From ‘Just Kids’ to ‘Better Things,’ get excited for these six TV projects

By Alyssa Rosenberg

The Washington Post

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The Television Critics Association press tour, from which I’ve been reporting for the past couple of weeks, is winding down at the Beverly Hilton. And while the tour is designed to give critics and industry reporters a closer look at the shows that will be debuting between now and December, it’s also an opportunity for networks to let us know about splashy projects that they’re putting in their various pipelines or rolling out on different timelines.

I’ll have deeper dives into many, many shows that are rolling out over the next couple of months (get excited for an explicitly feminist “Supergirl,” people), but since it’s August, and I know your thoughts are still on the beach, here are six of the most intriguing announcements to come out of press tour.

1. Showtime’s adaptation of Patti Smith’s “Just Kids”: I absolutely adored Smith’s memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe and the early years of her career in the New York art scene. And it’s tremendously exciting to hear that Showtime beat out other outlets for the project (Showtime head David Nevins noted that Smith is a passionate fan of the network’s gothic drama “Penny Dreadful.”), which means that we’ll be getting a miniseries, rather than a ninety-minute jaunt through Smith’s life. I can only imagine what it’ll be like to cast Smith and Mapplethorpe. If we’re lucky, maybe Showtime will adapt Smith’s planned sequel, too.

2. Lee Daniels’ “Star,” on Fox: If you like “Empire,” I have excellent news for you. You’re going to get a whole lot more of the Lee Daniels take on the music business. Not only did Daniels announce that “I think there is going to be a spin off from ‘Empire,’ without question. I think there’s so much ripe story. We’ve talked about it in the room already, about Cookie’s family, what makes her her; Lucious’ family, what makes them them,” but Fox Television Group co-chairman Dana Walden announced a project that’s already in the works: a show about a girl group from Atlanta that has the possibility to cross over with “Empire.”

“He talks a lot about everything from ‘Dreamgirls’ to modern day girl groups that are manufactured, that are put together, that don’t have an organic reason to be together, but are tied to each other,” Walden argued. “And that set-up lends itself to a great soap operatic storytelling machine.” I agree. And I’m excited to see more shows get out of New York and Los Angeles. Atlanta is a city that’s just crying out for terrific television.

3. Starz’s plans for a “Havana Quartet” adaptation starring Antonio Banderas: Starz has started to find its way as a source of original programming, with shows like period drama “Outlander,” the forthcoming ballet drama “Flesh and Bone,” from “Breaking Bad” veteran Moira Walley-Beckett, and most of all, the network’s outstanding comedy “Survivor’s Remorse,” about a basketball star and his family (not coincidentally, it’s another Atlanta story that takes its location seriously). And I absolutely love the idea of adapting these novels about a Cuban policeman with a yearning to write.

I particularly love the idea of bringing Antonio Banderas to television, and I’m actually surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Banderas is one of those actors who seems to have fallen in the emerging movie donut hole (if I can borrow a policy metaphor). He was a credible action hero — he was both sensual, funny and totally credible in “The Mask of Zorro” — but in a version of the genre that’s been shoved aside by heavily muscled superheroes and international traumas. He can do comedy or drama, but he never quite had the profile of a George Clooney or a Johnny Depp. Banderas is an actor whose career is just begging for revitalization with an excellent television part. Let’s just hope Starz has the right one for him.

4. BBC America’s “Undercover”: Speaking of actors I adore who are criminally under-recognized here in the United States, three cheers for Adrian Lester, who was excellent in the similarly-under-rated adaptation of “Primary Colors.” BBC America is giving us more of him, and of Sophie Okendo, in “Undercover,” a political thriller. Three cheers for proving that you can bring British sensibility to American audiences without simply importing period pieces like “Downton Abbey.” I’m excited to see this.

5. FX’s Pamela Adlon show, “Better Things”: Other than the title character on “Louie,” no character on Louis C.K.’s groundbreaking, category-defying dramedy has made a bigger impact than Louie’s on-again off-again love interest Pamela, played by Pamela Adlon. In particular, the show has done brave, if difficult, sex scenes with the pair that test the boundaries of consent and play with the shifting power dynamic between them. I don’t always like Pamela as a character. But I can’t stop watching her on-screen.

Now, FX is putting Adlon at the center of her own show. Like “Louie,” “Better Things” is based on Adlon’s own life — she’s said that she raises her three daughters as a single parent — and the show will look at her experiences as a mother and as an actor. I doubt “Better Things” will be comfortable to watch, or that Adlon will be any easier on herself than C.K. has been. But I have a lot of confidence that the show will push against the limits of likability. It’s about time a show did for middle-aged women what “Louie” has done for middle-aged men.

6. Netflix’s “Beasts of No Nation”: If the second season of “True Detective” made me feel anything, the most forceful emotion it elicited might have been longing for Cary Joji Fukunaga, the director who gave the Louisiana chapter of that show its rich, unnerving look. Thankfully, Netflix is giving us more of his work, with this beautiful-looking drama about a child soldier under the sway of Idris Elba’s Commandant.