Wow, lots of talk here about CiC. Hard to imagine America cares anywhere near this much, but we’ll see when the ratings come out. No, JPod, I won’t defend it, but only because I didn’t and won’t watch it.
“Amazing Race,” baby! What more can I say? (I do hope that CiC does well because I root for the home team, and if it helps bring viewers to ABC on Tuesdays, then it helps brings them to “Jim.”)
Meanwhile, staggering entertainment is to be found on HBO Sunday nights at 10:30, with the premiere of Ricky Gervais’ “Extras.” If there’s a funnier man working in television today than Gervais, I have yet to see him. Gervais plays a horribly self-involved actor employed as an extra (“atmosphere,” we call them) on a film set. Every week he works on a different movie, with a different real celeb guest star.
Week one had Kate Winslet as a breathtaking parody of an Oscar-grubbing potty-mouth star named Kate Winslet. And Gervais, who will remind you of his David Brent character from “The Office” only occasionally, has a few bravura moments as he pretends to be Catholic in order to get closer to a religious woman he meets on the set. I don’t laugh much at TV, and I laughed hard at this.
Also good: “Survivorman” on the Science Channel. Dude goes by himself into dangerous places with nothing but cameras, which he sets up on tripods and uses to tape himself as he makes fire, finds water, and occasionally traps and eats a squirrel. Cool. The kids and I like it.