TV Talk: Marvel comedy ‘She-Hulk’ short on laughs; ‘Sprung’ misses a chance for a shared universe
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Credit Marvel with attempting a half-hour comedy series for Disney+, but “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” proves too timid about leaning into humor.
The first episode, now streaming, proves a particularly dull introduction that wastes most of its running time on a training montage as Bruce Banner/Smart-Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) trains his cousin, Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany), in the ways of a Hulk.
The episode does little to advance the characters beyond the standard newcomer-in-training tropes. Walter does some “Fleabag”-style, break-the-fourth-wall, direct address to the camera and the first episode would have been so much better if she just explained she and Bruce were in a car accident, she had an open wound, some of his Gamma ray-infected blood seeped in and yadda-yadda, she became She-Hulk. Every viewer would understand what happened next.
Future episodes introduce court cases that bring in Marvel characters like Wong (Benedict Wong) and Blonsky/Abomination (Tim Roth).
Finally, in the fourth episode, there’s a genuinely funny plot that effectively melds Marvel magic with comic absurdity when a daffy courtroom witness gets zapped through a portal, but first tells the court her name is Madisynn, sing-songing, “with two Ns and one y but it’s not where you thin-ink!”
More of that and maybe “She-Hulk” will be worth watching.
‘Sprung’s’ missed connection
If there’s any disappointment to stem from Amazon Freevee’s genuinely funny, crudely comic, Pittsburgh-filmed “Sprung,” streaming Friday, it may be the lack of linkage to “Sprung” creator Greg Garcia’s past shows, especially because the actress behind a prior link, Dale Dickey, was in Pittsburgh at the same time “Sprung” filmed.
Dickey plays the team chaperone in Amazon’s “A League of Their Own” and she played nighttime waitress/daytime prostitute Patty in Garcia’s “My Name is Earl” and “Raising Hope,” creating a shared universe for those two Garcia series. Patty would have felt at home in “Sprung,” which follows a quartet who seek to punish those who take advantage of the covid-19 pandemic for personal financial gain.
Garcia said he was supposed to have a picnic lunch during his time in Pittsburgh with Dickey and actress Nancy Lenehan (she played Earl’s mother in “My Name is Earl” and recurs in “League”) but schedule conflicts got in the way. Beyond that, Garcia said there was a specific effort not to link “Sprung” to his past shows.
“We tried to be more cinematic than we had been in the past,” he said. “And we’re moving from network to streaming so I was trying to make it as different as I could.”
One differentiator: “Sprung” is more serialized than Garcia’s past comedies.
“There’s always the through-line of this overall heist that they want to complete and my least favorite part of the process was keeping track of that,” Garcia said. “That’s a lot of drawing and writing on whiteboards. I was like, if we can figure this out, let’s just go commit this crime. … But it was great when it was over and you were like, ‘Oh, this all added up, hopefully.’”
“Sprung” also marks the series return of two 1980s TV mainstays: Susan Ruttan, who played Roxanne Melman on “L.A. Law,” recurs as the elderly mother of prison parolee Jack (Garret Dillahunt). And Fred Grandy, best known for playing Gopher on “The Love Boat,” portrays the septuagenarian husband of Kate Walsh’s congresswoman.
Both veteran actors were cast off recorded auditions but Garcia didn’t recognize Grandy as Gopher until the actor was filming on the ground in Pittsburgh.
Renewals galore
“Power Book III: Raising Kanan” was renewed for a third season just prior to its Aug. 14, second-season premiere.
PBS’s “Grantchester” will return for an eighth season in 2023.
Apple TV+ renewed “Physical” for a third season.
Netflix will bring back “Love, Death Robots” for a fourth season.
PBS renewed “The Great American Recipe” for a second season.
Channel surfing
Spectrum Originals, the first home for shot-in-Pittsburgh “Manhunt: Deadly Games” before it aired on CBS, is the latest media company to exit the pricey scripted original series business. … The 1997 live-action version of “Cinderella,” starring Brandy, Whitney Houston, Bernadette Peters and Whoopi Goldberg and choreographed by Pittsburgh native Rob Marshall, will be rebroadcast on ABC at 9 p.m. Aug. 23 and preceded at 8 p.m. that night by a one-hour “20/20” retrospective on the made-for-TV film. … Fred Rogers Productions stages its latest family nature day, themed to the shorts series “Through the Woods,” 1-3 p.m. Saturday at Point State Park. … “John Wick” prequel series “The Continental,” originally announced for Starz, will instead premiere on Peacock in 2023. … This week Nexstar Media Group confirmed plans to buy a 75% stake in The CW from Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global (formerly CBS). While it’s too soon to definitively say what the sale will mean for CW programming, fewer expensive, American-made original scripted series seems the most likely outcome.