Halle Berry misses in “Extant”
In looking at the winners and losers of summer TV, Andy Greenwald of Grantland wasn’t too impressed with Halle Berry’s choice:
Berry wasn’t wrong to make the leap from the big screen to the small when she did. She just may have taken too large a jump. By choosing a high-profile project like Extant — executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, airing on CBS, TV’s most-watched network — Berry avoided the sliding scale of eyeballs and influence that allows movie stars to reap the prestige of TV writing without worrying about the responsibility to deliver a blockbuster-size audience. (Matthew McConaughey is now one of the biggest movie stars in the world, but an average first-run airing of True Detective earned about 2.5 million viewers. Decent, but not exactly Interstellar.) Extant — a sort of Rosemary’s Baby in space — started strong both creatively and otherwise, but quickly dimmed. Recent episodes have won their respective nights, but only barely. As its first (and potentially only?) season winds to a close, Extant is averaging nearly the same weekly audience as NBC’s bargain-basement French coproduction Taxi Brooklyn, a show that pulls off the rare feat of misrepresenting both taxis and the borough of Brooklyn. It’s no longer risky for a movie star to work in TV. But when you dive into the deepest end of the pool, you’d better produce a much bigger splash.
He brings up some interesting choice on television roles for stars, and he also points out how binge-watching opportunities can actually dim the buzz around shows like “Orange is the New Black.” It’s a good read . . .
Improve your game today!
You've got to brush up on your game to get the girl! Find your hookups with this online dating guide.
