TV Talk: Comic actors improvise their way through ‘Murderville;’ PBS delivers a history of jeans

In an era of plenty of TV, including many reboots, it’s refreshing to see some outlets take chances on offbeat programming. Sometimes those risks pay off creatively and ratings-wise (see: CBS’s “Ghosts,” not exactly a match with CBS’s multi-cam sitcoms) and sometimes they don’t. Creatively, Netflix’s “Murderville,” now streaming, falls in the latter category. It’s occasionally but not frequently funny.

Will Arnett (“Arrested Development”) stars as senior detective Terry Seattle, who in each episode works alongside a celebrity guest star who is tasked with solving a murder.

Although the case in each episode is outlined and portions with Arnett and other series regulars seem more scripted, Arnett and the celebrity guest improvise their way through the investigation, which is where the humor is supposed to come in.

In an episode guest-starring Conan O’Brien, the funniest moments come from Arnett and O’Brien trying to make one another break character, especially when Arnett repeatedly douses O’Brien’s meal with hot sauce and O’Brien keeps eating it, turning redder over time. But the more scripted stuff in the episode? Not that funny.

Other celebrity guest stars include Annie Murphy (“Schitt’s Creek”), Ken Jeong (“Community”), Kumail Nanjiani (“Silicon Valley”), Marshawn Lynch (“Westworld”) and Sharon Stone (“Basic Instinct”).

‘Riveted: The History of Jeans’

For writer/director/producer Anna Lee Strachan (“NOVA”), her latest film started with a simple question: “Why is everyone in the world walking around in the same pair of pants?”

From that sprung PBS’s latest “American Experience” episode, “Riveted: The History of Jeans” (9-10 p.m. Monday, WQED-TV).

“I knew it was something that was thought of [as] quintessentially American,” Strachan said last month at a PBS press conference during the Television Critics Association winter 2022 virtual press tour. “My curiosity had been piqued for many years. … My grandmother was someone who dressed to the nines her whole life, and I never thought about the language of clothing until her death. That got me thinking even more deeply about clothing and why we wear the things we wear.”

“Riveted” explores the history of the pants, which predates the Gold Rush and Levi Strauss and goes back further, including to generations of enslaved Blacks in the American South. “Riveted” explores how jeans evolved beyond working-class attire to the rise of designer jeans in the 1970s.

But why are jeans mostly blue?

“We couldn’t come up with a very clear answer other than just humans really seem to like blue,” Strachan said. “Cross-culturally, going back centuries, there seems to be a lot of religions and cultures that ascribe a lot of meaning and beauty to blue. That is definitely a reason, but it may not be the reason. The other reason may be that blue is really good at hiding dirt. Some of our experts offered that as well.”

‘Halo’ coming soon

The Paramount+ series “Halo,” based on the video game, finally arrives on the streaming service on March 24. First announced as in-development in 2013, Showtime ordered the show’s first season in 2018. “Halo” shifted to streaming service Paramount+ in February 2021 but is still produced by Showtime for Paramount+.

“We went through a number of fits and starts to do something of this scale,” acknowledged executive producer Kiki Wolfkill during Paramount+’s portion of the 2022 TCA virtual winter press tour.

Pablo Schreiber (“Orange is the New Black”) stars in “Halo” as Master Chief as he and his fellow 26th century Spartan supersoldiers defend humanity from an alien threat known as the Covenant. While he plays Master Chief in the streaming series, Schreiber is not great at playing the video game.

“I was really terrible the first time I played,” Schreiber said, laughing. “I’ve had all this military training, so I know how to carry guns, use guns, I’ve shot every gun you can imagine. But as soon as I get into the ‘Halo’ universe, I get killed by all the beginning stages, and all the grunts can kill me continuously. It’s been humbling, but I’m getting better as I practice.”

Another ‘Star Trek’

When “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” premieres May 5 on Paramount+, the latest streaming “Trek” series about Capt. Pike (Anson Mount), Spock (Ethan Peck) and Number One (Rebecca Romijn) on the U.S.S. Enterprise before the Capt. Kirk era will be the first “Trek” since “Enterprise” (2001-05, UPN) to put an emphasis on stand-alone episodic stories instead of an ongoing, serialized story.

Executive producer Akiva Goldsman said while he’s a fan of serialized storytelling, a return to the close-ended storytelling of the original 1960s “Star Trek” allows the show to “move gently through genre as the original series did” and it means episodes can be “slightly more tonally specific.

“It also allows us to have a ‘Star Trek’ that’s great at the moral-of-the-story, and I say that teasingly,” Goldsman said during a Paramount+ TCA panel. “What episodic or closed-ended stories do is they allow you to have reversals, like the best ‘Twilight Zones,’ where we reframe the story we’ve just seen and learn to see it from a different perspective. The original series was great at that and we hope to chase some of those values.”

Renewed

Paramount+ renewed “Mayor of Kingstown,” “SEAL Team” and “The Game.”

Fox ordered two more seasons of “Hell’s Kitchen.”

Channel surfing

Retired WPXI-TV news anchor Peggy Finnegan returns to Channel 11 to anchor during some newscasts Feb. 4-18 during the Winter Olympics, just as she did in 2021 during the Summer Olympics. … Regarding the Winter Olympics, Comcast customers automatically get access to Peacock Premium (at no additional cost), home of more than 2,800 hours of Olympics programming. Flex and X1 customers can speak “Peacock” into their voice remotes to gain access. … On “Ellen” Tuesday new WTAE-TV reporter Tori Yorgey retold her story about getting hit by a car during a live shot at her former TV station. Host Ellen DeGeneres gifted Yorgey with a WTAE-logoed light-up jacket, to prevent her from getting hit by a car in the future, and a beach resort vacation. … KDKA-TV has an opening for a full-time meteorologist/weather producer whose job would be to produce forecasts, report from the field on big weather events and fill in on the air. Assuming no current meteorologist departs, this would give KDKA a fifth meteorologist, equaling WTAE-TV’s tally. … Aleya Crable Jennings joins Pittsburgh-based Fred Rogers Productions as director of corporate sponsorships and individual giving. … Hulu made a deal with Fox Entertainment to stream past seasons of unscripted Fox series, including “The Masked Singer,” “LEGO Masters,” “MasterChef” among others. … WQED Multimedia has absorbed Steeltown Film Academy and related programs from Steeltown Entertainment Project, which is in the process of dissolving.