From ‘Annie’ to ‘Sondheim’ to ‘Kenny G’
NBC continues its tradition of staging live musical productions with “Annie Live!” (8 p.m., TV-PG). Celina Smith plays the title role and Harry Connick Jr. loses his locks to play Daddy Warbucks. Taraji P. Henson, of “Empire” fame, is Miss Hannigan.
Featuring music by Charles Strouse, “Annie” opened on Broadway in 1977 and remains a touchstone for those raised on its many songs, including “Tomorrow.”
The death of Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim last week evoked a great appreciation of his work, as well as the recognition that his compositions were not for every taste.
Most of these obituaries and retrospectives declared that he “changed” Broadway, but only some mentioned that he might have alienated theatergoers in search of a more approachable and “hummable” score. Like Leonard Bernstein (with whom he collaborated on “West Side Story,”) Sondheim didn’t so much change the musical as bring a Broadway audience to sophisticated and at times difficult and even academic ideas of late-20th-century “classical” composition. The results delighted and inspired many, but seemed opaque to many more. And for those fans, “Annie” and an onslaught of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals more than filled the breach.
A great appreciation, the 2013 documentary “Six by Sondheim” can be streamed on HBO Max.
› The distance between music that audiences like and music that musicians respect is explored in the new “Music Box” (8 p.m., HBO, TV-MA) installment, “Listening to Kenny G.”
› Sundance Now streams “The Pact.” Add this six-part thriller from BBC Wales to the growing list of good stories that might be better told as two-hour movies.
After a boozy work-related party shot through with resentment and disappointments, four workers at a brewery make a rash decision, with fatal consequences.
The story is propelled with the one-bad-decision-after-another logic of a horror movie. Not to give too much away, but how easy is it for four women with raging hangovers to keep secrets about a body in the woods?
Look for Laura Fraser (“Traces”) as the most level-headed of the group, who has the unfortunate task of keeping her secrets from her policeman husband (Jason Hughes, “Midsomer Murders”), who has just been assigned to the case.
Aneurin Barnard plays the dreadful new boss who sets off this calamity. He’s first seen disrespecting the women interviewing for a supervisor role and then hiring the most attractive and willing of the bunch. He then browbeats his father (Eddie Marsan) out of attending the party, having replaced, or perhaps overthrown, him. There’s a whiff of extortion in the brief moments they share. Julie Hesmondhalgh stars as one of the conspiring workers. She’s a familiar face from “Broadchurch,” a clear inspiration for “The Pact.”