MUMBAI: Zee English’s year end bonanza includes three new shows. With rival English entertainment channel Star World seriously bolstering its programming line up, Zee’s English entertainment arm’s announcement of new shows comes at a good time.
Starting 8 December every Monday, is Larry David’s satire Curb your Enthusiasm. Next in line is new comedy series Half and Half, which is scheduled to air every Thursday at 10:30 pm starting 11 December.
While the fifth season of HBO’s Sopranos will hit the US small screens on March 2004, Zee English will premiere season three of mobster soap Sopranos on 14 December, which will are every Sunday at 9 pm.
A brand new comedy series that premiered last year in USA, Half & Half, stars Essence Atkins and Rachel True as half-sisters Mona and Dee Dee who have only one thing in common: their father. Created by Jeffrey Klarik and produced by Yvette Lee Bowser, the show has been nominated for several awards including the golden globe and Emmy awards.
Mona is a budding music executive raised by her single mother, Phyllis, to be an independent woman who does things in her own free-spirited and sometimes sardonic style. In usual sitcom style, younger sister Dee Dee is a privileged honour-roll college student who grew up in a two-parent home, but searches for her own identity out of the shadow of her overbearing mother, Big Dee Dee.
Growing up separately, these two virtual strangers suddenly become neighbours in the same San Francisco apartment building and experience the challenges of sisterhood for the first time. They often clash on everything from morals to money to men. Meanwhile, Spencer, Mona’s best friend, becomes the conscience of the group and helps build a bridge between the women.
The candid, unsparing and self-deprecating Curb Your Enthusiasm brings the off-kilter comic vision of Larry David- the co-creator and co-producer of yet another Zee English alumnus Seinfeld. Winner of Golden Globe for best TV series, this HBO show ranked seven in the entertainment weekly’s list of top ten TV shows.
The series blurs the lines between reality and fiction, as David (playing himself) and a cast of real and fictional characters are followed around Los Angeles by a ubiquitous camera that chronicles the private, often banal world of a relatively public man.
It features footage of writer Larry David at home, at work and around town, as he gets into predicaments with fictional and real-life personalities. The show shot without a script, also stars Jeff Garlin as manager Jeff Greene and Cheryl Hines as wife Cheryl. The cast is given scene outlines and often improvise lines as they go.
Stylish, shocking and dark humorous series, Sopranos takes a fresh new look at organised crime from the psychiatrist’s couch. Starring James Gandolfini, Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco and Michael Imperioli, the series is about a New Jersey gangster and family man Tony Soprano and his gang who reluctantly seek the professional services of a smart and sophisticated therapist.
