HOLLYWOOD Q&A

Q: I loved the “Broadway’s Best” series that ran on PBS in the fall of 2017 and included broadcasts of “She Loves Me,” “Holiday Inn,” and “Present Laughter.” Are there plans for more broadcasts in 2018, or even for making it a returning series like “Great Performances at the Met”?

A: If there are plans to continue the “Broadway’s Best” series-within-a-series, no one’s talking about them.

As it stands, the whole series consisted of just six specials, broadcasts of six hit Broadway musicals: “She Loves Me,” Noel Coward’s “Present Laughter,” “In the Heights,” “Indecent,” Irving Berlin’s “Holiday Inn” and “Falsettos.” The first five on that list aired as part of PBS’s ongoing “Great Performances” series, while the sixth aired as part of “Live From Lincoln Center.”

Unfortunately, because of their unconventional format as series within series, and because that format is airing on the already-unconventional PBS, it’s hard to get info about it, or a sense of when it might come back.

With a conventional series — one that airs in seasons and follows a normal production schedule — you can guess at a return date even if one hasn’t been announced. If a series aired in the fall of 2017, it’ll likely air again in the fall of 2018, unless it’s been canceled (and then you’d get hints of that, such as announcements that

the stars have taken new roles in other shows).

None of those things apply to the “Broadway’s Best” series. It seems to have aired as a sort of experiment on “Great Performances” and “Live From Lincoln Center.” And those shows air on PBS, which doesn’t really follow seasons like the other broadcast networks, and which doesn’t ask its various local channels around the country to air the same schedule (for example, while “Broadway’s Best” began in the fall of 2017 for you, it didn’t do so for all of the PBS stations across the country).

And we can’t take a guess about a return based on what the cast is up to because, unlike a regular series, the specials are all different. If another run of “Broadway’s Best” is in the cards, it will be a list of different productions with different casts.

There is at least a good chance that the series will continue. It seems like a slam dunk: the content will always be there (Broadway’s been putting on shows for quite a while now and shows no signs of stopping), and it’s certainly in PBS’s wheelhouse. Also, the specials were sponsored by BroadwayHD, an online streaming service for Broadway performances, and that’s still a going concern and still (presumably) in need of advertising.

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