HBO jumps into new season with slavery, porn
The following are highlights from the Television Critics Association’s summer preview of upcoming shows.
HBO program BEVERLY HILLS chief Casey Bloys acknowledged the network erred in how it released news of an upcoming series, Confederate, that contemplates present-day slavery.
Last week’s announcement of Confederate, which imagines a successful Southern secession and the continuation of slavery to the present, drew an immediate online backlash.
“HBO’s mistake was that we would be able to announce an idea that is so sensitive and requires such care and thought on the part of producers in a press release. (That) was misguided,” Bloys said Wednesday.
Critics objected on many fronts, including the intention to depict slavery as a legal institution and that two white men, David Benioff and D.B Weiss of Game of Thrones, would be running the series. Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Malcolm Spellman, who also will write for the series, are black.
Bloys said: “The producers said they’re not going to do Gone With the Wind 2017. It’s not whips and plantations.” – Bill Keveney
MISOGYNY SELLS
Premiering Sept. 10 on HBO, The Deuce traces that moment in New York City in the ’70s when sex — and porn — became a billion-dollar industry.
James Franco plays twin brothers — one a hard-working bartender, one a gambler in debt to the mob — while Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a prostitute turned would-be filmmaker. Their paths cross in Times Square.
“The product is really human flesh,” Creator David Simon said. “It’s objectified women, and in making it into a billiondollar industry, there’s something really telling in who gets paid and who gets left out.”
Gyllenhaal’s prostitute suffers abuses that may be hard to watch, and that’s OK with her. “There is a huge amount of misogyny in the world. ... Here we have an opportunity to ... put it on the table.” – Robert Bianco
MORE ‘CURB’ COMING
Seinfeld co-creator Larry David is back for a 10-episode season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, premiering Oct. 1, that includes the old gang: Jeff Garlin ( The Goldbergs) as Jeff, Larry’s sometime manager; Susie Essman as Jeff ’s foul-mouthed wife; and JB Smoove as pal Leon. Why bring it back now? “Why not?” David says. “I’m not a misser ... but I was missing it. And I got tired of people asking me, ‘Is the show coming back?’ I couldn’t face that question anymore, and I didn’t want to say, ‘No, never.’ Gary Levin