The 2008 saga of four SF and LA gay men who murdered a Palm Springs art dealer and sold off his possessions (while hiding his body for nine years!) is getting its close-up this week, as NBC’s ‘Dateline’ explores this yesteryear scandal.

Back in 2009, the local media here couldn't get enough of a saga dubbed at the time as the “gay grifters”, which would end up also involving a gruesome Palm Springs murder. Here’s a 2009 SF Weekly cover story that (partially) tells the tale of then-26-year-old Kaushal Niroula, known by his nicknames “the Nepalese Prince” and “Prince Little Stuff” because of his completely bogus claims that he descended from Nepalese royalty. On top of that, Niroula had a hand in the implosion of SF’s New College thanks to his fake million-dollar promises and a fraudulent visa scam, and “Prince Little Stuff” also helped fake deeds to Rincon Hill condos so he could take out bogus loans on them, plus he bilked a woman in Hawaii out of $500,000.

And we haven’t even gotten to the gruesome murder part. Niroula was one member of the five-man “gay grifters” cabal that murdered 74-year-old Palm Springs art gallery dealer Clifford Lambert by stabbing him in 2008, and the crew then hid his body (it was not found until 2017). SF Weekly wrote in 2009 that the crew conspired to “fraudulently sell Lambert's house, loot his bank and investment accounts, steal his Mercedes sports car, and truck away his collection of fine art.”

If this sounds like it would make a delicious episode of NBC’s Dateline, it will do just that this coming Friday night, according to the Bay Area Reporter. In fact, this Friday night's episode of Dateline will be a two-hour installment called "The Prince, The Whiz Kid & The Millionaire."

The trailer for the episode can be seen here, and there’s also an exclusive preview snippet.

The episode appears to be largely based on SF author Tyson Wrensch's co-written 2013 book Until Someone Gets Hurt, and Wrensch apparently features prominently in the episode.

“I couldn't be more excited that Dateline not only chose to do this story, but after five years of production roadblocks thrown at NBC News by these con men and the justice system itself, the cautionary tale can finally be told to the world,” Wrensch told the Bay Area Reporter.

The two-hour Dateline episode "The Prince, The Whiz Kid & The Millionaire"  will air Friday, October 10, from 9-11 pm and locally on NBC Bay Area’s KNTV Channel 11.

Related: Disbarred SF Attorney Sentenced to Life In Prison For His Role In Murderous 2008 ‘Gay Grifters’ Scandal [SFist]

Image: NBC Universal

Despite some decent reviews, Steph Curry's first foray into live-action scripted television content is getting wiped off the slate at NBC and Peacock.

The mockumentary-style show, Mr. Throwback, stars Curry as himself in a fictional scenario in which his good friend and former grade-school basketball teammate Danny, played by Adam Pally, comes back into his life for selfish reasons — he's a down-on-his-luck sports memorabilia dealer and he wants some of Curry's game-used uniforms to sell to get out of debt. But the two find an unlikely friendship as adults, and the comedy gets some boosts from co-stars Ego Nwodim (SNL), who plays Curry's loyal assistant, and Ayden Mayeri (I Love That for You), playing Pally's ex-wife.

As The Hollywood Reporter is reporting today, Mr. Throwback is getting thrown back in the dustbin of TV obscurity after just six episodes in large part because it failed to capture much of an audience. The show debuted strong last August, just days before Curry played on the US men's basketball team at the Paris Olympics — which also aired on Peacock, and Curry even made a Mr. Throwback reference on air while at a game, with Adam Pally on the sidelines.

"NBCUniversal executives lost their minds over the moment of true corporate synergy," THR quips.

But the show failed to crack the Nielsen Streaming Top 10, and even putting the show on a broadcast network — it aired on NBC in September — didn't drum up enough interest, according to executives.

The show still enjoys an 86% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but THR itself gave it a middling review when it debuted, saying, it "ends up with the wrong percentage of taking-itself-seriously," and "never quite lives up to Curry’s charm or pedigree."

Curry's Unanimous Media has its mission to "develop, create, and distribute compelling family-, faith-, and sports-based content for all," and Mr. Throwback was their first attempt at live-action fiction content on the television side. Next February, coinciding with the NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles, Unanimous Media's feature-length, animated sports comedy film GOAT will be having its premiere, but details on that have yet to be shared. We do know that Tyree Dillihay, an Emmy-nominated director of Bob’s Burgers, is directing.

The company previously released an animated reboot of Good Times, last April on Netflix, and the documentary series Black Pop, in addition to the Apple TV+ documentary about Steph Curry, Underrated, and the Oscar-nominated documentary short, The Queen of Basketball, about the first woman ever drafted by the NBA, Lusia Harris.

Unanimous Media is one of multiple business entities that fall under Curry's Thirty Ink banner, and that company had plans to build a new headquarters in SF's Dogpatch which were abruptly called off this month in what may be part of a negotiation with a carpenters' union.

Previously: Steph Curry to Star In New NBC Sitcom 'Mr. Throwback'

The SF-set musical TV show Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist is doing a Bay to Breakers episode Sunday night, likely without much nudity or drunkenness. But Bernadette Peters is involved!

The NBC television show premiered last year (January 2020) and is set in San Francisco, and the premise is that the main character is having some kind of mental health aberration in which she experiences other peoples' innermost thoughts as musical numbers. We kind of lost track of this series after the pandemic hit, but we are pretty intrigued with the news today from the Chronicle’s Datebook section that Sunday’s episode of this “musical dramedy” will be a Bay to Breakers episode. SFist scoured through the publicity stills and information available online about the episode, and it does not appear it will feature any of the nudity, drunkenness, peeing in public, or Stanley Roberts catching people in the act of such shenanigans for which the race is known.

First, we’ll note that it appears that this episode was not shot in San Francisco, though the show is supposed to take place here. The Chronicle's report says that the series “is largely filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia,” and as Hoodline earlier noted, they only do occasional exterior shoots here. The IMDB entry for this episode does not list locations, but some website called Celebzz.com has shots of the Bay to Breakers scene that verify that this scene was shot in Vancouver. The IMDB still photos of the episode show no evidence of San Francisco, but they do show that Tony Award winner Bernadette Peters makes a cameo, and her vocal skills are certainly worth tuning in for.

The trailer for the episode is a mere 15 seconds, and it indicates that there is definitely a Bay to Breakers scene, though the episode is not necessarily Bay to Breakers-centric. The Bay to Breakers scene is clearly a musical number. The story arc appears to be more about a double date gone awkwardly, with the clip ending with one of the women on the double date saying to the two men, “You two have a little bit of weird history, don’t you?” (Please let them be former gay lovers! Please let them be former gay lovers!)

Digging though more clues, the show’s Facebook post above indicates that there will be a Queen song done as a musical number. An Entertainment Weekly interview with the show’s choreographer Mandy Moore asks Moore about “a scene in which Zoey (Jane Levy) sees the Bay to Breakers crowd of runners perform a Heart song,” and Moore says “It was 40 to 50 dancers, but then we had 150 extras or background, and then our cast on top of that.” The scene was shot during COVID-19, but the show does not appear to acknowledge the pandemic.

And hey, what about Bay to Breakers this year? Last we’d heard, they pushed it out to August but were still planning an in-person 2021 race. That statement is no longer operable, and they’ve backtracked to a virtual race again (which registrants can run anytime May 16 to June 2). As such, SFist sees no need to do our annual Bay to Breakers Liquor Store Map this year.

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist airs Sunday night, May 2, at 9 p.m. PT on KNTV 11, and will be available on Hulu and Peacock the following day.

Related: Photos: Bay to Breakers Battles Rain With ‘Game of Thrones,’ Elizabeth Holmes Costumes [SFist]

Images: NBC / Lionsgate

San Francisco -- being like that pretty girl who sits by herself in the lunchroom and doesn't get a ton of attention outside her AP classes -- gets excited when she's given a chance to shine in the prime time limelight. But NBC's Trauma which premieres in two weeks and which we've all watched in the making here in SF all summer long, may not be long for this world. SF Citizen points us to this blurb by a NY Daily News critic who's had a sneak peak at the show and writes it off saying "we've all seen this before." There's also this poll on HubDub in which people have placed Trauma second only to Accidentally on Purpose as being one of the first new shows likely to get canceled this season. (SF Citizen also points to the irony of our city being one of the only ones without a hospital helipad or medical helicopter trauma unit largely due to the efforts of these rich NIMBYs.)

We at SFist feel no one should underestimate the American public's appetite for vapid procedural dramas involving explosions and blood, but maybe that's cynical of us. We at least want the show to survive long enough to air the nightclub trampling episode involving multiple local drag queens which was shot last week at Great American Music Hall.

We'd now like to point you to this story of a little girl from Los Gatos, Erica Rix, who was on the Today show this morning telling Matt Lauer about the hand she had to have sewn back on after a freak accident last year. It seems Erica was dangling a jump-rope out the window of her mom's SUV (naughty!) with a slip-knot around her wrist, and when the rope became tangled in the car's axle it ripped her little hand right off. Doctors were able to reattach it, and a year and a dozen surgeries later, Erica can wave, bend her wrist and move her thumb.

Obviously this should be a cautionary tale to everyone who may have forgotten the rules about dangling things out of cars. But with that new "mood meter" functionality on NBC Bay Area's site where readers can say whether they're "thrilled" or "furious" or "laughing" about this story, it seems the site's readers are showing a distinct lack of sympathy for the poor tyke.

Currently 29% of them are "laughing" about this story and 14% are "furious," we suppose with the mother? Or still furious with Erica a year after the fact and think she should be punished? Anyhow, embedded polls... not always appropriate. Discuss.

UPDATE: As of today (9/9/09 at 2:04 p.m.), fully 42% are "laughing" at this story, with only 45% "thrilled," and 6% have the gall to say they're "bored"!

San Francisco First Lady Jennifer Siebel on the set right now at Laguna Honda hospital portraying "mildly-injured but unsullied car crash vixen" for the NBC pilot Trauma. The show will be directed by executive produced Jeffrey Reiner (NBC's Friday Night Lights).

Also, next week on March 28, a tanker truck filled with gasoline will slam into two other cars on I-280 near the King Street onramp. According to Sam Spade SF, "the truck will erupt in a fireball and send thick clouds of smoke billowing into the air. Multiple helicopters will be buzzing about overhead." It's all about of Trauma's pilot episode.

Former NBC 11 on-air talent Traci Grant is suing NBC Universal, Inc., as well as NBC 11 assistant news director Mark Neerman, for punitive damages on counts of disability discrimination, failure to accommodate disability, and harassment on the basis of disability. Why? Well, according to Grant's suit, NBC allegedly let her go because of her epilepsy. (Grant suffered from two epileptic seizures between July and October 2007 while working for NBC 11.)

The "36-year-old African American Female" claims that the the Defendants perceived her as mentally disabled when they made the decision not to renew her contract for 2008. According to the suit, Grant met with the Neerman and Human Resource Manager, Judy Betro, and was reportedly told,"you have been sick and because you have had to take a number of sick days and because you have seizures at work, we find you unreliable to do this job." While she was given the opportunity to do another job, the suit goes on to say, that job would've been a demotion, effectively cut her paycheck in half.

Also, in an email Betro sent to Grant, the former reporter was asked "are there better jobs for which you qualify that can better address your limitations or restrictions?" Ouch.

Also, what if you saw a reporter experience a seizure while live on-air? Obviously, it would freak you out, but then what -- would you be upset? compassionate? pissed that the station let it happen? fine with it? too uncomfortable to ever watch NBC 11 again? would you send a nice letter of support, or heartlessly make it into your LJ icon?

Students at Encinal High School walked out of their classrooms today in response to proposed budget cuts. Last night the school board held a tense meeting that went well into the wee hours of the morning, voting to increase class sizes by cutting advanced placement classes, most high school sports, music in the elementary schools, and counselors in the middle schools, reports NBC 11. Students walked out today, marching straight over to the school district's headquarters. They carried signs reading "No Us No Future," "No Sports No School" and "You're Tearing Down Our Future." According to the high school principal:

When NBC11's Ethan Harp asked the principal if he thought students would go back to class.

He said, "Would you go back to class if you were 16 years old and out in this beautiful day?"

Nice. Wish we had that kind of principal growing up. Anyway, student body president Ian Merrifield goes on to tell NBC11 that the students have no plans of returning to class today. And there were, alas, no Frank Chu spottings.

Photo: NBC 11

Billion-dollar expansion work at Mineta San Jose International Airport came to a halt this morning after a 28-year-old construction worker's arms were severed below his elbows in an accident. Yikes.

According to NBC 11, "the 28-year-old construction worker somehow became entangled in the equipment that drives long posts into the ground with quick movements, the San Jose Mercury News reported." It appears that the accident involved pile driving work for "a new roadway just south of the Terminal A garage at the north end of the airport."

Construction work will stop today and tomorrow while an investigation is underway.