EDITOR’S NOTE: Nobody here at TVWriter™ knows Shane Barnes, the writer of the following review, but we’re all big fans. For those of you who’ve been inquiring about writing for the site, particularly those who’ve been wanting to write TV reviews, we’re presenting this recent Shane Barnes classic as an example of the kind of thing we’re looking for.
And Shane, if you see this, please give us a holler. We want to praise you to the skies and then make you an insulting employment offer. You know, just like real-life showbiz.
Twenty years after the iconic film Independence Day opened to not only box office success but critical success as well, much of the original gang both before and behind the cameras has returned to our screens. It’s sequel time, with Independence Day: Resurgence telling the tale of how, a generation after our victory over alien invaders Earth is in big trouble from a new threat. Well, actually it’s the old threat. Except…
No, I’ll stop now. No point in me spoiling things for you. The film handles that all by itself.
Everybody and his or her brother can be a critic; is willing to criticize the writing of others…especially if they don’t write themselves, right?
And over time all that criticism from editors, producers, well-meaning friends, critical relatives who just know you’re wasting your time, a reader’s group who though well-meaning, don’t know what they’re talking about, whoever, builds up until it all super-charges the self-critic already camped in your brain. In fact, by now as a writer of scripts and/or books, you might not even be able to tell exactly who or what makes up that tyrant of a self-critic sitting in the bleachers in your brain.
It might do you some good to figure out what the composite actually is, but the main lesson to take away from this is, your writing absolutely must make your audience come back again and again. The audience must look for your name in the credits of a movie. The novel must hook the reader to return to continue reading that book and to look for more with your name on the cover of the next.read article
Considering how off the mark U.S. adaptations of UK sitcoms often are, the writer of the following article wonders why British comedy series creators look forward to seeing their work produced on our side of the pond. But to us at TVWriter™ the question is more along the lines of, “Why can’t American writers get UK comedies right?” (Hint: We don’t see this as the writers’ fault at all.)
THE THICK OF IT failed on U.S. Network TV but is running strong on cable as VEEP
by Andrew Collins
Imagine an alternative universe where Dad’s Army, The Young Ones, The Thick of It and Spaced never got past the pilot stage and Fawlty Towers was cancelled midway through series one. Well, that nightmarish world exists: it’s called the United States, and it’s the place where the brightest and best British sitcoms go to die.
Caitlin and Caroline Moran’s semi-autobiographical Raised By Wolves, about two sisters growing up in a large family in Wolverhampton, is the latest Britcom to arouse transatlantic interest. The Channel 4 original makes its US debut this week on streaming service Acorn. But, more mouth-wateringly, a deal for an American version has been agreed with Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult) hired to write the pilot. Caitlin tells me she is “staggered” by the US interest: “When you set a sitcom in Wolverhampton, you’re obviously not expecting that.” But, despite all the flag-waving goodwill and agape expectation, it has little hope of succeeding, statistically at least.read article
NOTE FROM LB: The Howdy Doody Show was my absolute favorite when I was a kid. So much a favorite that I remember sitting on the floor and watching it one day when I was four years old and praying to you-know-Who that I would never get any older because I knew that when I did I wouldn’t love Howdy and the gang anymore. Some people say I never did get any older. Maybe there really is a God.
That’s Howdy in the middle, for those who are not of a certain age
by Dennis O’Neil
Our man Thunderthud was called a “chief,” but he wore only a single feather on his head instead of the fully-feathered bonnet we were used to seeing perched atop guys who answered to “chief” in the cowboy pictures I saw before you were born. The (if I may) chief is most notable, not for something he wore, but for something he said. This was “Kowabunga,” sometimes spelled “Cowabunga” and used mostly, if memory serves, as an expletive you could say freely in front of your church-going grandma. Some of you – most of you? – thought that Kowa/Cowabunga originated with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, of movie and comic book fame. Sorry, but no.
Beginning in 1947, Chief Thunderthud dwelt in Doodyville which, in turn, was located in midtown Manhattan in a studio owned and operated by The National Broadcasting Company.read article
