The same year it earned a Peabody Award, and the same week it was handed a second Emmy nomination for Andre Braugher as Outstanding Supporting Dramatic Actor, Men of a Certain Age was awarded by TNT Friday by being given its pink slip.
After two excellent seasons, the series, starring and co-created by Ray Romano, is no more. But like many terrific TV shows before it that suffer a premature death, it deserved, and earned, a different fate.
It deserved to be shipped off to a home...
Specifically, a home where all intelligent, entertaining television series should go when they die. Either to be have their lives extended by ordering new episodes, or, at least, embracing and welcoming their body of work and gathering quality TV, and a love for it, in one convenient place.
I'm not talking about networks who have made, and continue to make, their reputations by making a point of presenting daring, smart TV shows. AMC, for example, with Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. FX, with Rescue Me and Louie. HBO and Showtime, and so on.
I'm talking, instead, about a place to go for shows, from those networks and others, that don't continue to make the cut -- but that deserve a better fate.
Currently, satellite television's DirecTV is the best example of this: It cut a deal to extend NBC's Friday Night Lights by two seasons, and last week began production of new episodes of Damages, starring Glenn Close, after FX opted to let it go. DirecTV also recently reran, in high definition, every episode of HBO's Deadwood, and currently is recycling HBO's The Wire and importing a gritty Australian crime series, Underbelly.
But DirecTV, reportedly, is about to change its focus somewhat. Meanwhile, there's been no real replacement, for years, for Trio's "Brilliant...But Cancelled" showcase (or, for that matter, for Trio), which proudly presented shows that either were killed prematurely or that never got past the pilot stages.
I suggest it's time for an entire network where TV brilliance, recent and vintage, is celebrated, and treated properly. That could have been, and should still be, TV Land, but that network long ago abdicated its throne through a mixture of horrendous programming choices and a counter-intuitive desire to chase the same youthful demographic as every other cable network.
Imagine a network where you could go to revisit recently cancelled series -- series that deserved a longer run, that is. If the network's a cash cow, they could extend the series. If not, the network could at least present it with pride, pairing it with others of its quality ilk.
Think of the shows that would be on such a network right now. Not only Men of a Certain Age, but AMC's Rubicon. FX's Lights Out. NBC's Life. And, of course, ABC's Pushing Daisies.
These shows would be presented intact, as a TV equivalent of Turner Classic Movies. No commercials interrupting the programs, only between presentations. Classic series -- going all the way back to, say, East Side, West Side and Route 66 and He & She -- would be presented without edits, and without speeding up the tape or film to cram more ad time into each hour.
Shows also could be presented, a la TCM, by a host, or by an enthusiastic roundtable -- or could gather cast reunions and do interstitial interviews to put shows in context, as producer Paul Brownstein once did for E!'s cable-premiere showing of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
So I have two questions for you.
One: Which shows would you most like to see on such a network? Quality shows, whether recent or dusty, that had too short a run, and that deserve a second chance, or at least a comfortable second home? (The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, by the way, would be a prime candidate for this.)
Two: What should such a network be called?
I'm having a problem with this one. I like the idea of a "Phoenix" network, because these are shows that, one way or another, would rise from the ashes. And I like putting some sort of qualitative description in the network title, too, like Excellence or Masterpiece or Quality.
But the Phoenix Masterpiece Service, while it might sound good in full, would cause real problems with TV listings pages and services.
Who wants to list, much less watch, a network with the initials PMS?