You have questions. I have some answers.
We just finished watching the series “Modern Love,” on Amazon Prime. We loved it! Will there be another season?
Another season of the anthology inspired by the New York Times’ column on love and romance has been ordered. “It’s a show with so much emotion and warmth every episode touches the heart in a different way,” an Amazon executive said in announcing the second season last October, just a week after the series premiered. At the time, Amazon said the second season would premiere in 2020, but the pandemic may have stalled that plan.
Why do some networks insist on either starting their programs a couple of minutes after the hour or having them run over a couple of minutes? It can make viewers miss the beginning or lose the ending of a program. It’s not exactly earth-shattering but is most assuredly annoying.
This has long been asked and answered, but it still bedevils viewers. The short answer to why shows run a little long is that it keeps you from changing the channel at the half-hour, possibly boosting the show that follows the extended telecast, as well as making possible more ads in a hit show without reducing content even more. Starting a show early, which can also happen, is another way to stall channel-flipping.
In addition, some programs are given the creative license for running times that do not fit the standard half-hour or hour, if that’s what the shows’ makers want to tell their stories. Listings in onscreen program guides have gotten better about citing the odd times, although not perfectly. I often add a minute or two to the running time of a scheduled recording in my DVR because of that.
A related, but separate issue, involves show times that get moved to odd starts and stops because of live sports events airing before them. (Yes, I’m looking at Sunday nights.) Again, the best idea is to add lots of extra time when scheduling your recordings.
Our favorite ’90s TV program was the warm but quirky “Northern Exposure.” I heard a rumor there may be a reboot or spinoff in the works? It would be perfect for these difficult times.
The comedy-drama about a doctor working in a strange Alaska town had many pleasures during its 1990-95 run. It’s not surprising there have been calls for its return or rebooting. Talk was especially intense in 2018, but nothing was actually produced. Rob Morrow, who starred in the series for most of its run, said in a November 2019 interview on WGN radio that a reboot was still in the works. “It is a struggle” to make it happen, he said, “and I don’t know why.”
My wife and I are watching “The Last Kingdom” and think it’s great. Will they be continuing this series?
In July Netflix ordered a fifth season of the adventure drama based on Bernard Cornwell’s novels. I do not know when it might air.
We loved “Moonlighting” back in the ’80s and wanted to watch the series again. We could not find it on any of our services. Is it available anywhere?
Well, at this writing someone has posted what looks like the entire series on YouTube. But “Moonlighting” is not on another streaming or cable service that I can find, and even the available copies of the DVD sets are expensive. That may surprise a lot of folks since the show was a hit during much of its 1985-89 run, it made a star of Bruce Willis and it amped up Cybill Shepherd’s career. But in a March lament over the unavailability of the series, Dave Holmes of Decider.com thought “this is probably due to the many music cues the show used …Those songs ain’t cheap.” While some shows have been reissued without their original music, Holmes said “Moonlighting” “simply wouldn’t work” without its tunes.
