Category: News
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Better Call Saul (AMC, 9:00 p.m.) — Nacho inches closer to the cartel while Jimmy and Kim make a business move that carries serious repercussions.
The Last Dance (ESPN, Hulu, Netflix UK) — The first two episodes of this 10-part docuseries aired last night on ESPN, and while our friends across the pond get to relive Michael Jordan’s glory days on Netflix, Hulu and ESPN’s streaming site is the place to go, stateside. Still, if you’ve got a login, this is more than worth it. The series combines rare unseen footage of Jordan at the height of his career — during the famed 97-98 season — along with commentary from some well-known athletes and celebrities measuring his influence on the game, and the world.
9-1-1 (Fox, 8:00 p.m.) — A rescue mission involving a child stuck in a well forces Eddie to confront his own past.
Roswell, New Mexico (CW, 9:00 p.m.) — Isobel’s night out takes an unexpected turn while Liz suffers another blow in her quest to save Max.
The Plot Against America (HBO, 9:00 p.m.) — In the series finale, Herman takes drastic measures to keep his family safe in the turbulent buildup to Election Day while Alvin is recruited for a top-secret mission.
Prodigal Son (Fox, 9:00 p.m.) — Malcolm and Ainsley call a Whitly family meeting after their suspicions about Nicholas Endicott are proven true.
Breeders (FX, 9:00 p.m.) — Paul and the kids are losing sleep while Ally’s away and they’re not handling it well.
Songland (NBC, 10:00 p.m.) — Luis Fonsi comes to the show to hear unknown songwriters pitch their original material.
Dispatches From Elsewhere (AMC, 10:00 p.m.) — While the rest of the group pursue new interests, Fred finds it hard to let go.
The Last Dance has been highly anticipated by NBA fans since it was announced over two years ago, and with stay-at-home orders around the country halting live sports, viewers pushed, successfully, for ESPN to push up the release from June to April.
On Sunday, it made its debut to the delight of fans and, unsurprisingly, drew big numbers for ESPN. The broadcasts on ESPN and ESPN2 (where they showed a “clean” version with cursing bleeped out) averaged 6.1 million viewers for the two hours of episodes 1 and 2. Episode 1 had 6.3 million viewers, while Episode 2 drew 5.8 million, making it the most watched broadcast on ESPN since the College Football Playoff National Championship game.
They also make for the two most watched episodes of ESPN original programming, topping the previous record-holder, “You Don’t Know Bo,” the 30 for 30 on Bo Jackson that drew 3.6 million viewers. It’s a strong number for ESPN in a time where sports networks are desperate for anything that can draw eyeballs to them, and it will surely continue to do well streaming on ESPN+. Those that thought it might rival Game of Thrones viewership were overestimating how big a draw this would be, but for a documentary about a 20-year-old subject, it is a pretty massive number and represents a big win for ESPN.
With the NBA season on hiatus, fans and TV partners are turning to old games to pass the time. ESPN pushed up The Last Dance documentary on the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls to the delight of fans and NBA stars past and present, but that only fills two hours on Sunday nights.
In the meantime, NBA TV is running marathons of Hardwood Classic games, along with some Film Room episodes that have players and personalities look back at pivotal games from the past — this week, Kevin McHale and Bill Simmons will look at Game 7 of the 1987 playoff series with Milwaukee. ESPN is also running some old NBA games to fill the time, although their basketball schedule is light this week due to the NFL Draft.
We will be bringing you a viewing guide each week, focused on full game broadcasts — not various cut up, hour-long broadcasts — that you can watch. Here are this week’s offerings.
Monday, April 20
NBA TV: 2019-20 Regular Season, Jazz at Bucks; 8:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2019-20 Regular Season, Lakers at Mavs: 10:30 p.m.
Tuesday, April 21
NBA TV: 1991 East Playoffs, Pacers at Celtics, Game 5; 8:30 a.m.
NBA TV: 1993 East Playoffs, Celtics at Hornets, Game 4; 10:30 a.m.
NBA TV: 1994 West Playoffs, Suns at Warriors, Game 3; 1:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2000 East Playoffs, Bucks at Pacers, Game 5; 3:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2002 East Playoffs, Pacers at Nets, Game 5; 5:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 1984 East Playoffs, Knicks at Pistons, Game 5; 8:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 1987 East Playoffs, Bucks at Celtics, Game 7 (Film Room with Bill Simmons and Kevin McHale); 10:00 p.m. ET
NBA TV: 2006 West Playoffs, Suns at Lakers, Game 4; 12:30 a.m.
NBA TV: 2002 West Playoffs, Rockets at Mavericks, Game 2; 3:00 a.m.
Wednesday, April 22
NBA TV: 2009 East Playoffs: Celtics at Bulls, Game 6; 8:30 a.m.
ESPN: 2008 NBA Finals, Celtics at Lakers, Game 4; 7:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 1994 West Playoffs: Nuggets at Sonics, Game 5; 8:00 p.m.
ESPN: 2008 NBA Finals, Lakers at Celtics, Game 6; 9:30 p.m.
NBA TV: 2007 West Playoffs, Mavericks at Warriors, Game 4; 11:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2000 West Playoffs, Sonics at Jazz, Game 1; 2:00 a.m.
Thursday, April 23
NBA TV: 2006 East Playoffs, Cavaliers at Wizards, Game 6; 11:00 a.m.
NBA TV: 2009 East Playoffs: Celtics at Bulls, Game 6; 1:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2006 West Playoffs, Suns at Lakers, Game 4; 3:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2008 West Playoffs, Suns at Spurs, Game 1; 5:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2007 West Playoffs, Mavericks at Warriors, Game 6; 8:00 p.m.
Friday, April 24
NBA TV: 2014 NBA Finals, Heat at Spurs, Game 1; 11:30 a.m.
NBA TV: 2014 NBA Finals, Heat at Spurs, Game 5; 1:30 p.m.
NBA TV: 1999 NBA Finals, Spurs at Knicks, Game 5; 3:30 p.m.
NBA TV: 2006 West Playoffs, Mavericks at Spurs, Game 5; 5:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2003 NBA Finals, Nets at Spurs, Game 6; 8:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2003 West Playoffs, Spurs at Lakers, Game 6; 10:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 25
NBA TV: 2013-14 NBA Regular Season, Clippers at Warriors; 6:00 a.m.
NBA TV: 2013-14 NBA Regular Season, Warriors at Heat; 8:30 a.m.
NBA TV: 2013-14 NBA Regular Season, Warriors at Thunder; 10:30 a.m.
NBA TV: 2013-14 NBA Regular Season, Heat at Bulls; 12:30 p.m.
NBA TV: 2014 NBA Finals, Heat at Spurs, Game 1; 8:30 p.m.
NBA TV: 2014 NBA Finals, Heat at Spurs, Game 5; 10:30 p.m.
Sunday, April 26
NBA TV: 2014-15 NBA Regular Season, Cavaliers at Heat; 7:00 a.m.
NBA TV: 2014-15 NBA Regular Season, Blazers at Cavaliers; 9:00 a.m.
NBA TV: 2014-15 NBA Regular Season, Kings at Warriors; 12:00 p.m.
ESPN: “The Last Dance” Episode 3; 9:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2015 NBA Finals, Cavaliers at Warriors, Game 2; 9:00 p.m.
ESPN: “The Last Dance” Episode 4; 10:00 p.m.
NBA TV: 2015 NBA Finals, Warriors at Cavaliers, Game 6; 11:00 p.m.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, many sports teams have taken to implementing pay cuts while league seasons remain on hold. Arsenal are the latest to do so, agreeing to a yearlong 12.5% salary cut with its players, head coach and staff, the club announced on Monday. The wage reduction will be implemented before the end of April.
According the statement, “the club will repay agreed amounts” as long as specific targets regarding the team’s success on the field are reached.
“We will be able to make those repayments as hitting these targets, which the players can directly influence, will mean our financial position will be stronger,” the statement read. “The agreement is based on the assumption we will finish the season 2019/20 and receive the full broadcasting revenues.”
The announcement comes after a few weeks of back and forth between the players and the club, and ultimately, manager Mikel Arteta’s intervention seemed to have made the difference. As The Athletic reported, Arteta had a long phone call with his squad on Wednesday night and encouraged them to agree to the club’s proposal while also stating that he’d support their decision regardless. Before conversations with Arteta, a majority of the first team was not willing to accept a sustained pay cut — instead, pushing for a deferral. Defender Hector Bellerin, who is also the club’s Professional Footballers’ Association representative, also reportedly played a big role in the discussions. According to ESPN, two players still refused to accept the voluntary agreement, but the rest of the team complied. The move is reported to save the club close to 20 million pounds.
Arsenal follows in the footsteps of other Premier League clubs like Southampton and West Ham and top European clubs like FC Barcelona, Atletico Madrid in making cuts during this uncertain time.
Backyard wrestling is headed to HBO, and The Rock is helping it get there.
Variety reported today that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Issa Rae, and Dany Garcia will executive produce a “half-hour series in development at HBO about the creation of a backyard wrestling promotion.” The show’s working title is TRE CNT (pronounced “tre count”), and it’s the creation of writer Mohamad El Masri, whose credits include HBO’s Here and Now and the Netflix series October Faction.
Here’s how Variety lays out the premise of the series:
The series focuses on Cassius Jones, a young dock worker and struggling pro-wrestler, who uses inherited life-insurance money for start-up cash and the deed to a shotgun house from his grandfather to start a hip-hop centric backyard wrestling empire in Houston’s Third Ward (The Tre) with the help of his working-class family, neighbors, and friends.
The wrestling cred The Rock brings to the project is obvious, though he was never a backyarder; so far it’s unknown if anyone from specifically the backyard wrestling world is attached to TRE CNT.
Johnson and Rae both have experience executive producing shows for HBO. Johnson produced and starred in Ballers, which ended in 2019, and Rae is the co-creator, star, and exec producer of Insecure, which recently began its fourth season.
Over the weekend, The Office star John Krasinki released the latest episode of Some Good News, a news show “dedicated entirely to good news.” The concept is self-explanatory, I suppose. Anyway, episode four was prom-themed with an impressive lineup of guests, including NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station, Billie Eilish (who performed “Bad Guy” with her brother Finneas), the Jonas Brothers, Chance the Rapper, and his Office co-star Rainn Wilson (Steve Carell was already on the web show). Krasinki also had a famous friend filling in as the weathercaster.
“Brad, how’s it looking there?” Krasinski asked Brad Pitt, making his best cameo since Deadpool 2, which only came out two years ago, but doesn’t it feel longer? “It looks, uh…pretty good,” he reported, while peeking his head outside his home. “Yeah.”
This isn’t the first time the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Oscar winner has taken on a weathercaster role: he did it on The Jim Jefferies Show, too. It’s good to know this famously handsome and talented actor can always fall back on “telling people in Los Angeles it’s 75 degrees outside” as a second career. I was worried for him.
Episode four of “Some Good News” has already generated nearly 1.5 million views.
(Via Hollywood Reporter)
Not everyone loves their boss enough to write a song about them, but Ab-Soul has returned with a fiery freestyle in celebration of TDE founder Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffith’s birthday. Produced by Devin Williams, the beat is built on a soulful loop and features some of Ab-Soul’s slickest wordplay yet, with timely references to Eminem, Craig Mack, Michael Jordan, Nat Turner, and John Mayer. Midway through the song, the beat switches up, trading in its soul sample for one from Sister Nancy’s “Bam Bam,” while Ab-Soul unleashes, delivering nimble-tongued odes to Top Dawg and Soul’s late friend Mac Miller.
Ab-Soul has had a quiet couple of years since the release of his most recent album, Do What Thou Wilt, but recently began to poke his head back above the surface for neck-snapping verses on labelmate Reason’s latest single “Trapped In” and performances at Day N Vegas and the annual TDE community concert, where he promised his new album would arrive in 2020. With albums from the likes of Isaiah Rashad, Jay Rock, Reason, Schoolboy Q, and SZA reportedly coming soon, 2020 is very quickly shaping up to be a crowded year for the Los Angeles-based label — if coronavirus quarantines don’t derail their mainline artists’ respective comebacks.
Check out the “Dangerookipawaa Freestyle” above.
100 Gecs are a success story of how even niche musicians can find their way to fame. The experimental electronic duo consisting of Dylan Brady and Laura Les went from creating music at home to working with the likes of Charli XCX and Rico Nasty. While the duo only has one formally-released album, 100 Gecs remains active by reaching out to fellow musicians to remix their music. 100 Gecs’ “Gec 2 U” recently saw a remix by rising queer pop singer Dorian Electra. Now, the three have virtually teamed up to release a video accompanying the remix.
Filmed separately, the “Gec 2 U (Remix)” shows it’s still possible to collaborate while in quarantine. Directed and edited by Weston Allen, the video features Brady, Les, and Electra going about their quirky quarantine routine. Les uses their free time to experiment combining cereal with Red Bull while Brady sews his own wizard hat and learns how to juggle. All the while, Electra remains in the center of the screen, creating their own dance party.
The visual arrives ahead of 100 Gecs’ virtual festival experience Square Garden Festival. Taking place on Minecraft, the festival features music from big-name musicians like Charli XCX, Kero Kero Bonito, Cashmere Cat, Benny Blanco, and more. All proceeds from the Minecraft festival will be donated to the charity organization Feeding America.
Watch the “Gec 2 U (Remix)” video above.
Revisit Uproxx’s Why 100 Gecs Should Be Taken Seriously here.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.