TV Picks: ‘@midnight,’ ‘Cosmos’ times two
“@midnight” (Comedy Central, weeknights Monday through Thursday). Busy Chris Hardwick, the alt-Allen Ludden (I might have said “indie Gene Rayburn” or “left-field Dick Clark” just as well), hosts this late-night comedy game show with a social media theme. It’s one of those series, in the long tradition of “Information Please,” “My Word,” “The Match Game” and “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!” and Stephen Fry’s “QI” (as critic-picked this week by Mary McNamara) whose main purpose is the display of celebrity wit. (Points, which are somewhat beside the point, are awarded largely at the discretion of the host.)
It’s a hard thing to get right -- IFC’s “Bunk” was one fairly recent, overcomplicated failure -- but everything lines up here. It possibly helps that the show runs four nights a week, Monday through Thursday, and that it follows the similarly newsy (allowing for some latitude in the word “news”) and hectic “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” A nightcap to their nightcaps, it keeps the party going. A typical segment is #HashtagWars, echoing the Twitter meme-game. The category #SuckyActionMovies, with panelists John Hodgman, Grace Helbig and former “Bunk” host Kurt Braunohler produced in an instant, “Ironing Man,” “The Flirt Locker,” “The Permenator,” “Alien Befriends Predator” and “Jaw.”
BEST TV OF 2013 Lloyd | McNamara
As ringmaster, Hardwick -- who also currently hosts AMC’s “Talking Dead,” “Nerdist Podcast” and is the voice of Craig on the Nickelodeon cartoon “Sanjay and Craig” -- is also part of the act: funny himself but delightfully delighted as well by his guests. (“Points!” he cries, awarding them.) Panelists have included Judd Apatow, Kristen Schaal, Brett Gelman, Rob Corddry, Ike Barinholtz, Jenny Slate, Natasha Leggero, Patton Oswalt, Paul Scheer and Paul F. Tompkins; a “Community” panel with Jim Rash, Gillian Jacobs and Danny Pudi; a reunion of “The State” with Michael Showalter, Kerri Kenney-Silver and Michael Ian Black; and a “Broad City” night with Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer and Hannibal Buress, along with the occasional incidental comedian, such as singer Neko Case (who won her night). That not all comics are created equal when it comes to saying hilarious things under pressure is certainly demonstrated here, but the quality stays remarkably high, and the fun, as they say, is infectious.
“Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” (National Geographic Channel, Saturday and Sunday); “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” (Fox, Sundays; National Geographic Channel, Mondays). This weekend brings you the story of everything, twice, as told (at length) by Carl Sagan and told again by Neil deGrasse Tyson. One, quiet, eloquent, trance-like, entrancing; the other a sci-fi (or rather a sci-tru) blockbuster, with cartoons, that digitally goes where no man, etc., etc. Both of them are worth your time.
PHOTOS: TV shows and their spinoffs
First: “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,” Sagan’s 1980 PBS blockbuster, which took viewers from here to there, and from then to now, from atoms to people to way over yonder in space and time to the very point where knowledge evaporates. National Geographic will rebroadcast the series in its 13-episode entirety, marathon-style. Though it is 34 years old, long enough for our understanding of the universe and its fiddly bits to have moved on a little -- Pluto is no longer classified as a planet, for one thing, thanks partially to Tyson, and pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope have reformed even the way we fictionally imagine interstellar real estate -- it is not going to mess you up for the final. Much of its power emanates from Sagan himself -- this is “a personal voyage,” like the sign says -- with his poetical clarity, with his cool-teacher haircut and trademark turtlenecks. Here he is on galaxies: “And then little pockets of gas began to grow / Tendrils of gossamer clouds formed / Colonies of great lumbering slowly spinning things / Steadily brightening / Each a kind of beast / Composed of a hundred billion shining points.” (Line breaks mine.)
Tyson, whose Seth MacFarlane-backed remake was undertaken in concert with Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan, is a vivid presence, as well -- and a more rambunctious one than Sagan, though at the same time reduced in scale by his version’s wide-screen aspect ratio, splashy special effects and Alan Silvestri score. It’s a cosmic roller coaster to Sagan’s boat ride, and fun, and you will either learn things you don’t know or see things you do pictured in new and disarming ways. Either way, if you stop texting for a minute and pay attention, you may come out smarter.
There was a certain urgency in Sagan’s “Cosmos,” born of nuclear proliferation and Cold War jitters, a political and philosophical through line hopefully leading to the point where, by apprehending our smallness in the scheme of things, humans might get some clarity about their own self-destructive self-regard and beat their swords into plowshares. Tyson’s version addresses different challenges: fast-creeping medievalism that threatens to sideline science in favor of superstition, and, environmentally speaking, our ongoing tendency to saw off the branch we’re sitting on. Listen to the man, people -- he’s an astrophysicist.
Twitter: @LATimesTVLloyd
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