The TV Column

Networks offer new fare for basketball weary

ABC’s The Catch stars Peter Krause and Mireille Enos, shown here in a new form of flirting in Season 2.
ABC’s The Catch stars Peter Krause and Mireille Enos, shown here in a new form of flirting in Season 2.

March Madness continues tonight and Friday on CBS, TBS and TNT, with regional semifinals trimming the teams to the Sweet 16. For those whose brackets are already shattered, other stuff on TV may hold more interest.

It will be a fairly normal night of viewing on the rest of the broadcast networks.

NBC will have fresh episodes of Superstore, Powerless and The Blacklist: Redemption. Chicago Med at 8 p.m. is a repeat from October.

Fox will air a new episode of the junior edition of MasterChef at 7, followed by a particularly illustrative edition of Kicking & Screaming that demonstrates the importance of team communication -- communicate or go home.

The CW has a couple of Supernatural reruns.

ABC plans a new evening from Shonda Rhimes and her ShondaLand production company. Beginning at 7 p.m., the offerings are Grey's Anatomy, Scandal and The Catch.

Thursday night on ABC has become the "must-see TV" evening of the week for many. It's the one night you turn off your phone, slip into a robe and cozy up on the couch for three hours of soapy self indulgence.

Grey's Anatomy. Now in its 13th season, the series stars Ellen Pompeo as Dr. Meredith Grey. She and her fellow doctors at Seattle's (fictitious) Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital deal with life and death on a daily basis, as well as frequently messy personal relationships.

The series already has a green light for a 14th season.

Scandal. The political thriller follows the adventures of Washington "fixer" Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and her crisis management team of "gladiators in suits." Have a crisis? It's handled.

The Catch. For its second season, the drama has been retooled as a romantic comedy. That's what the producers realized they had once they took a close look at their "sexy, scintillating game of cat and mouse between L.A.'s top private investigator, Alice Vaughan (Mireille Enos), and the man she loves, con man Benjamin Jones (Peter Krause)."

In Season 2, Ben has turned himself in to save Alice from wrongful imprisonment. Now, Ben and Alice must learn to "game the system and each other" in order to overcome their shady pasts and stay together.

Trivia: The 51-year-old Krause (Sports Night, Six Feet Under, Parenthood) pronounces his surname "KRAU-suh," and his 41-year-old co-star pronounces her name "MEE-ray E-nos."

"It's an old-fashioned southern French name," Enos (whose mother, Monique, is French) told the Los Angeles Times. "My mother's best friend growing up in high school was Mireille. It's a derivation of 'wonderful' or 'marvel.'"

Enos married her childhood idol, Alan Ruck (Ferris Bueller's Day Off), in 2008. They have two children.

Krause has been "in a relationship" with his Parenthood co-star Lauren Graham since 2010.

More Shonda. If these three series aren't enough ShondaLand shows for you, there's always ABC's How to Get Away With Murder starring Oscar-winner Viola Davis as law professor and criminal defense attorney Annalise Keating. The series completed its third season Feb. 23 to make room for The Catch, but it'll be back with Season 4 in the fall.

Having only 15 or 16 episodes per season was part of the deal to get Davis to sign on. The usual 22 or 24 episodes can be overly exhausting.

Weekend Update. Thanks to its merciless lampooning of President Donald Trump and his administration, NBC's Saturday Night Live is having its highest ratings in years and plans to capitalize by spinning off its "Weekend Update" segment into a prime-time show this summer.

Beginning Aug. 10, there will be four half-hour episodes airing at 8 p.m., with Michael Che and Colin Jost as co-anchors. Other SNL cast members will join in.

SNL is enjoying its best run in 24 years, averaging 11 million viewers each week. That's a 20 percent jump thanks in large part to Alec Baldwin's recurring impression of Trump and his foibles.

About the impressions, Trump has tweeted, "Just tried watching Saturday Night Live -- unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can't get any worse. Sad."

Trump speech. While we're at it, here's the answer for the four readers who've asked about the ratings for Trump's first address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28.

According to Nielsen, 47.4 million tuned in, with Fox News Channel (no surprise) having the most viewers at 10.8 million.

For the record, President Bill Clinton had 66.9 million in 1993; George W. Bush had 39.8 million in 2001; and 52.4 million watched Barack Obama's first address in 2009.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:

mstorey@arkansasonline.com

Weekend on 03/23/2017

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