TV Guide Magazine February 28, 2022

STAR QUALITY I was delighted to learn recently that IMDb TV is picking up not only Leverage: Redemption for a second season but also Dean Devlin and Christian Kane’s Almost Paradise. Christian is a highly underrated but extremely versatile actor, and he deserves the opportunity that IMDb TV is affording him. He’ll be a very busy man this year, but I can’t wait to see both Eliot Spencer and Alex Walker back in action! —Tamara ORDER IN THE COURT! Jeers to the Jeer about Steve Harvey [January 31 issue]. I have never been a Steve Harvey fan, but I love him in his new ABC show Judge Steve Harvey. It is tailor-made for him! He is so funny, I’m laughing out loud constantly. He admits right up front that he’s not a real…

TV’S TOP-RATED CABLE show, Paramount Network’s Yellowstone, will be back for Season 5, which should come as no surprise. It averaged 14 million viewers in Season 4, with 15 million seeing the finale in which badass Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) blackmailed adoptive bro/lawyer Jamie (Wes Bentley) into shooting his biological dad, Garrett Randall (Will Patton), who’d ordered a hit on the Duttons. That bit of frontier justice left us with some burning questions. How will Beth use her power over Jamie? Beth owns Jamie after she snapped a pic of him dumping Garrett’s body. Plus, she’s threatened to tell lifelong love/new husband/ranch boss Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser), who got her pregnant as a teen, that Jamie took her to get an abortion and failed to reveal that the clinic would also sterilize…

Smart Watch If you have a half hour, check out this series New episodes of TV’s scarygood Ghosts? We’ll take ’em, especially when TV’s hottest freshman comedy channels Frasier for Thorfinn’s therapy session. This show has really hit its groove. Thursday, March 3, 9/8c, CBS If you have an hour, watch this series The 1980s NBA success story is told in the 10-episode Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dy nasty, with Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) building a slam-dunk squad on and off the court. Sunday, March 6, 9/8c, HBO If you have a free evening, watch this special Enjoy greatest hits from classic musicals Gigi, Camelot, My Fair Lady and more when Broadway in Concert tunes up selections from the Lerner & Loewe catalog. Sunday, March 6, 6:30/5:30c, PBS (check local listings at…

@TVGMMattRoush Too bad there’s not an award for series opening credits. The title sequence for Peacemaker on HBO Max is fantastic. Being in my twenties during the hair metal days, I really appreciate its opening, plus the entire soundtrack. Your thoughts on Peacemaker’s opening credits, please? —Roger MATT ROUSH: Who doesn’t love a good opening credits sequence? I never skip over them when they’re this cool. And actually, there is an Emmy category for Outstanding Main Title Design. It typically rewards graphics design, however, not performance pieces like Peacemaker’s, but I agree that this funky dance number to Wig Wam’s 2010 single “Do Ya Wanna Taste It” perfectly captures the tonguein-bloody-cheek spirit of the John Cena–led superhero parody. Currently, the sequence that haunts me most: the surreal, Escher-like credits for the Apple…

@TVGMMattRoush Better Things Pamela Adlon’s edgy comedy serves raw humor with its slices of life SEASON PREMIERE Monday, Feb. 28, 10/9c, FX WILL THE REAL Pamela Adlon please stand up? It’s never easy distinguishing this accomplished auteur—writer, director, star—from her fictionalized alter ego, Sam Fox, the embattled mother and daughter whose hectic life is depicted in FX’s Peabody-winning Better Things, of which there are few better things on TV. Now in its fifth and (tell me it’s not so) final season, this terrific semi-autobiographical series blurs the line further when Sam visits a genealogist, just as Adlon did in a recent episode of PBS’s Finding Your Roots. As scandalous skeletons tumble from the family tree, much as occurred in real life, Sam takes heart: “That makes me feel like we’re a part of a greater chain…

Outlander SEASON PREMIERE Sunday, March 6, 9/8c, Starz FILMING SCENES WHERE all hell breaks loose is all in a day’s work for the cast of the Starz adventure romance Outlander. But filming them while nearly seven months’ pregnant? In Season 6, that distinction was reserved for Caitriona Balfe, who plays time-traveling 20thcentury surgeon Claire Fraser, married to Highlander Jamie (Sam Heughan). The good-humored actress describes one of the tougher days toward the end of the shoot, when her bump was biggest: “There was lots of gun shooting—Claire was shooting a few herself—and squibs flying. One of the funniest bits was, I had to get up from the ground, just get up. We did that take multiple times. I was struggling.” And that’s not the only moment of heart-pounding peril for the residents of Fraser’s…