Reality Beat: Spice Girls May Be Getting Their Own Docuseries
Time & Life Pictures
Docuseries: The show Home Sweet Home hosted by Ava DuVernay has been picked up for another 10 episodes by NBC. The unscripted show, that has been revered as a “family social experiment,” looks at two different families and attempts to challenge the audience to consider what it’s like in the life of another family. The show uses factors such as religious, economic and geographic assumptions to challenge two different people by allowing them to live in the other person’s home. The show hopes to “reveal genuine moments of change that we hope will spark thought-provoking conversations and encourage compassion, empathy and understanding,” said Meredith Ahr, president of NBC Entertainment. DuVernay’s production company, ARRAY Filmworks, has paired with Warner Horizon Unscripted Television to produce the docuseries. DuVernay directed A Wrinkle in Time in 2018 and currently produces Queen Sugar on the Oprah Winfrey Network. In 2019, she produced When They See Us, available on Netflix.
The directing team behind Channel 4’s Jade: The Reality Star Who Changed Britain are planning to cover the Spice Girls for their next project. 72 Films has been commissioned by Channel 4 to make the docuseries, which has a working title of Girl Powered: The Spice Girls. The goal is to incorporate footage from archives and including insightful interviews to honestly tell the story of the successful 90s British girl band. Alisa Pomeroy commissioned the show for Channel 4. Rob Coldstream is the executive producer and Clare Cameron is the series editor.
Nick Cannon - Kris Connor / Stringer
Game Shows: Recently Nick Cannon was under fire for having said anti-semitic remarks on his podcast, Cannon’s Class. On June 30 he was interviewing Richard Griffin and had a conversation about semitism and had inadvertently created a dialog of hate towards semitism. For this reason, Viacom CBS fired Cannon from Wild ‘N Out, the show he used to produce and host since 2005. However, he is still going to be on the game show Masked Singer. Masked Singer, which airs on Fox, is a competitive show where there are multiple well-known singers who have to sing while masked, and everyone must guess who the masked singers are. When each masked singer is eliminated, they unmask, revealing their identity. Fox had shared their dislike for the incident and have publicly shared Cannon’s apology as well. Nick Cannon will also have his own syndicated show called Nick Cannon starting September 21.
Tyra Banks - Amy Sussman
Competitive Series: Succeeding Tom Bergeron, supermodel Tyra Banks will now host the competitive series, Dancing With The Stars. The supermodel has recently hosted NBC’s Americas Got Talent and The CW’s America’s Next Top Model. Banks has been a fan of Dancing With The Stars since its beginning, and is excited to continue the legacy of the show. The show will air on ABC, and Banks will also be executive producing the show. The rest of the staff are excited for what Banks can bring to the table, as she is a female icon in the entertainment industry. The show is produced by BBC’s Los Angeles sector. The last season of the series averaged about 9.1 million total viewers after 35 days.
As we near August in this year of uncertainty, we see that sports entertainment has been impacted extremely. Televised baseball games, for example, have edited fake crowds into the stands. Is it just for aesthetic purposes? Or is it some sort of marketing tactic, a weak attempt to keep the passion behind televised sports alive? The same problem is being found within the NFL. Many players are uncertain about the plans for the league under the pandemic. “NFLPA officials estimated that each of the NFL’s 32 teams could lose $70 million this year due to the pandemic.” This is a big dilemma that would impact all parties involved somehow with the NFL. The conversation between these parties contains a lot of differing opinions, with some saying that any given protocols are excessive and others saying that they want to be safe and ‘do the right thing.’ There is not much the average football fan can do to help the situation except to wear a mask, says NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith.