The TV Column

'Talent' contests, drama, horror set for summer

The Gong Show host Tommy Maitland introduces Snax the Funny Bunny to the audience.
The Gong Show host Tommy Maitland introduces Snax the Funny Bunny to the audience.

For your summertime viewing pleasure, TV is rolling out three alternative (formerly called "reality") shows and three scripted programs over the next couple of days. Let's take them in order.

Boy Band, 7 p.m. today, ABC. This new 10-episode music competition series begins with 30 wannabe superstars battling it out to become a member of what ABC promises to be "the next great music sensation."

Right.

Host Rita Ora welcomes the vocalists to Hollywood, where they audition before "musical icons" Emma Bunton, Nick Carter and Timbaland.

Who? For those out of the icon loop, Bunton is best known as Baby Spice of the Spice Girls; Carter was a member of the pop group the Backstreet Boys; and Timbaland (real name Tim Mosley) is a record producer and rapper.

Eighteen performers will make the cut and advance to the next round. Then three groups of six will be formed to compete in the next phase, with the winners getting a recording contract with Hollywood Records.

The talent ranges in age from a 14-year-old from Las Vegas to the geezer entry, a 24-year-old from Kansas City, Mo. No Arkansans are among the hopefuls, but there is a 15-year-old from Memphis we can cheer on as almost local.

The Wall, 7 p.m. today, NBC. Season 2 continues for the game show hosted by Chris Hardwick and executive produced by basketball star LeBron James.

The game has a pair of teammates answering questions and a ball bouncing down a four-story Plinko wall to land in slots worth cash prizes. Millions of dollars are at stake, but the ball is fickle and leads to "a roller coaster of emotions." Brace yourself.

The Night Shift, 8 p.m. today, NBC. It's Season 4 for the hospital drama set in San Antonio.

The new season picks up 48 hours after we last saw our intrepid heroes dealing with a new hospital owner, a bombing in a refugee camp overseas, the emergency room in chaos and personal lives in such wacky turmoil that it makes the crew of Grey's Anatomy look like slackers.

The Gong Show, 9 p.m. today, ABC. Those of us old enough may recall the absurd original variety "talent" show in the 1970s created and hosted by Chuck Barris. The designated gag acts were frequently too bizarre to describe.

I best remember The Unknown Comic (Murray Langston), who was a recurring fixture and performed with a sack on his head, and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine (Gene Patton).

Now the series makes "its triumphant return to television" with British comic Tommy Maitland as host and Will Arnett (Arrested Development) as executive producer.

The original featured celebrity judges such as Jamie Farr and Phyllis Diller. This time around, the judges include Fred Arminsen, Elizabeth Banks, Ken Jeong, Will Forte and Zach Galifianakis. They will cheer on the good contestants and unceremoniously gong off the losers.

The first episode includes a unicycler dressed in a yeti suit playing flaming bagpipes, a married couple performing a choreographed banana spitting routine, a woman who plays the harmonica with a tarantula in her mouth, an obsessed opera fan, and a scary wrestler who sings a children's lullaby.

All good, clean family fun.

The winning act will receive the coveted Gong Show trophy and a check for $2,000.17.

Note: Barris, also the creator of The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, died March 21 at the age of 87.

The Mist, 9 p.m. today, Spike TV. TV horror shows usually leave me cold. Maybe because I'm watching in the den with the lights on. Perhaps The Mist, based on a novella by Stephen King, will be different. I doubt it.

The story is set in the seemingly idyllic small town of Bridgeville, Maine, where a brutal crime has been committed. As the town deals with the fallout, an eerie mist rolls in, cutting the town off from the rest of the world.

Bad, bad things are in the mist and, Spike says, "The rules of society break down."

I haven't reviewed an episode, but the trailer was pretty gory.

GLOW, Friday, Netflix. The new comedy comes from the team behind Orange is the New Black and is set in the '80s when a gaggle of gals reinvent themselves as the glittered and spandexed Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Hilarity ensues. The cast includes Alison Brie (Community) and Betty Gilpin (Nurse Jackie).

Playing House, 10 p.m. Friday, USA. It's Season 3 for the comedy about two BFFs. It all began when mother-to-be Maggie (Lennon Parham) called on Emma (Jessica St. Clair) to come help after Maggie kicked her cheating husband out of the house. Hilarity ensued and Emma and Maggie are raising the baby.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email: mstorey@arkansasonline.com

Weekend on 06/22/2017

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