TV News Roundup: HBO Announces ‘Perry Mason’ Premiere Date (Watch)
By J. Kim Murphy
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – In today’s TV News Roundup, HBO announced the premiere date for its reboot of “Perry Mason,” and Fox Entertainment announced a weekly talk show to accompany its Animation Domination Sunday block.
DATES
HBO has announced that its upcoming reboot of “Perry Mason” will premiere on June 21 at 9 p.m. The series follows criminal defense lawyer Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys) as he ventures into the criminal underbelly of Los Angeles during the Great Depression. The series is executive produced by Amanda Burrell, Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, Ron Fitzgerald, Joe Horacek, Rolin Jones and Timothy Van Patten. Aida Rodgers serves as co-executive producer. HBO released the announcement alongside a new teaser, which can be watched below.
PBS has announced that the two-part docuseries “And She Could Be Next
” will premiere on the network and at pov.org in June. The documentary is part of the network’s summer “Trailblazers” initiative, celebrating the centennial of women’s suffrage. The documentary series follows individuals at the heart of the movement behind the New American Majority, including Stacey Abrams, Bushra Amiwala, Maria Elena Durazo, Veronica Escobar, Lucy McBath, Rashida Tlaib and Nse Ufot, executive director of the New Georgia Project. The series is executive produced by Ava DuVernay, Justine Nagan and Chris White and directed by Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia.
FIRST LOOKS
Quibi has released the trailer for “Dummy,” an upcoming comedy about an aspiring writer (Anna Kendrick) befriending her boyfriend’s (Donal Logue) talking sex doll (voiced by Meredith Hagner). “Dummy” comes from Wiip. Cody Heller serves as series creator and writer. Tricia Brock serves as series director. Kendrick, Heller and Brock serve as executive producers. The series premieres on the mobile platform on April 20. Watch the trailer below.
SPECIALS
Fox Entertainment and social broadcasting platform Caffeine have announced a partnership to launch “The Anidom Beyond Show,” a live and interactive program hosted by Andy Richter dedicated to Fox’s Sunday block Animation Domination. The hour-long program premieres April 19 at 10 p.m. ET
/ 7 p.m. PT and features episode recaps and interviews with cast and crew of “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” “Bob’s Burgers,” “Bless the Harts,” “Duncanville” and more. It will air new episodes every Sunday over the next five weeks, until the end of the broadcast season.
INITIATIVES
The cast of the Fox animated series “Duncanville” will perform a live table read of the pilot episode to benefit Feeding America as the coronavirus pandemic continues to throttle the economy. Feeding America is a hunger-relief charity that helps 40 million Americans yearly. The table read will stream on the Animation Domination YouTube channel April 17 at 3 p.m. PT. “Duncanville” co-creators and executive producers Amy Poehler, Mike Scully and Julie Scully will take part, along with series cast members Ty Burrell, Rashida Jones, Riki Lindhome, Betsy Sodaro, Zach Cherry, Yassir Lester and Joy Osmanski.
RATINGS
A new episode of Nickelodeon’s
“Danger Force” set a record in Live+3 gains during its April 11 8 p.m. slot, posting a series high +65% increase with kids 6-11(3.3/425,000) versus its Live+Same Day performance (2.0/250,000) and drew 646,000 total viewers.
