Drama

In an odd yet understandable marketing strategy, the folks behind E!'s new reality show "Mrs. Eastwood & Company" have spent a lot of pre-premiere publicity time explaining what the show isn't. Which is to say, Clint Eastwood. The legendary actor and director will appear in but a few episodes and then only briefly. He will not, for instance, be slamming doors or engaging in filmed therapy sessions with his wife, Dina, around whom the show revolves (see title.) That doesn't mean the show is not about Clint Eastwood; it is. If the principal characters -- Dina, her 15-year-old daughter Morgan and 19-year old stepdaughter Francesca -- were not related to him, there would be Absolutely No Reason to watch this, which, by reality show standards, promises to be tame to the point of sedation.

Jeremy Irons stars as the ruthless Rodrigo Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI, in Showtime's period drama"The Borgias," now in its second season. You really seem like you're having fun with this role. I'm glad about that. I've always believed that in the theater or movies, whatever, the audience's enjoyment is increased if the actors seem to be enjoying what they're doing. What's fun about the Borgia pope? The great thing about doing series television is you have time.

"The Artist," the charming film about Hollywood's transition from silent movies to talkies, and the family drama "The Descendants" were catapulted to front-runner Oscar status Sunday night with an armful of Golden Globes to their names as the awards season reaches fever pitch. There's no guarantee that a Golden Globe will lead to Oscar gold. But it can't hurt with Academy Award nominations just around the corner. (They'll be announced Jan. 24.) "The Artist" picked up three Golden Globes, for best film, musical or comedy, lead actor in a comedy or musical, and score.

In an odd yet understandable marketing strategy, the folks behind E!'s new reality show "Mrs. Eastwood & Company" have spent a lot of pre-premiere publicity time explaining what the show isn't. Which is to say, Clint Eastwood. The legendary actor and director will appear in but a few episodes and then only briefly. He will not, for instance, be slamming doors or engaging in filmed therapy sessions with his wife, Dina, around whom the show revolves (see title.) That doesn't mean the show is not about Clint Eastwood; it is. If the principal characters -- Dina, her 15-year-old daughter Morgan and 19-year old stepdaughter Francesca -- were not related to him, there would be Absolutely No Reason to watch this, which, by reality show standards, promises to be tame to the point of sedation.

Drama: An Actor's Education John Lithgow Harper: 320 pp, $26.99

As the silvery UFO-shaped balloon sailed over the high plains and a national television audience watched transfixed Thursday, the Colorado Army National Guard scrambled combat helicopters for a possible rescue of the 6-year-old boy reportedly inside. Flights in and out of Denver International Airport were rerouted. On the ground, would-be rescuers with eyes skyward chased the craft along winding back roads. CNN upped its tape delay to 10 seconds, lest it broadcast a tragedy live.

In the same week that a Major League Soccer club president proclaimed that some MLS games are simply too boring to watch, attendance figures for 2009 revealed an alarming drop. So the question becomes this: Are the two items related? Are fewer fans going to watch MLS games because the quality of play has been found wanting, or is the drop merely a reflection of the economic downturn? Attendance was down by more than 20% in Los Angeles, New York and Boston, and by almost as much in Washington, where Kevin Payne, D.C. United's president and chief executive, was slapped with a $5,000 fine by the league for speaking his mind.

More drama, that's what a host of Hollywood veterans are hoping will be produced as a result of the blockbuster news this week that NBC's Jay Leno experiment in prime time had failed. While it was still unclear Friday whether the network would fill Leno's current 10 p.m. time slot with scripted or reality programming, executive producers such as Kurt Sutter of FX's biker drama "Sons of Anarchy" are glad NBC executives are knocking the talk show out of prime time. "If they cop to the fact that they made a bad decision and show some kind of contrition, that will go a long way to repairing their relationship with the creative community," Sutter said.

THANKS for the piece about British imports ["Hits From the Brits," by Lynn Smith, Nov. 7]. As an ex-pat Brit (here 31 years), I have always been proud of our little nation's influence on American TV. However, since I doubt you misquoted Ricky Gervais and his comment about British TV drama ["As far as drama goes, we don't come close"], I have to assume excessive American adulation has caused him brain damage. British TV drama has always been superior to America's, and always will be, for two primary reasons: a lack of American network censors, and a wealth of trained and talented actors who are comparatively ego-free and do not require preposterous salaries to do their best work.

NBC evidently believes laughter is the best medicine: The struggling network will have a strong dose of comedy on four nights in its fall lineup plus the Season 3 return of"The Voice. " Keeping its Thursday sitcom block essentially intact with existing series, NBC will push the low-rated comedies"Community"and"Whitney"to Fridays and open up Tuesdays and Wednesdays for new sitcoms such as "Go On," "Animal Practice" and "Guys With Kids. " Nearly one-quarter of NBC's fall prime-time schedule will consist of sitcoms; last fall, the figure was just 14%. Also on the schedule: the Monday one-hour series "Revolution," the new sci-fi drama from producer J.J. Abrams, and, for Wednesday, "Chicago Fire," from "Law & Order" mastermind Dick Wolf.

The Lakers seemingly couldn't get through a family breakfast without drama. As if they didn't have enough worries heading into Game 7 of their first-round playoff series, the Lakers had to hear the franchise's most popular figure question the future of their coach on the eve of the game. Magic Johnson , the Lakers vice president who also serves as an ESPN analyst, said Friday that Lakers Coach Mike Brown wouldn't keep his job if his team lost to the Denver Nuggets on Saturday.

They don't call it "Tim Burton's Dark Shadows," but they might as well have. Nominally based on the cult favorite 1960s daytime soap opera, this film has much more to do with what goes on inside director Tim Burton's head than with any TV show, no matter how beloved. In fact, "Dark Shadows" is as good an example as any of what might be called the Way of Tim, a style of making films that, like the drinking of blood, is very much an acquired taste and, unless you're a vampire, not worth the effort.

It's been more than 31/2 politically and culturally eventful decades since the BBC debuted "I, Claudius," the now iconic political drama set in ancient Rome that shocked and amazed audiences, first in the United Kingdom and then the United States. The recent release of an anniversary-edition DVD reminded many that no matter how many naked breasts, bloody beheadings or incestuous liaisons"Game of Thrones" or"The Borgias" serve up, no matter how much spiritual and political rot is examined by"Breaking Bad" or "Homeland," there is no topping the vicious intrigues, vindictive violence and general depravity of Rome as depicted first by novelist and historian Robert Graves and then by screenwriter Jack Pullman and director Herbert Wise.

Earnest and filled with self-doubt, "The Perfect Family,"starring Kathleen Turner, is a darkly comic family drama about the imperfect union between real life and the rigors of Catholic doctrine. Like Eileen Cleary (Turner), the hopelessly devoted Catholic mother at its center, the movie has lost its way. It makes an unsteady debut for director Anne Renton, and the screenplay by Claire V. Riley and Paula Goldberg is literal to a fault. The film's single saving grace is Turner, who channels that legendary Catholic guilt like there is no tomorrow.

The merits of working with one's spouse can be debated endlessly, but few couples face the pressures of opera singers who share a life and sometimes a stage. In 2004, local music lovers were transfixed when two of opera's biggest stars, tenor Roberto Alagna and soprano Angela Gheorghiu, appeared in Herbert Ross' production of Puccini's "La Bohème" at Los Angeles Opera. That the singers were married to each other in real life made the experience, already rife with romantic pathos, that much more intense.

When actors and actresses do their best work, we forget they are acting. It seems as through they have effortlessly become the characters they are playing. But in reality, there is alot of work that goes into a performance: the words, the costume, the makeup, the lighting, the sound, the direction, the sets, as well as the vocal, physical and emotional elements. All the world may be a stage, but the stage must be built on a solid foundation.

Thank you, David Shaw, for such an intelligent and well put together piece on this subject ("History Is All the Drama Needed for Reagan's Story," Nov. 9). It's been so frustrating to watch the debate about what's proper and what's fair spin out of control to a place where the available facts -- Reagan's record on AIDS was nonexistent to just plain awful -- were somehow left behind. Shana Naomi Krochmal San Francisco Shana Naomi Krochmal is the director of communications and public affairs for the STOP AIDS Project.

A new kind of Mav-wreck It was a week that packed enough drama for a season's worth of episodes on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" - or "Jersey Shore," for that matter. There were confrontations, finger-pointing and plenty of regrets, all involving one Lamar Joseph Odom. It started with the infamous locker-room clash last weekend between Odom and his boss, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who reportedly asked his mopey, underachieving forward whether he wanted "to go for it or not?"

TV westerns, game shows and variety shows have come and gone. But when it comes to prime time, TV has rarely experienced a cop-out, despite the seemingly endless recycling of formulas dealing with the central themes of good and evil, crime and punishment. The creative forces behind CBS' new "NYC 22" hope that their series demonstrates that there is plenty of life left in the well-tilled cop show territory. Its A-list pedigree is an immediate attention grabber: Executive producers include Oscar winner Robert De Niro and novelist-screenwriter Richard Price.