled this year.
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an hour ago
Tony Awards offer many intriguing matchups in a star-studded season
NEW YORK -- A pair of singing androids. Two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. A drunken Mary Todd Lincoln. A musical with a corpse as its hero. Romeo, Juliet and teddy bears with rave music. Not to mention George Clooney. Broadway has had a stuffed season with seemingly something for everyone and now it's time to recognize the best with the Tony Awards, hosted by Cynthia Erivo, set for Sunday night on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. Broadway buzz is usually reserved for musicals but this year the plays — powered by A-list talent — have driven the conversation. There's Clooney in 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in 'Othello,' Sarah Snook in a one-woman version of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and her 'Succession' co-star Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk in 'Glengarry Glen Ross.' (Clooney, Snook and Odenkirk are nominated for Tonys.) There were two Pulitzer winners — 2024 awardee 'English' and 'Purpose' from 2025 — but perhaps one of the season's biggest surprises was 'Oh, Mary!,' Cole Escola's irreverent, raunchy, gleefully deranged revisionist history centered on Mary Todd Lincoln. All three are nominated for best play, along with 'John Proctor is the Villain' and 'The Hills of California.' On the musical side, three options seem to be in the mix for the top prize: 'Maybe Happy Ending,' a rom-com about a pair of androids; 'Dead Outlaw,' about an alcoholic drifter whose embalmed body becomes a prized possession for half a century; and 'Death Becomes Her,' the musical satire about longtime frenemies who drink a magic potion for eternal youth and beauty. 'Maybe Happy Ending,' 'Death Becomes Her' and another musical nominee, 'Buena Vista Social Club,' lead nominations with 10 apiece. The 2024-2025 season took in $1.9 billion, making it the highest-grossing season ever and signaling that Broadway has finally emerged from the COVID-19 blues, having overtaken the previous high of $1.8 billion during the 2018-2019 season. 'We're going through this strange period, which I would think someday we can draw the line from COVID to this, as you can draw the line from the early 1980s with AIDS to the explosion of big musicals again,' says Harvey Fierstein, who will get a special Tony for lifetime achievement. Audra McDonald, the most recognized performer in the theater awards' history, could possibly extend her Tony lead. Already the record holder for most acting wins with six Tonys, McDonald could add to that thanks to her leading turn in an acclaimed revival of 'Gypsy.' She has to get past Nicole Scherzinger, who has been wowing audiences in 'Sunset Blvd.' And Kara Young — the first Black female actor to be nominated for a Tony Award in four consecutive years — could become the first Black person to win two Tonys consecutively, should she win for her role in the play 'Purpose.' Other possible back-to-back winners include director Danya Taymor, hoping to follow up her 2024 win with 'The Outsiders' with another for 'John Proctor Is the Villain,' and 'Purpose' playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who won last year with 'Appropriate.' Other possible firsts include Daniel Dae Kim, who could become the first Asian winner in the category of best leading actor in a play for his work in a revival of 'Yellow Face.' And Marjan Neshat and her 'English' co-star Tala Ashe could become the first female actors of Iranian descent to win a Tony. Broadway this season saw a burst in alt-rock and the emergence of stories of young people for young people, including 'John Proctor is the Villain' and a 'Romeo + Juliet' pitched to Generation Z and millennials. Sunday's telecast, as usual, will have a musical number for each of the shows vying for the best new musical crown, as well as some that didn't make the cut, like 'Just in Time,' a musical about Bobby Darin, and 'Real Women Have Curves.' This year, there's also room for 'Hamilton,' celebrating its 10th year on Broadway. But the musicals 'BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical' and 'SMASH' didn't get slots.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Tony Awards offer many intriguing matchups in a star-studded season
NEW YORK (AP) — A pair of singing androids. Two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. A drunken Mary Todd Lincoln. A musical with a corpse as its hero. Romeo, Juliet and teddy bears with rave music. Not to mention George Clooney. Broadway has had a stuffed season with seemingly something for everyone and now it's time to recognize the best with the Tony Awards, hosted by Cynthia Erivo, set for Sunday night on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. Broadway buzz is usually reserved for musicals but this year the plays — powered by A-list talent — have driven the conversation. There's Clooney in 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in 'Othello,' Sarah Snook in a one-woman version of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and her 'Succession' co-star Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk in 'Glengarry Glen Ross.' (Clooney, Snook and Odenkirk are nominated for Tonys.) There were two Pulitzer winners — 2024 awardee 'English' and 'Purpose' from 2025 — but perhaps one of the season's biggest surprises was 'Oh, Mary!,' Cole Escola's irreverent, raunchy, gleefully deranged revisionist history centered on Mary Todd Lincoln. All three are nominated for best play, along with 'John Proctor is the Villain' and 'The Hills of California.' On the musical side, three options seem to be in the mix for the top prize: 'Maybe Happy Ending,' a rom-com about a pair of androids; 'Dead Outlaw,' about an alcoholic drifter whose embalmed body becomes a prized possession for half a century; and 'Death Becomes Her,' the musical satire about longtime frenemies who drink a magic potion for eternal youth and beauty. 'Maybe Happy Ending,' 'Death Becomes Her' and another musical nominee, 'Buena Vista Social Club,' lead nominations with 10 apiece. The 2024-2025 season took in $1.9 billion, making it the highest-grossing season ever and signaling that Broadway has finally emerged from the COVID-19 blues, having overtaken the previous high of $1.8 billion during the 2018-2019 season. 'We're going through this strange period, which I would think someday we can draw the line from COVID to this, as you can draw the line from the early 1980s with AIDS to the explosion of big musicals again,' says Harvey Fierstein, who will get a special Tony for lifetime achievement. Audra McDonald, the most recognized performer in the theater awards' history, could possibly extend her Tony lead. Already the record holder for most acting wins with six Tonys, McDonald could add to that thanks to her leading turn in an acclaimed revival of 'Gypsy.' She has to get past Nicole Scherzinger, who has been wowing audiences in 'Sunset Blvd.' And Kara Young — the first Black female actor to be nominated for a Tony Award in four consecutive years — could become the first Black person to win two Tonys consecutively, should she win for her role in the play 'Purpose.' Other possible back-to-back winners include director Danya Taymor, hoping to follow up her 2024 win with 'The Outsiders' with another for 'John Proctor Is the Villain,' and 'Purpose' playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who won last year with 'Appropriate.' Other possible firsts include Daniel Dae Kim, who could become the first Asian winner in the category of best leading actor in a play for his work in a revival of 'Yellow Face.' And Marjan Neshat and her 'English' co-star Tala Ashe could become the first female actors of Iranian descent to win a Tony. Broadway this season saw a burst in alt-rock and the emergence of stories of young people for young people, including 'John Proctor is the Villain' and a 'Romeo + Juliet' pitched to Generation Z and millennials. Sunday's telecast, as usual, will have a musical number for each of the shows vying for the best new musical crown, as well as some that didn't make the cut, like 'Just in Time,' a musical about Bobby Darin, and 'Real Women Have Curves.' This year, there's also room for 'Hamilton,' celebrating its 10th year on Broadway. But the musicals 'BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical' and 'SMASH' didn't get slots. ___
Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
‘Good Night, and Good Luck' CNN live broadcast brings George Clooney's play to the masses
Saturday afternoon out west and evening back east, as citizens faced off against ICE agents in the streets of Los Angeles, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' George Clooney's 2005 dramatic film tribute to CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, became a Major Television Event, broadcast live from Manhattan's Winter Garden Theater, by CNN and Max. That it was made available free to anyone with an internet connection, via the CNN website, was a nice gesture to theater fans, Clooney stans and anyone interested to see how a movie about television translates into a play about television. The broadcast is being ballyhooed as historic, the first time a play has been aired live from Broadway. And while there is no arguing with that fact, performances of plays have been recorded onstage before, and are being so now. It's a great practice; I wish it were done more often. At the moment, is streaming recent productions of Cole Porter's 'Kiss Me, Kate!,' the Bob Dylan-scored 'Girl From the North Country,' David Henry Hwang's 'Yellow Face' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning mental health rock musical 'Next to Normal.' Britain's National Theater at Home subscription service offers a wealth of classical and modern plays, including Andrew Scott's one-man 'Vanya,' as hot a ticket in New York this spring as Clooney's play. And the archives run deep; that a trip to YouTube can deliver you Richard Burton's 'Hamlet' or 'Sunday in the Park With George' with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters is a gift not to be overlooked. Clooney, with co-star Anthony Edwards, had earlier been behind a live broadcast of 'Ambush,' the fourth season opener of 'ER' as a throwback to the particular seat-of-your-pants, walking-on-a-wire energy of 1950s television. (It was performed twice, once for the east and once for the west coast.) That it earned an audience of 42.71 million, breaking a couple of records in the bargain, suggests that, from a commercial perspective, it was not at all a bad idea. (Reviews were mixed, but critics don't know everything.) Like that episode, the 'live' element of Saturday's broadcast, was essentially a stunt, though one that ensured, at least, that no post-production editing has been applied, and that if anyone blew a line, or the house was invaded by heckling MAGA hats, or simply disrupted by audience members who regarded the enormous price they paid for a ticket as a license to chatter through the show, it would presumably have been part of the broadcast. None of that happened — but, it could have! (Clooney did stumble over 'simple,' but that's all I caught.) And, it offered the groundlings at home the chance to see a much-discussed, well-reviewed production only a relatively few were able to see in person — which I applaud on principal and enjoyed in practice — and which will very probably not come again, not counting the next day's final performance. The film, directed by Clooney and co-written with Grant Heslov (who co-wrote the stage version as well), featured the actor as producer and ally Fred W. Friendly to David Strathairn's memorable Murrow. Here, a more aggressive Clooney takes the Murrow role, while Glenn Fleshler plays Friendly. Released during the second term of the Bush administration, the movie was a meditation on the state of things through the prism of 1954 (and a famous framing speech from 1958 about the possibilities and potential failures of television), the fear-fueled demagoguery of Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and Murrow's determination to take him on. (The 1954 'See It Now' episode, 'A Report on Sen. Joseph McCarthy,' helped bring about his end.) As in the film, McCarthy is represented entirely through projected film clips, echoing the way that Murrow impeached the senator with his own words. It's a combination of political and backstage drama — with a soupcon of office romance, represented by the secretly married Wershbas (Ilana Glazer and Carter Hudson) — even more hermetically set within the confines of CBS News than was the film. It felt relevant in 2005, before the influence of network news was dissolved in the acid of the internet and an administration began assaulting the legitimate press with threats and lawsuits; but the play's discussions of habeas corpus, due process, self-censoring media and the both-sides-ism that seems increasingly to afflict modern media feel queasily contemporary. 'I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument,' says Clooney's Murrow to his boss, William F. Paley (an excellent Paul Gross, from the great 'Slings & Arrows'). As was shown here, Murrow offered McCarthy equal time on 'See It Now' — which he hosted alongside the celebrity-focused 'Person to Person,' represented by an interview with Liberace — but it proved largely a rope for the senator to hang himself. Though modern stage productions, with their computer-controlled modular parts, can replicate the rhythms and scene changes of a film, there are obvious differences between a movie, where camera angles and editing drive the story. It's an illusion of life, stitched together from bits and pieces. A stage play proceeds in real time and offers a single view (differing, of course, depending on where one sits), within which you direct your attention as you will. What illusions it offers are, as it were, stage magic. It's choreographed, like a dance, which actors must repeat night after night, putting feeling into lines they may speak to one another, but send out to the farthest corners of the theater. Clooney, whose furrowed brow is a good match for Murrow's, did not attempt to imitate him, or perhaps did within the limits of theatrical delivery; he was serious and effective in the role if not achieving the quiet perfection of Strathairn's performance. Scott Pask's set was an ingenious moving modular arrangement of office spaces, backed by a control room, highlighted or darkened as needs be; a raised platform stage left supported the jazz group and vocalist, which, as in the movie, performed songs whose lyrics at times commented slyly on the action. Though television squashed the production into two dimensions, the broadcast nevertheless felt real and exciting; director David Comer let the camera play on the players, rather than trying for a cinematic effect through an excess of close-ups and cutaways. While the play generally followed the lines of the film, there was some rearrangement of scenes, reassignment of dialogue — it was a streamlined cast — and interpolations to make a point, or more directly pitch to 2025. New York news anchor Don Hollenbeck (Clark Gregg, very moving in the only role with an emotional arc) described feeling 'hijacked … as if all the reasonable people went to Europe and left us behind,' getting a big reaction. One character wondered about opening 'the door to news with a dash of commentary — what happens when it isn't Edward R. Murrow minding the store?' A rapid montage of clips tracking the decay of TV news and politics — including Obama's tan suit kerfuffle and the barring of AP for not bowing to Trump's Gulf of America edit and ending with Elon Musk's notorious straight-arm gesture, looking like nothing so much as a Nazi salute — was flown into Clooney's final speech. Last but not least, there is the audience, your stand-ins at the Winter Garden Theatre, which laughed at the jokes and applauded the big speeches, transcribed from Murrow's own. And then, the curtain call, to remind you that whatever came before, the actors are fine, drinking in your appreciation and sending you out happy and exhilarated and perhaps full of hope. A CNN roundtable followed to bring you back to Earth.
