Entertainment Today and Beyond

Never Met a Zombi I Didn’t Like…

TNT’s RAISING THE BAR and HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 promotional BLITZ!

Got a chance to watch the new TNT legal drama RAISING THE BAR Monday night and found this pilot episode to be a watchable but truly generic piece of television. I’ll continue to watch because it’s from NYPD BLUE creator Steven Bochco, and I have liked shows featuring lead actor Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Saved by the Bell, NYPD Blue). The concept of a team of public defenders fighting for the rights of the ‘everyman’ is nothing original and that’s okay but the show’s writing, at least here in episode one, was fairly uninspired and pretty manipulative. Jane Kaczmarek, one of the show’s leads, plays a controlling and vindictive Judge, and her character is written like she’s channeling the wicked witch of the west from the Wizard of Oz. It was a little too much, although she did manage to get my blood boiling, if that means anything. So I’ll give the premiere episode 6 out of 10 simply because it held my attention and I think some of the early rust can be polished up. If not, any potential audience will tire out quickly. The show drew an estimated 7.7 million viewers Monday night, the best ratings ever for a new basic cable program. Tomorrow I’ll give my opinion of the new CW show,  90210.

My Space and Disney have announced an extensive promotion for the studio’s October 24th release of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3. This will be the first theatrical installment in this very popular franchise which became a phenomenon after the original High School Musical premiered on the Disney channel in 2006. The franchise’s star, Zac Efron, is reportedly looking at a big paycheck in the 10 million dollar range for a fourth one. If it’s a huge hit I don’t see why Disney won’t give it to him as they already have plans for a fifth installment.

September 3, 2008 - Posted by | Reviews | , , ,

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

« Previous | Next »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.