SFist Watches: Television This Week
While SFist Rain vacations, SFist Eve does her best to fill the void. Come home soon, Rain!
We've been cable-free since 2001, but when we reunited with our long-lost boyfriend TiVo (who left our lives about four years ago, along with a really great cat and a man on whom we will reserve judgment), we knew it was time to renter the Comcast fold. We're starting small, with the package that, when you go to order it, inspires everyone to double-check to make sure you know what you're asking for, like it's assisted suicide or something. Their dubious tone when we said "oh, no, thirty-plus channels will do me just fine" made us wonder, "do we need more?"
So far, the answer has been a resounding "no." We turn on the TV every night to see that TiVo has busily recorded all sorts of great programming -- both local and national. It's an embarrassment of riches, all these shows, somewhere between a comforting buffer between us and the unpleasantness of "live TV", and something that feels like homework. Here are some of the great Bay Area shows we've discovered, rediscovered, and are eagerly anticipating.
In our old (read: pre-TiVo) life, KRON's "Bay Cafe" was a show we caught on occasion, but now we get at least one a day, with episodes ranging from old-school episodes on the worst cooking show set ever (check out those weird hanging colored lights on the right side of the set) to host Joey Altman's present day glory as he gets out of the studio and hits actual Bay Cafes. Our favorite "Bay Cafe" moments come when Altman corrects (sometimes a little aggressively) his expert guests on their chosen topics and cooking techniques, making us wonder why he bothers to have anyone else come on the show if he really knows it all so much better than they do. Don't be mad, Joey, we love you and are just bitter that Brian Shields stands in between us.
Another show we always seem to have a new episode of is
We were watching KRON's news this morning, mainly to catch Phil Matier's segment with Gavin. While we didn't get any more scoop on Rush Hour, Gavin did allude to a TV series that may or may not shoot in our fair city next year. To paraphrase our Mayor, he said something about "A drama by folks who seem to have a show on every hour on channel 4" before correcting himself -- apparently Gavin forgot that KRON is no longer the NBC affiliate it once was, or is he anticipating a locally-set drama from the think-tank that brought us The Magic Bullet?
While we do love the idea of 10 second guacamole, we prefer to think that Mayor Newsom was referring to "The Evidence", a San Francisco-set police procedural. They shot the pilot here several months ago, and if the series is indeed picked up they plan on continuing to film the series locally. Since we haven't had a locally-produced drama since "Nash Bridges", not only will it be nice to see an onscreen San Francisco that isn't Canada, but it'll be a great way to get local actors and crew work. And we'd be remiss in our Rain-substitution if we failed to make the starf**ker announcement that one of our dearest friends in the world, Jason Frazier, appears in the pilot episode, so we're keeping our fingers crossed that ABC chooses to add this show to its lineup.