Year: 2024

Taylor Sheridan does not know the meaning of moderation. He has about 80 shows (which is only a slight exaggeration) currently running or in the works, some of which film at his various ranches. And yet, Sheridan still doesn’t have enough shows to call it good because he’s headed the espionage realm with an upcoming project and an Oscar winner in the lead role.

Of course, this isn’t Sheridan’s first rodeo in the spy realm, where he previously tangled with Special Ops: Lioness, starring not only Nicole Kidman but also Zoe Saldaña as a CIA operative named Joe who mentored and molded recruits. That series has been renewed by Paramount+ for a second season, but Sheridan is stretching his spy-thriller-assassin-show legs by putting a new spin on existing source material. With The Day of the Jackal, Sheridan will further adapt Frederick Forsyth’s same-named novel that was already the basis of a 1973 movie. Let’s discuss how the show might differ.

Plot

Sheridan is planning to tackle The Day of the Jackal as a 10-episode action-thriller series, which hasn’t yet been formally declared a limited series, so we shall see where that loose end goes. Eddie Redmayne will portray the titular Jackal, a lone-wolf who assassin who is being hunted by an MI6 agent (Latasha Lynch). The Yellowstone creator is making the series for SkyShowtime (it will stream elsewhere in the U.S.), and of course, the Jackal isn’t truly by his lonesome.

According to Hollywood Reporter, a character named Nuria (Ursula Corberó) will surface as “someone at the heart of The Jackal’s personal life, entirely unaware of who he truly is.” Also, Sheridan is certainly not planning to simply rehash and lengthen the feature film’s take on the subject matter:

The Day of the Jackal is being billed by the producers as a “bold, modern reimagining of the beloved and respected novel and film.” While staying true to the DNA of the original story, which was set in 1962 and based on attempts to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle, this contemporary drama will delve deeper into the chameleon like “antihero” at the heart of the story in a “high octane, cinematic, globetrotting ‘cat and mouse’ thriller,” set amidst the turbulent geo-political landscape of our time.

Sky Studios is aiming for the sky with this series, which CEO and chief content officer Cécile Frot-Coutaz has called “probably one of the most ambitious or large-scale production that we’ve mounted.”

Cast

Eddie Redmayne headlines as the Jackal with Latasha Lynch as Bianca. The series co-stars Sule Rimi, Chukwudi Iwuji, Stuart Whelan, Christy Mayer, Florisa Kamara, Ben Hall, Lia Williams, Khalid Abdalla, Eleanor Matsuura, Jonjo O’Neill, and Martin McDougall.

Release Date

The series will stream on SkyShowtime across the pond and presumably Peacock in the U.S., although that final detail hasn’t been confirmed yet. That would be departure from most of Sheridan’s shows, which stream on Paramount+, although Yellowstone proper is a Peacock outlier.

Trailer

Since no trailer has surfaced yet for Sheridan’s project, here’s the 1973 film’s trailer for the heck of it, and if you are so inclined, the film is available to rent on Prime Video (Amazon).

Yesterday marked one month since hip-hop fans received the last entry in Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s rapid fire rap beef that took a turn for chaos starting at the end of April. That last entry was Drake’s “The Heart Part 6,” which references Kendrick’s long-running freestyle series. Since that diss was released, fans and critics alike crowned Kendrick Lamar as the winner of the rap as he also went on hit No. 1 with “Not Like Us.” It remains to be seen if either rapper will toss out another diss, but it seems likely that it won’t be Drake after he removed all his Kendrick Lamar disses from his Instagram page.

Fans noticed that Drake quietly removed the diss songs, which include “Push Ups,” “Family Matters,” and “The Heart Part 6,” from his Instagram page on Wednesday. The move also came with a new post and cryptic message. “The only yes man around me is my Rolex dealer,” Drake wrote under pictures of himself in his Toronto mansion. It’s not the first time that Drake deleted a song during his beef with Kendrick. Back in April, Drake was forced to remove his “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which featured AI rap verse from Tupac and Snoop Dogg, after the former’s estate issued a cease & desist letter that threatened to sue Drake for using Tupac’s voice without permission.

Coincidentally (or maybe not), Drake deleted the Instagram posts the same day that Kendrick Lamar announced “The Pop Out — Ken & Friends” concert with pgLang and Free Lunch at LA’s Kia Forum on June 19, aka Juneteenth. That performance could add another page to Kendrick Lamar-Drake rap beef story.

Chris Fowler has been one of the leading voices in college football for decades, but this July will mark his debut as the voice of video game college football. The lead play-by-play man for ESPN will join his colleague Kirk Herbstreit on the call for the biggest games in EA Sports College Football 25, and as Fowler explains, it’s a moment that’s been a long time coming.

Fowler has been calling college football games for 36 years at ESPN, but when the NCAA Football franchise was around, he was conspicuously missing. His partner, Kirk Herbstreit was in the game, but the play-by-play in those games was former ESPN broadcaster Brad Nessler, who’s currently with CBS. As Fowler detailed in Orlando during a launch event at EA Sports campus, that was because ESPN wouldn’t let him be part of the game.

“It’s so cool for me being involved in this game, because I wasn’t allowed to be involved in the previous version of this college football game by my employer,” Fowler said. “ESPN blocked me from doing it. I was a staff employee, they could do that back then. Kirk and others could be involved, I couldn’t be. The rationale was ESPN was going to get into the football video game business and this would compete with that.”

This time around, ESPN no longer has dreams of getting in the gaming space and instead lent much of their team to EA Sports College Football 25. Fowler couldn’t have been more excited, and saw firsthand how excited people are for the return when he started posting videos of himself recording lines from his home studio.

“Well, I was aware of how it resonates when I wasn’t involved in it. I mean, it bothered me a lot. And I don’t really live with regrets, but I mean, not being able to do that, I thought was really unfair and it just bothered me,” Fowler explained. “And here’s Kirk involved in it, Nessler, and other guys that I knew or [were] friends. So I was aware from the start when they brought this game back that it was going to be really well received and that I wasn’t going to take no for an answer and wanted to be involved in it. But I get it. As it unfolds, and it gets closer and closer and little tidbits are released, and also once I saw the quality of it. Again, I’m not saying I was shocked, but I just had no idea that there was going to be that kind of commitment by everybody. Every single person who played any role in creating this wanted to do their part as well as they could and that comes out on the screen.”

While Fowler is a veteran of voiceover work, lending his voice to a video game was an entirely new experience, and one that forced him to really think about how he calls games. They don’t play clips for you when you’re recording your lines, but you have to figure out how to match your intensity with the moment in the game without seeing what you’re calling at all. That required an adjustment period and, as he explained, he had to learn to visualize the moment and try to imagine himself in an actual broadcast booth in a stadium to try and deliver a call that mirrors what fans would hear on TV.

“It wasn’t instant because it’s so different than most of the voiceover work you do — you know, you do documentary films that it’s very quiet and very slow, and you do commercials and you’re doing what they want and it changes,” Fowler said. “But like I said, it’s not alien to me. You have to imagine yourself in a booth, but if you’ve ever seen anybody in a studio or in a booth, when you listen at home, the energy is here. When you see it live, it’s there. The whole process is filtered by the time it gets through a TV screen or to a gaming console. So you have to be even bigger here to get the level you want there. The routine plays are not that big of a deal, but the touchdown calls are what people remember in a game or a video game, so you want to get that part right. And like I said, it was a process. I felt like I was trying, but I wasn’t doing a good enough job at simulating a first-play or a game-winning touchdown. So you go back and listen to some of those calls, and then you have to try to get to that level.”

Fowler said he requested to re-do some lines once they finally sent him clips, because he felt he didn’t bring the right energy to the call to meet the moment. One example he noted was they sent him a gameplay clip of someone scoring a first-play touchdown in Ohio State-Michigan, and, having literally been in that situation before — he brought up Xavier Worthy’s touchdown to open Red River in 2021 — he realized the excitement and energy level just wasn’t where it needed to be.

“It was a 75-yard pass play touchdown on the first play of the game, with the commentary I’d laid down. If you don’t know how it’s done, a touchdown call is stitched together from five or six pieces of information — you can’t call every single touchdown situation,” he said. “So it’s stitched together in that way, but I didn’t like what I heard. Ohio State scores from 75 yards out on the first play against Michigan? I mean, that energy level in real life is as big as any game-winning touchdown. In a rivalry game, in that environment, if you score on the first play, that’s as much as winning a championship on the last play. And I didn’t think that I brought it. So I really asked to re-record some of the stuff.”

Part of the challenge of getting that energy level right was learning how to pace the recording sessions. They recorded him shouting “TOUCHDOWN [insert school]” 134 times in a session, but had to break that up with some “run for three yards” calls to help him from blowing out his voice and having the energy and sound taper off later down the alphabet.

“You have to learn over time how to program those sessions so that you’re not blowing yourself up because it’s just not like a real game. You have a lot of small plays and quiet calls mixed into the touchdowns,” Fowler recalled. “We were doing a bunch of those stuff together. So it took a while, but not that long. And then there’s just a ton of plays there, where it’s not scripted. I think people have to understand, when you’re saying, “Out of bounds at the 49,” and going all the way down to the one, and the different inflection you need as you get closer to the goal line.

“It’s subtle stuff like that that you want to bring, and they did a great job in helping remind me or direct me in that, but sort of just putting yourself in that position. Like okay, now they’re out of bounds at the four. That shouldn’t sound the same way as out of bounds at the 30, right? So just subtly bringing up the energy, and it requires a lot of focus to do that. I think we started at four hours [per session] and then moved it down to three. Kirk did two-hour sessions. It’s trying to make sure you have the right energy because nobody cares when they’re playing the game. ‘Hey, he probably called about 100 touchdowns before that, so I understand why he didn’t really bring it on that one.’ It doesn’t matter. There’s no context for that. You want to be great.”

Fowler said he did 115 hours of recordings across more than two years getting ready for the game, with about 10 hours of sessions with Herbstreit to create a natural conversation feel in the game. As Herbstreit told him, the amount of detail in the commentary was way more than when he was part of the old NCAA Football franchise, and as such, the hours piled up as they found more things they needed lines for.

“He did inform me, ‘Let me tell you something, this is way different.’ It’s way denser, because every aspect of this game is much denser and richer than it was before,” Fowler said. “So yeah, he let me know that the commitment and the kinds of things he was being asked to talk about. It’s just so much. And that’s the thing, you know better than I do that people get frustrated when every call sounds the same, right? And there’s a generic nature to it. There should be nothing generic about a football game, or a video game about football, right? I mean, I don’t know what it was. Probably 100 times richer than that, than what he first did.”

We’ll find out exactly how successful they were in delivering on their promise of depth and detail, but it was clear how excited Fowler was to be a part of it and how much respect he had for the folks at EA Sports for the amount of effort and work that went into the game. As they explained in the presentation they gave the assembled media in Orlando, they wanted fans of every team to feel like they were cared for in the same way, whether they’re a big program like Alabama or a smaller one like Kennesaw State. They put a ton into the presentation, from stadium builds to getting band and cheerleader formations exact for player runouts, but the broadcast commentary is vital to the game feeling real and feeling fresh. They hope all those hours put in the studio will pay dividends.

For Fowler, it was a long time coming to finally get his voice in the game, and while “demanding,” he cited it as one of the “one of the coolest experiences I’ve had” in his nearly four decades as a broadcaster.

Uproxx was invited on a hosted trip by EA Sports for reporting on this piece. They did not review or approve this story. You can find out more about our policy on press trips/hostings here.

Pat Sajak is in “they can’t fire me, I already retired” mode.

During Wednesday’s episode of Wheel of Fortune, contestant Allison made it all the way to the bonus round, but she struggled with the puzzle. “___TS _AND __G_RES,” the board read. She tried to talk it out, guessing “COATS AND HANGERS,” but after she was unable to come up with the right answer (“FACTS AND FIGURES”), Sajak zinged, “Ooooh, you were so not close.”

He basically pulled a Borat-level “… NOT.” You can watch it above.

Sajak has been the host of Wheel of Fortune for over 40 years, but this Friday, June 7, is his final episode. “This was announced a long time ago, almost a year ago. So I’ve had time to sort of get used to it. And it’s been a little bit wistful and all that, but I’m enjoying it and taking it all in and reflecting on the great run,” he told his daughter Maggie during a recent interview. Sajak added, “Somewhere along the line, we became more than a popular show. We became part of the popular culture. And more importantly, we became part of people’s lives. And, that’s been awfully gratifying.”

Sajak will be replaced by Ryan Seacrest. Co-host Vanna White is sticking around after a long-overdue salary bump.

For several days, all indications have pointed to ESPN analyst JJ Redick as the overwhelming favorite to become the next head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. Redick, who is set to call the NBA Finals beginning on Thursday, recently side-stepped the topic by indicating saying it “will be addressed once the season’s over,” and that only added fuel to the fire. With that said, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski delivered a curve ball in the early hours of Thursday morning, reporting that the Lakers are set to present a “massive, long-term contract offer” to UConn head coach Dan Hurley.

In his piece for ESPN, Wojnarowski notes that “the Lakers have had preliminary contact with Hurley and the sides are planning to escalate discussions in the coming days.” Hurley was also reportedly the apple of Kentucky’s eye during their 2024 coaching search, though Hurley quickly made it clear that was not in his plans.

Hurley is the architect of the two-time reigning national champions of men’s college basketball, and he is renowned for his tactical abilities at the college level. Though the college-to-pro jump has been less in vogue in recent years, Hurley is highly respected and, as ESPN writes, “LeBron James has been impressed with Hurley’s sophisticated offensive actions.”

It remains to be seen as to whether Hurley will sign on the dotted line. For one, the presence of a high-profile, high-dollar offer is appetizing, but nowhere in the reporting is it stated that he is likely to join the Lakers and it would be a substantial risk for him to leave the incredible situation he constructed at UConn for (far) less job security at the NBA level. However, it would also be fair to suggest that the chance to coach the Lakers, and presumably LeBron James, would present a different calculus than a more run-of-the-mill NBA opportunity.

The Lakers have certainly been interviewing other candidates, ranging from Redick to Sam Cassell and James Borrego, and one of the reasons for the building assumption of Redick as the leader is the reality of his ESPN’s commitment and the length of this coaching search. However, Hurley as a leading candidate is the kind of high-profile factor that complicates matters in considerable fashion, and the next steps on all sides will be incredibly interesting.

Ed Sheeran headlined Boston Calling Music Festival 2024, but that wasn’t the only highlight of his Memorial Day Weekend. On Thursday, May 23, Sheeran and fellow Boston Calling performer Reneé Rapp sat courtside when the Boston Celtics hosted the Indiana Pacers at TD Garden for Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals, and it left an impression on him.

“I’d only ever been to two basketball games before,” Sheeran said on the newest episode of Therapuss With Jake Shane. “One was a Celtics-Knicks game, and one was a Knicks [versus] someone else, so I haven’t really found a team. And then, yesterday, I saw all this green around and all these sort of Irish symbols, and I was like, ‘Well, yeah, I guess I’m a Celtics fan now.’”

Sheeran, already a longtime Tennessee Titans fan, continued, “I was sitting there, and I didn’t really know what was going on. Reneé was like, ‘OK, if you shoot from here, it’s a three; if you shoot from here, it’s a two. If they foul, then they get another one.’ She was explaining [the game], so I feel like I know now. I feel like maybe the Celtics, because they’re a really, really good team that win all the time, that maybe it was quite an obvious choice for me to be like, ‘I’m a fan.’”

The viral X (formerly Twitter) video of Rapp seemingly explaining basketball to Sheeran is even more delightful to watch now.

Sheeran isn’t wrong in that the Celtics are an obvious bandwagon to join. Boston has appeared in four of the past five Eastern Conference Finals and will take on the Dallas Mavericks in the 2024 NBA Finals, beginning on Thursday, June 6, in Boston.

Charli XCX hasn’t decided yet whether she will reveal who inspired her to write “Girl, So Confusing” from Brat, her forthcoming album.

“When I wrote it, I was like, ‘I’m revealing!’” Charli XCX said on Las Culturistas With Matt Rogers And Bowen Yang. “But now, the time is here, [and] I’m like, ‘Oh, am I revealing?’ […] My thing is, people are gonna guess. You probably both have an accurate guess.”

The time to hear “Girl, So Confusing” and form a guess is near. Find everything you need to know about Charli XCX’s Brat below.

Release Date

Brat is due out 6/7 via Atlantic Records. Find more information here.

Tracklist

1. “360”
2. “Club Classics”
3. “Sympathy Is A Knife”
4. “I Might Say Something Stupid”
5. “Talk Talk”
6. “Von Dutch”
7. “Everything Is Romantic”
8. “Rewind”
9. “So I”
10. “Girl, So Confusing”
11. “Apple”
12. “B2b”
13. “Mean Girls”
14. “I Think About It All The Time”
15. “365”

Singles

Charli XCX has released “Von Dutch,” “Club Classics,” “B2b,” and “360.” On top of that, the “Von Dutch” remix featured Addison Rae and A.G. Cook, and a “360” remix featured Robyn and Yung Lean.

Features

So far, the only confirmed featured artists have been those welcomed onto the “Von Dutch” and “360” remixes.

Artwork

Tour

In late March and early April, Charli XCX separately announced Brat 2024 and Brat 2024 Arena Tour dates, as seen below:

If that weren’t satisfying enough, Charli XCX and Troye Sivan will co-headline the Sweat North American tour this fall. Find all of Charli XCX’s upcoming tour dates here.

“Radio-friendly style over substance.” That was the verdict from Pitchfork upon the June 7, 2004 release of the debut album by a Las Vegas quartet being heavily hyped by the U.K. music press, back when being heavily hyped by the U.K. music press really meant something.

“Hot Fuss floats boatloads of blasé lyrics about the pressures of being fabulous and the politics of fucking over an easily sippable blend of ’80s and ’90s British pop influences rarely pausing to test the end product,” opined the site on the The Killers’ first album. “Top-shelf mixing and attention to melody helps out the record’s appeal as lifestyle music for sheltered bloggers and female professionals who still wear cool hairstyles.” If you’re wondering if there’s even faint backhanded praise lurking in that comment, consider the thoroughly mediocre score of 5.2.

Pitchfork’s skepticism echoed the naysaying from the hippest corners of the music media, who dismissed The Killers as carpetbaggers riding the NYC-centric “rock is back!” scene associated with bands like The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And there was some truth to that — The Killers would not have had a lane if not for those chic acts from Manhattan. The only problem (for those who viewed The Killers as a problem) was songs. The Killers had them. Lots of them. More than the competition. And they were designed to take over the world.

Twenty years later it can be said that Hot Fuss has — at the very least — reached an audience beyond sheltered bloggers and female professionals. After going triple platinum in the mid-aughts, it has proven to be one of the more streamed rock records of its time, boasting four songs that have been played at least 100 million times on Spotify and one track, “Mr. Brightside,” that has sailed past the two-billion mark. While the band has put out other hit records, Hot Fuss and Hot Fuss alone has kept The Killers in arenas and the upper echelon of music-festival posters as they have approached middle age. (They are playing the album in full in August at Caesars Palace in Vegas.)

In honor of the album’s anniversary, I decided to explore the band’s discography. After a lot of listening and ruminating, I am now comin’ out of my cage. And I’ve been doing just fine! My column begins not with a kiss, but rather a music video …

Pre-List Entertainment: The Band From The New Order Video

If you are familiar with The Killers’ origin story — or you simply have kept up with latter-day New Order albums — you are aware that the band name derives from the fictional ensemble featured in the video for 2001’s “Crystal.” Whether you love or hate The Killers, this story will confirm your preexisting biases. For the haters, it aligns with their perception of The Killers as empty poseurs recycling the highs of 1980s rock. For supporters, well, the video is pretty damn boss, isn’t it? And isn’t it funny how the band in the video sounds a lot like Hot Fuss?

Setting aside the New Order connection: The Killers are the most aptly named band of their generation. No other act of the Meet Me In The Bathroom generation was as ruthless about pursuing the biggest audience possible. They were not like The Strokes. Brandon Flowers was not about to react to media hype by getting political and recording 10-minute art-rock songs with a side project band. The Killers were like The Strokes if The Strokes had wanted to be like U2. When it came to pursuing rock stardom, they were cold-blooded sociopaths. The Killers were killers.

Consider that guitarist Dave Keuning later recalled a pre-fame, early ’00s conversation with Brandon Flowers about their prospects. “I remember asking Brandon, ‘So you want to be big, right?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah,’” he told Rolling Stone in 2008. At the time, they didn’t even have a rhythm section yet. But they did have “Mr. Brightside.” They played it at their very first show, situated at some random coffee shop near the UNLV campus. In the history of world-conquering rock bands, I’m guessing this is the first time that a group debuted with a tune that would go on to be streamed more than two billion times. Even then, The Killers had murder on their minds.

30. “Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll” (2007)

There’s no getting around it with this band: To appreciate The Killers, you must respect their killer instinct. A lot of people don’t, particularly the rival bands from the aughts that did not create a song with a comically resilient run on the British pop charts. “We had conversations that went along the lines of “Gosh, I think our songs are better than ‘Mr. Brightside’ by the Killers, but how come that’s the one everyone is listening to?” Strokes guitarist Nick Valensi says in Meet Me In The Bathroom. And here’s Valensi’s answer: “They did it a different way. They recorded it in a different way. They promoted it in a different way. We could be that big.”

Right next to Valensi in the book is a quote from rock journalist Jenny Eliscu that goes beyond Valensi’s “slick production and canny promotion” theory of Killers supremacy. “It’s important to state that there’s a difference between the underground and hipsters. The underground is real and permanent. It’s more art than it is commerce. The Killers … and King Of Leon were never part of the underground. Fuck no.”

There are two ways to read this quote. The first is the obvious way, which is how (I think) it was intended: It absolutely slags The Killers. It posits The Strokes as the true paragon of the rock underground, which allegedly hampered their chances of success, and positions The Killers as the aforementioned “empty poseur” alternative.

The second way is less obvious, and it’s (probably) not what was intended, but (to me) is nevertheless truer than the first way: The Killers were never part of the underground, and never tried to be. They instead set out to make (to quote a Hot Fuss outtake rerecorded for 2007’s “odds and sods” collection Sawdust) “Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll.” What is glamorous indie rock & roll? Does it really need explaining? The meaning strikes me as self-evident. It’s like indie music, only more glamorous and more rock & roll. So not really indie music at all.

Is it “real”? Depends on what you mean by “real.” Is it permanent? Clearly.

29. “Everything Will Be Alright” (2004)

I have come around to believing that The Killers’ discography is deeper than it gets credit for. For instance, I will soon argue that Sam’s Town is a very strong follow-up to Hot Fuss. (Could one contend that Sam’s Town is an “initially misunderstood but gradually acclaimed sophomore” LP, a Pinkerton of the 2000s, if you will? One could! And perhaps one will!) I also believe that the two most recent Killers LPs, 2020’s Imploding The Mirage and 2021’s Pressure Machine, rank with their best and amount to one of the great mid-career comebacks in recent music history.

But facts are facts: Hot Fuss is unquestionably the best work they ever did. It’s the record that secured The Killers’ current status as the one rock band that gets booked to headline mid-tier music festivals. And it will surprise absolutely no one that there is a lot of Hot Fuss on this list. As I was writing this column, I realized that Hot Fuss might very well be the last great 20th-century alternative rock album. Even though it came out in 2004, Hot Fuss is spiritually the last link in a chain of classic alt records from the ’80s and ’90s. If you heard Hot Fuss without any context, you would place it closer to Heartbeat City or The Queen Is Dead than you would Is This It or Fever To Tell. It feels like one of those college-rock warhorses where the trappings are moody and alienated but every song is exceedingly poppy and indestructibly catchy. They’re not really a vinyl band. The Killers are a CD band (with a cracked jewel case) through and through.

A motif of this sort of record is the spooky album closer. “Everything Will Be Alright” is that song on Hot Fuss, and it links the album to “spooky alt-rock closer” records of yesteryear, from Disintegration to Achtung Baby to Siamese Dream.

28. “Believe Me Natalie” (2004)

A common criticism of Hot Fuss from people who actually like the record is that it’s front-loaded. If you’re thinking in terms of hits, this observation is irrefutable. “Mr. Brightside” is the second track, “Somebody Told Me” is the fourth track, and “All These Things That I Have Done” is the fifth track. The songs around those numbers weren’t singles, but they seem like singles. The evidence is clear. Side One of Hot Fuss is a brick house.

Some have gone as far to say that Side Two, in comparison, is weak. Or that Hot Fuss would be improved if the tracks were put in a different, more equitable sequence. But these people are dead wrong. Side Two of Hot Fuss is great in the same way that Side Two of The Joshua Tree — another notoriously front-loaded record — is also great. Side Two is what you put on when you are sick of “Mr. Brightside” or “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” It’s the “less crowded” lounge located in a side room of a popular restaurant. It’s the chillout tent at the music festival. It’s a good hang. More canonical records should offer a respite on Side Two that contrasts with the barrage of smashes on Side One. On Hot Fuss, “Believe Me Natalie” is that chill respite.

27. “All The Pretty Faces” (2007)

“I could get shot for this, but I don’t think having a museum in your town makes you better than anyone else. I’m really sick of that attitude. Maybe that’s me being ignorant, but we did fine without it. I mean, you can watch movies and read books, and there is music, you’ve just got to find it. We did it all on our own.”

That was Brandon Flowers in a 2004 Spin interview after being pressed about growing up in the small Utah town of Nephi, a place referenced explicitly on Pressure Machine and implicitly on Sam’s Town as well as scores of other Killers songs. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t find Flowers’ small-town romanticism/resentment endearing, especially when positioned against the relentless NYC worship that was prevalent when The Killers emerged. “Rock band with unglamorous roots embraces a glamorous rock band aesthetic” is dime-store psychoanalysis, but in this case I think it happens to be 100 percent true. The Killers kill because it was the only way for them to make it.

Sam’s Town, famously, is the album where they allowed that ambition to tip into megalomania. Though, again, if you appreciate this band’s killer instinct, that is a feature of the record, not a bug. My feelings about Sam’s Town have only grown warmer over the years, but one criticism I still have is that they didn’t include the heavy riffing “All The Pretty Faces” on the record. Flowers once claimed — in one of his many self-aggrandizing “I’m going to make music critics hate me” promotional interviews for Sam’s Town — that the deep cut “Uncle Jonny” has one of the greatest guitarist riffs in rock history. I love that song (more on that in a moment), but he was wrong on that one. However, if he had said the same about “All The Pretty Faces,” I could be talked into going along with it.

26. “Run For Cover” (2017)

A minute ago I casually asserted that the run of Killers albums in the 2020s amounts to one of the great mid-career comebacks in recent music history. This speaks to how much I like Imploding The Mirage and Pressure Machine, and also how much I did not like 2017’s Wonderful Wonderful. In my review, I said The Killers appeared to be on their last legs, and — at the time — I meant it. This seemed to be true artistically (Wonderful Wonderful is easily the worst Killers album), but also structurally (bassist Mark Stoermer had recently stopped touring with the band, and Keuning was about to commence his own hiatus).

Rereading the column, I think I was too dismissive of the band’s past and legacy, particularly this sentence (which is basically the thesis of the piece): “For as long as I’ve listened to The Killers (going back to 2004’s Hot Fuss, which seems like an impossibly long time, what have I done with my life?) I’ve never quite figured out a seemingly straightforward question: Is this band good or terrible?”

Seven years later, I am solidly on the side of The Killers being good. What I would say now is hopefully more nuanced and amounts to this: “On the way to making their best songs The Killers have exhibited a reckless disregard for the possibility that those tunes might turn out to be terrible. They play with motifs — rock clichés, grandiose musical gestures, unbridled emotionalism — that linger on the precipice of potential disaster before they are delivered to the promised land on the back of a hurricane (to borrow the weather-oriented parlance of “When You Were Young”).

My favorite song on Wonderful Wonderful is “Run For Cover,” which I love in spite of (or perhaps because of) the following lyrics: “I saw Sonny Liston on the street last night / black-fisted and strong singing ‘Redemption Song’ / he motioned me to the sky / I heard heaven and thunder cry.” Now you know why the record is called Wonderful Wonderful.

25. “Terrible Thing” (2021)

When I interviewed Flowers in 2021, he all but admitted that Wonderful Wonderful was a dud. (“We were drifting a little bit,” he allowed.) Perhaps he was still on a high after making Pressure Machine, the downtrodden song cycle inspired by Nephi interspersed with audio interviews featuring locals speaking on their dashed dreams and the fleeting escape offered by opioids. It’s one of the more fascinating records to come out this decade — a genuinely uncommercial gesture by a superstar act about a part of the country that the media otherwise ignores. Not every song is successful, and Flowers’ lyrical approach can sometimes lean broad bordering on generic. But Pressure Machine ultimately feels like the most wholly unique record in The Killers’ catalog, and the culmination of Flowers’ career-long obsession with melding dusty Americana with British rock atmosphere.

Pressure Machine was categorized in some quarters as Nebraska cosplay, but that’s only true of “Terrible Thing,” which nods to the familial psychodramas of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 masterpiece as well as that album’s lo-fi sound. “‘Terrible Thing’ is recorded on the Tascam,” he told me, proudly, referencing the home studio unit that Bruce worked with. “The actual Tascam is in the Hall of Fame, so you can’t get that one, but we found the model.”

24. “In Another Life” (2021)

Supposedly there is a new Killers album in the can that Flowers doesn’t want to release because he would rather make records like Pressure Machine. That’s according to an interview he gave to The Times last year. “The Killers are my identity and our songs fill the seats, but I’m more fulfilled making music like Pressure Machine. I found a side of myself writing it that was strong. This was the guy I’d been looking for! I’m as proud of Hot Fuss as you can be for something you did when you were 20, but I’m not 20. So I’m thinking about the next phase of my life.”

If you have been reading Brandon Flowers’ interviews for 20 years like I have, you will recognize that different versions of this statement have been repeated over and over. “Serious” Brandon Flowers vs. “Rock Star” Brandon Flowers is the central theme of the man’s front-facing persona. To pick one example out of thin air, here’s a quote from that 2008 Rolling Stone profile: “One day I want to be dead serious, and the next I just want to write great pop songs and have fun. I don’t have any kind of clear direction. I don’t know if I’d want to.”

I am not questioning his sincerity when he says things like this. I only wonder if there is actually that much of a gap between the two Brandons. For instance: “In Another Life” is a character study about a blue-collar guy (“I spent my best years laying rubber on a factory line”) who ponders the proverbial “more interesting path” he might have taken. It is unmistakably a “Serious” Brandon Flowers song. But musically, “In Another Life” is a shiny synth-rock number recorded at a slightly lower fidelity. It is also a “Rock Star” Brandon Flowers song.

These sides can clearly coexist! They clearly coexist in this particular song!

23. “A Dustland Fairytale” (2008)

Brandon Flowers likes to write about small towns, which is apparent from the documentary approach of Pressure Machine. But he also likes to write about “small towns,” a dramatically heightened version of reality that is partly passed down from “Thunder Road,” and partly passed down from “Livin’ On A Prayer.” A place where dreamers named Johnny or Tommy or Maria or Jenny struggle to survive and thrive. Flowers doesn’t view these clichés via the knowing perspective of a songwriter like Craig Finn, whose earnestness is leavened with a sly wit that deconstructs classic-rock tropes. If Finn wrote “A Dustland Fairytale,” it would winkingly reference Neil Schon or Stevie Nicks while depicting a messianic tale of doomed, gutter-trash love. But that is not Flowers’ way. He doesn’t joke about this stuff. He reveres rock clichés like Saint Francis Of Assisi revered self-punishment as a way of glorifying the Lord. (The Lord in this case being The Boss, who naturally appeared in a remake of the song in 2021.)

22. “Change Your Mind” (2004)

Another mainstay of Hot Fuss Side Two, not to be confused with “Read My Mind” from Side One of Sam’s Town, which is coming up on this list soon.

21. “Running Toward A Place” (2020)

While Brandon Flowers has been wrapped up spiritually and creatively in the relatively scaled-back insularity of Pressure Machine, The Killers did prove they could effectively re-enter the arena-rock anthem business in their 40s on the previous LP, Imploding The Mirage. What helped The Killers rediscover their mojo was getting into The War On Drugs, a band to which Flowers and drummers Ronnie Vannucci have expressed their admiration and willingness to actually join. But even without that praise, they would have telegraphed their devotion to A Deeper Understanding with “Running Toward A Place,” whose title is reminiscent of “Thinking Of A Place” and whose music recalls “Nothing To Find.” (Adam Granduciel actually plays on the song “Blowback,” which doesn’t sound much at all like a War On Drugs song. It’s more like Muse attempting to emulate All That You Can’t Leave Behind.)

20. “Caution” (2020)

You know who likes Imploding The Mirage even more than I do? Brandon Flowers. “This is kind of our Achtung Baby, without copying that record,” he told me. To be clear: He made the connection because Imploding The Mirage and Achtung Baby are both the seventh albums in the respective bands’ discographies. There is no other reason to liken Imploding The Mirage to Achtung Baby. (If we’re talking in terms of albums that depart significantly from a band’s signature sound, Pressure Machine is The Killers’ Achtung Baby.)

However, The Killers do have the upper hand on U2 in one respect: On “Caution,” The Killers got Lindsey Buckingham to play his best circa 2021 version of the guitar solo from “The Chain.” Is this as good as “The Fly”? Not exactly. But it’s in the parking lot outside of that ballpark.

19. “Spaceman” (2008)

Confession time: I own every Killers album. I am not bragging about this. I am divulging it for the sake of transparency. I want you to know what kind of sicko you are dealing with here.

Of those albums, Hot Fuss is the one that is good all the way through. Sam’s Town is about 80 percent good. The rest are about 65 to 75 percent good. (Except for Wonderful Wonderful, which is 33 percent good.) The one with the greatest variance between good and not good is Day & Age. This album contains some of their very best tunes — including “Spaceman,” their 19th best — and some of their weakest. (I don’t remember the last time I listened to “Neon Tiger” all the way through.)

18. “Human” (2008)

This is the song everybody knows from Day & Age, and the one line that everybody knows from “Human” (of course) is the awkwardly worded chorus, in which Flowers asks, “Are we human? Or are we dancer?” And the reason everybody knows that line is because nobody understands what in the bloody hell Flowers is talking about. The binary between humanity and choreography is not commonly recognized. But I think I know what he means. I think this is Brandon Flowers wrestling (again) with his central thematic concern: Am I a serious guy? Or am I a rock star? In Flowers’ mind, seriousness is conflated with the most authentic parts of life, whereas rock stardom is for mindless fun and joyful prancing. But (as we have established) he is wrong about these worldviews being separate — particularly for The Killers and especially for this song, which is undoubtedly silly and potentially profound.

17. “Sam’s Town” (2006)

Upon the 10th anniversary of Sam’s Town, I wrote an appreciation of the record that at the time probably seemed contrarian but now seems … less contrarian? It’s generally accepted that Sam’s Town is solidly the second-best Killers record. And — like most acts of musical grandiosity from a more lucrative time in the music business, at least for rock bands — there’s a fearless bravado to Sam’s Town that’s aged from annoying to endearing. That also goes for Brandon Flowers’ press tour in support of Sam’s Town, which is matched only by Pure Comedy era Father John Misty in the annals of consistent musician interview excellence. (Matty Healy wishes he could approach the transcendent obnoxiousness of Brandon Flowers in his prime.) “I’d put it up against OK Computer. I’d put it up against Achtung Baby,” he boasted to Blender about Sam’s Town at the time. “It’s what I’m here for: Thom Yorke’s not gonna make another OK Computer; he’s making a bunch of noise.”

And he didn’t stop there! “I was reading an old interview with Springsteen about how he went into Born to Run wanting to make the best rock ‘n’ roll album that’d ever been made. People think it’s pretentious, but I looked at that album and I looked at Hunky Dory, and Springsteen and Bowie were 24 when they made them. I was like, ‘I’ve got to up the ante.’”

The irony, of course, is that Flowers had already made the album that would help to define his era of mainstream, big-time rock music. And it was not Sam’s Town. But I still love it. And I still love the title track.

16. “Uncle Jonny” (2006)

The song that media-crazed ’06 Brandon Flowers claimed in an NME interview had “one of the greatest guitar riffs of all time.” (In the same article he likened “Sam’s Town” to The Beatles’ “Penny Lane.”) Anyway: “Uncle Jonny” falls short if you go in expecting one of the greatest guitar riffs of all time. If, however, you go in expecting a character study about a small-town cokehead set to some pleasingly buzzsaw-sounding six-string action, you will be satisfied.

INTERMISSION

Did you think we would get through this without revisiting the finest cinematic moment of The Killers’ (and Justin Timberlake’s) career?

15. “Goodnight, Travel Well” (2008)

The finest spooky album closer in The Killers’ arsenal. Slow songs generally are not this band’s strength — nobody listens to The Killers when they’re feeling contemplative — so that makes the glowering “Goodnight, Travel Well” doubly impressive. Interpol was the aughts band that garnered the most Joy Division comparisons, but they never got their Closer on like The Killers do here.

14. “On Top” (2004)

More Hot Fuss Side Two excellence. Kurt Cobain once expressed regret that he didn’t space out the songs on Nevermind over several albums, implying that the lesser-known tracks would have hit like potential smashes if they were surrounded by conventional filler tracks. A similar case could be made for a song like “On Top,” an irresistible synth-rock banger with an excellent keyboard hook that is regarded as an afterthought on an album overloaded with popular tunes.

13. “In The Car Outside” (2021)

A thoroughly Killers-esque construction. You take music that evokes a million post-punk songs that held down countless episodes of 120 Minutes and you marry it to a narrative that crossbreeds Tunnel Of Love (the guy in the song laments his failing marriage) and an irony-free reading of “Glory Days” (he eventually hits up a girl he knew in high school). I know this reads like copypasta but as music it is [chef’s kiss].

12. “Midnight Show” (2004)

I know I have referenced U2 a lot in this column, but The Killers also reference U2 a lot. At their best, these references are very specific. And they aren’t necessarily obvious. Flowers might invoke Achtung Baby in interviews, but The Killers don’t really emulate that version of U2 all that much musically. And while the beards and vests of Sam’s Town are reminiscent of The Joshua Tree sartorially, The Killers don’t get dusty in that way, either. The most common U2 touchtone for The Killers is All That You Can’t Leave Behind, which makes sense given that was the record released right as The Killers were getting going. And then there’s “Midnight Show,” which zeroes in on U2’s War period so perfectly that you can practically smell the flaming torches circling Red Rocks when it comes on.

11. “Read My Mind” (2006)

The other criticism of Sam’s Town that I have not reconsidered is about the mix, which — in the manner of countless aughts-era rock records — is pitched at a “stupid loud” level. This makes Sam’s Town sound distorted if you turn it up in the car, which is precisely what you want to do when Sam’s Town is on in the car. Some listeners complained about this in the moment, prompting Flowers to defend the mix. (“Maybe we’re going deaf, but we like it that way,” he told Rolling Stone.) It’s a shame because there are some lovely melodies on Sam’s Town, and none are more lovely than “Read My Mind.” Though not even maniacally compressing that song can rob it of all its beauty. (The Boygenius cover puts a lot of that beauty back in.)

10. “Smile Like You Mean It” (2004)

Let’s pause on the Side Two of Hot Fuss talk and push play on the Side One of Hot Fuss conversation. Is it the greatest Side One of any rock album from the aughts? If it’s not, it’s in the Top Five and it’s at five, four, or three. The trio of big hits from Side One are still ahead of us on the list but for now respect must be paid to “Smile Like You Mean It.” How good is “Smile Like You Mean It”? It’s so good that The Killers put it between “Mr. Brightside” and “Somebody Told Me” and felt confident that listeners would not immediately skip it. And they haven’t.

9. “Runaways” (2012)

The only song from Battle Born on the list, but it’s a heavy hitter. The album overall has a level of try-hard energy that’s extreme even by Killers’ standards. On the cover, a sports car plays a game of chicken with a rampaging stallion against a desolate landscape. That’s the definition of writing a check your ass can’t cash, though they certainly put up a valiant effort. The stable of superstar producers corralled for the project — Brendan O’Brien, Steve Lillywhite, Daniel Lanois — amounts to the rock equivalent of the 2003-04 Los Angeles Lakers. And like that team, The Killers didn’t want the championship on Battle Born. But “Runaways” is a “slam dunk launched from the free throw line” of a song, a shot of adrenaline that sends the record briefly (and spectacularly) toward the heavens.

8. “For Reasons Unknown” (2006)

My favorite Sam’s Town anecdote (that I haven’t already shared) concerns Brandon Flowers’ mustache. In the mid-’00s, Brandon Flowers’ mustache was a polarizing cultural force that divided artists and pundits. On one side was Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys, who reached out to Flowers’ personally to express his concern over the obtrusive facial hair. On the other side was famed photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn, who assured Brandon that the follicles signified gravitas and artistic fortitude. Yet again, we see “Serious” Brandon pitted against “Rock Star” Brandon in a street-cred death match. And — one more time — the war was wholly unnecessary, as “For Reasons Unknown” shows. This song is pure pop. This song is uplifting rock. It evinces a mustache that is soft yet supple.

7. “My Own Soul’s Warning” (2020)

I don’t want to be melodramatic here, but you know a song is special when you remember the first time you heard it. (A song can also be special if don’t remember the first time you heard it — see every other song in the Top 10 of this list.) Anyway: I remember the first time I heard “My Own Soul’s Warning.” I was out on The Killers at the time and I had zero expectations that the song would be any good. I looked at the title and scoffed. What in the world does “my own soul’s warning” mean? Is this just a more convoluted way of saying “feelings”? Then I listened. And I could instantly sense that The Killers were prepping to kill once again. The part where Flowers yells “But man … I thought I could fly!” hit and I knew it was over. Brandon Flowers really was flying. And I really was flying. Jesus, they did it! I was back on board.

6. “Andy You’re A Star” (2004)

I like (most of) the aughts era NYC bands. I enjoy the tunes and I appreciate the lore. But it is an indictment of that scene that they could not produce a decadent glam rock jam as good as the best effort by a band from the western desert led by teetotaling Mormon. Paul Banks, I love you, but you must hang your head in shame.

5. “Somebody Told Me” (2004)

Then there’s this song. This song must have really pissed off the Manhattanites. When dance punk was fashionable for five minutes and it seemed like The Rapture might become huge, “Somebody Told Me” was precisely the sort of can’t-miss pop confection that was needed to put that DFA sound over the top. If was as if the NYCers got the ball into the red zone, but then The Killers took the pigskin and punched it into the end zone.

When the world heard “Somebody Told Me,” they assumed that The Killers wanted to be Duran Duran. Even better: They seemed like they were the new Duran Duran. They weren’t, but only because they didn’t want to be. (But they could have been.)

4. “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” (2004)

One of two songs on Hot Fuss about literal killings. (The other is “Midnight Show,” the last part of a “Murder Trilogy” that also includes the outtake “Leave The Bourbon On The Shelf.”) But the text of “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” is less crucial than the subtext, which is This album is loaded with figurative killers, one after another, and the tone is being set by this massive sounding song. Shoutout to Stoermer, who co-wrote the song and provides the crucial bassline, which manages to sound both springy and monolithic, like Adam Clayton doing his best Flea impersonation.

3. “Mr. Brightside” (2004)

Along with “Seven Nation Army,” the most enduring rock song of the 21st century so far. And it deserves the distinction. The Killers wanted to make that kind of song, and they delivered. No arguments, no notes. Nevertheless: It’s the third-best Killers song. It just is. It’s close to the top two, and but not as close as No. 2 is to No. 1.

Putting “Mr. Brightside” at number three was easy. Ranking the next two songs was not.

2. “All These Things That I Have Done” (2004)

I was committed to not having a tie at the top of the list, so I’m putting this at No. 2. But, unofficially, this is really 1b. If we were only talking about the back half of the song — everything from the “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier” section to the end — this would represent the greatest music of The Killers’ career. It has the definitive Killers’ lyric (which naturally makes no logical sense) and The Killers’ definitive “lifts your butt from your plastic arena seat” musical surge. It’s just as anthemic as “Mr. Brightside,” but it hasn’t been played as much, which automatically makes it more appealing. It’s so good it even justified JT’s hideous chin beard in Southland Tales.

1. “When You Were Young” (2006)

In his instant-classic review of Sam’s Town, Rob Sheffield observed of this song, “Hurricanes don’t burn, actually; check your copy of Neil Young’s Guide To Weather Metaphors.” That is what you call a spectacular rock-critic burn. But here’s the thing — whenever I hear “When You Were Young,” I believe that The Killers are able to defy meteorological law. Hurricanes do burn, at least in the context of a highway skyline. And I believe this because Brandon Flowers makes me believe it, and then Dave Keuning’s simple but screamingly effective guitar solo demonstrates that unlikely burn. “When You Were Young” was the introductory single from Sam’s Town, and it was the song that made you think that Brandon Flowers wasn’t full of it when he put it up with OK Computer. Just because the rest of the record didn’t quite deliver doesn’t change the power of the unbridled classic-rock evangelism that “When You Were Young” exudes. Like the album, it was an attempt to write one of the greatest songs ever made. There’s no sin in not reaching that plateau; sometimes, hearing someone believe such a thing is possible is inspirational enough.

Charli XCX’s Brat album rollout has been immaculate, but it’s time for Brat to drop already. Luckily, we’re about 48 hours away.

In the meantime, Charli XCX stirred up her fan base by speaking about the Brat track “Girl, So Confusing” during Wednesday’s (June 5) episode of Las Culturistas With Matt Rogers And Bowen Yang. Like everyone else, Rogers and Yang desperately wanted to know whom “Girl, So Confusing” is about.

“This is the first time I’ve spoken about this song,” Charli XCX said around the 13-minute mark. “You guys are the first people to ask me. So, I haven’t quite decided whether I’m revealing. When I wrote it, I was like, ‘I’m revealing!’ But now, the time is here, [and] I’m like, ‘Oh, am I revealing?’ […] My thing is, people are gonna guess. You probably both have an accurate guess.”

Charli XCX then explained the larger meaning behind the song, as transcribed below:

“I think we live in this world of pop music right now where women are like, ‘I support other women! I love women, and I’m a feminist!’ And that’s great. Like, love that. I don’t think that you become a bad feminist if you maybe don’t see eye-to-eye with every single woman. That’s just not the nature of human beings.

There is a competitiveness between us. There is envy. There is camaraderie. All of these different dynamics. I feel that, working in entertainment, there is this kind of dance that we all do with each other, whether you’re in music [or] in your world [and] no matter how you identify. There is this dance. Everybody’s watching each other. Everybody’s posing in the picture, like, ‘Hey, oh my god, it’s so nice to see you!’ But then, you’re also like, ‘I want what they have.’ And then, the next day, you’re like, ‘They suck. I killed it today!’

This happens, but no one, really, is willing to discuss it. But we all probably have our person or maybe a few different people, and I’m sure we are that person for other people. I just find that there is this strange, unspoken thing that often happens particularly with women because there is such a narrative of pitting women against each other within music, and sometimes, that’s not totally fabricated. Sometimes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Watch the full Las Culturistas episode above.

Brat is out 6/7 via Atlantic Records. Find more information here.

Aaron Korsh’s enduring legal drama, Suits, not only found new life in Summer 2023 on Netflix, but 2024 could see a repeat with the ninth season finally appearing on the streaming juggernaut (although it was already available on Peacock), too. The show’s unexpected rebirth could be tied to curiosity about Meghan Markle (who portrayed Rachel for seven seasons) for those who didn’t catch the series the first time around, and yep, the United Kingdom saw some Suits fever, too.

As a result, NBCUniversal decided to revive the universe with a spin off, albeit in a different location. Will we see any of the original cast members? No confirmation exists yet, but surely, NBC will want to make existing fans happy while growing the spin off’s own popularity. Other answers are beginning to surface with several cast additions, so let’s gather up what we know so far about Suits: L.A.

Plot

Another city, and another cast? That’s the official word from NBC, which means that there could be a clean break with a change in scenery, but of course, we’ve seen NCIS and Law & Order crossovers lately, so never say never when it comes to original cast members popping up in spin offs. Gabriel Macht (Harvey) and Patrick J. Adams (Mike) have both expressed interest in reprising their roles, but the latter might be too occupied working on his own Netflix series. However, some certainties do exist.

This spin off revolves around Ted Black (portrayed by Stephen Amell of Heels), who moves to Los Angeles from New York (so perhaps he could receive some advice from Harvey Specter?). In his new city, Black teams up with Stewart Lane (The Walking Dead‘s Josh McDermitt) to launch a firm that caters to criminal and entertainment law clients. Yup, there’s definitely some crossover between those two realms of law, and Los Angeles is the perfect city to make that happen.

You might wonder how Amell will fare while moving from a wrestling show right into lawyer mode. Well, stay tuned there because while speaking to Deadline, Amell described McDermitt as “sensational” in his role, but Amell also admitted that he hadn’t seen the original Suits before he was cast:

“I’m really excited, and I’ve also really been enjoying the show. I hadn’t seen the original, and I’m familiarizing myself because I think certain shows, they’ll have a syntax to them. But big fan and just glad I get to be a part of the world.”

Thus far, NBC has fast-tracked a pilot, and it’s hard to imagine that a full season will not happen as well. From the show’s official description:

Ted Black, a former federal prosecutor from New York, has reinvented himself representing the most powerful clients in Los Angeles. His firm is at a crisis point, and in order to survive he must embrace a role he held in contempt his entire career. Ted is surrounded by a stellar group of characters who test their loyalties to both Ted and each other while they can’t help but mix their personal and professional lives. All of this is going on while events from years ago slowly unravel that led Ted to leave behind everything and everyone he loved.

Cast

The Walking Dead fans should enjoy Josh McDermitt in a completely different gear than expected as Stuart Lane. Stephen Amell will be far more polished than he was in Heels as Ted Black. They will be joined by Lex Scott Davis, Rachelle Goulding, Victoria Justice, Troy Winbush, Bryan Greenberg, John Amos, Kevin Weistman, and Alice Lee.

From there, no definitive word has surfaced on original-cast cameos — Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams, Gina Torres, Sarah Rafferty? — but don’t expect to see Meghan Markle in this universe again.

Release Date

Suits: L.A. is humming away on pilot production in Vancouver with eyes on a 2024-2025 season, so we might actually see this spin off surface before year’s end.

Trailer

NBC hasn’t delivered a peek at any on-set footage yet, but can you blame them? However, it’s worth revisiting this scene that likely irked Prince Harry, although he should have known better than to watch this.