Day-before-premiere links

[jae]

A marvelous Hitfix interview with showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields (unless you're SUPER spoiler-averse, this one is fine to read).

A whole slew of very spoilery reviews of the first few episodes of season three: from Spoiler TV (first episode only), from theworkprint.com, from IndieWire, from the IndieWire blog, from Slant Magazine, from Variety, from thedailynews.com, and from We Got This Covered.

The Christian Post has a Christian take on Paige's Christian conversion story.

And MediaPost does a full-on comparison of the new spy drama Allegiance and The Americans.

Comments

[soupytwist]

That first link is making me flail with LOVE. What a fantastic interview.

(And the point about TV families with two kids where the daughter has drama and the son doesn't is completely true. My theories: partly it's 'oh they'll identify with the son anyway but a girl needs something to be watchable' and partly it's about age, because with the girl being the older one you can have hot teenage girls on your TV show for dudes to fancy.)

[jae]

I just love them both so much. They are my spywrangler couple OTP. :)

-J

[(Anonymous)]

I have just realized that I am very spoiler-averse, so I will wait until at least the first S3 episode has aired to read these articles. Thanks for posting these links. I will surely check them out later.

Too bad that their premiere party didn't happen as we may have had interesting interviews from that. But, we are now in Season 3 that will surely be rich with articles, reviews, and appearances of "The Americans."

CA

[jae]

I am also sad that their premiere party didn't happen! More for them than for us, though--they work so hard, and it's not fair. It's good publicity, too, and the show needs all it can get! Ah well.

-J

[lovingboth]

I've only got part way through the first (and won't bother with the others) but the big surprise for me is how tight the post-production schedule must be if they were filming episodes due to be shown in February/March in December...

That doesn't leave much time for editing, dubbing, adding the soundtrack, any effects work on any of the shots etc etc.

Or am I too used to film production and all 'high quality' TV works like this?

[treonb]

I don't think it's unusual for network shows with longer seasons. I think they usually film a couple of months in advance of airing.

But I don't know what's the norm for shows like this and what's the advantage of filming so close to airing.

Take a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_the_2007%E2%80%9308_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike_on_television

During the writer's strike - many shows were put on hiatus around 2-3 months after the strike started.

[jae]

Joel Fields was saying on Twitter just the other day that it felt weird to him to be "already" working on the finale when the premiere hadn't even aired, so it's clear that the industry folk think this is totally normal.

-J

[jae]

I don't think all 'high quality' TV works like this; I think it's specifically an American thing. But it's definitely not just this show. I think it must have something to do with wanting time off? The writing and filming and producing of a thirteen-episode television season once a year doesn't leave much time to, say, go have a nice long holiday with your family if you were to stretch it out much more.

In any case, it was really noticeable what a gruelling schedule they had while we were on the set. We came in late morning and the production staff had been there since a normal office-job start time, and while we left in late afternoon, it was clear based on what they were going to film that day that everybody else was going to be there until well after midnight.

-J

[lovingboth]

I think the main reason is that if a network wants to cancel a show mid-season, it can do so safe in the knowledge that some of the money hasn't been spent yet.