Host Mike Rowe getting back to his ‘Dirty’ tricks
With many of us longing to return to work, Mike Rowe is back on the job.
Yes, the “Dirty Jobs” expert — who knows everything there is to know about icky, sticky labor — is taking a road trip with his old “Dirty Jobs” crew. They will revisit past on-the-jobbers and tell all new stories. “Dirty Jobs: Rowe’d Trip” premiered on the Discovery Channel last week.
Rowe said he became interested in the field because of his dad and grandfather.
“My earliest memories growing up were of my grandfather and my father working as this sort of apprentice team solving problems, no matter how dirty or disgusting,” he said. “It’s still mysterious to me because they would vanish and come back filthy and whatever the thing was, would be fixed.
“I always wanted to do a TV show that celebrated those kinds of qualities, to point a camera at people who would never have a camera pointed at them. To just pay an honest tribute.”
Revived ‘Wonder Years’ to center on Black family
ABC is rebooting “The Wonder Years,” a beloved coming-of-age sitcom about the U.S. middle class, only this time it will tell the story of a Black family in Alabama.
“Empire” co-creator Lee Daniels is executive producing the project, alongside Fred Savage, the star of the original series, which debuted in 1988. Neal Marlens, who co-created “The Wonder Years,” will serve as a consultant.
ABC has committed only to produce a pilot of the show, which means it may never get on the air. But ABC and its owner Walt Disney Co. have made telling more Black stories a priority after the killing of George Floyd, which brought a wave of protests about racial injustice.
Disney also announced an overall production deal with football player and civil-rights activist Colin Kaepernick last week.
“The Wonder Years,” which ran until 1993, originally depicted Kevin Arnold, a young boy in what was presented as a typical American family dealing with the tribulations of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Famed firy tales to get a retelling on the CW
Kevin Williamson’s modern take on ancient fairy tales is moving to the CW on July 28.
“Tell Me a Story,” which streamed on CBS Access, combines three famous fairy tales — “Hansel and Gretel,” “The Three Little Pigs,” and “Little Red Riding Hood” — into a parable about modern-day anger and angst.
Williamson, author of five “Scream” incarnations, “Dawson’s Creek,” “The Vampire Diaries” and “Stalker,” said, “What we’ve done is we’ve taken sort of the notion of some (of) these classic fairy tales in all of their darkness, and we have sort of the concept being: What would you do if you had to write them today? What would they look like? What form would they take? What would be the cautionary tale of it? What would be the morals? What would be the themes? What would be the stories?
“And so we have taken that as our jumping off point,” he said.
— From wire reports