English Entertainment
Zee English to launch ‘Caroline in the city’
MUMBAI: After nearly three months of lull, Zee English has finally decided to unveil a new launch. Starting 8 September, the channel will premiere NBC sitcom Caroline in the City at 9 pm.
Replacing yet another NBC show, the Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser starrer Mad About You, Caroline… is based on life of Caroline Duffy (Lea Thompson, Back to the Future), an accomplished cartoonist searching for love and happiness or, at least, some good material for her weekly comic strip. The strip tittled ‘Caroline in the City’ gets transformed into a merchandising goldmine, with an array of greeting cards, books and calendars.
Created by Barron/Pennette Productions and Three Sisters Entertainment in association with CBS Entertainment Productions, the show is produced by Fred Barron (Dave’s World, The Larry Sanders Show), Marco Pennette (Dave’s World) and David Nichols (Grace Under Fire ).
Other characters in the sitcom include Eric Lutes(Frasier ), as Del Cassidy, Caroline’s sometime boyfriend and fiancé, who owns the greeting card company that produces “Caroline in the City” cards, Andy Lauer (21 Jump Street ) as Charlie, Del’s bizarre messenger/delivery person, Amy Pietz (Muscle ) as Annie Spadaro, Caroline’s best friend and next door neighbour, a Broadway actress with an offbeat dating life that is chronicled in the strip, Malcolm Gets (Mrs. Parker ,Vicious Circle ) as Richard Karinsky, the struggling, brooding artist who pays his rent by working as her cartoon colorist and Tom LaGrua as Remo, proprietor of the neighborhood restaurant.
The show when premiered on NBC in the 1995-1996 was the number one primetime series. With its second season, it established itself as a bona fide hit, giving NBC its best Tuesday rating at 9-9:30 pm in seven years. Caroline in… was a consistently top-rated, primetime comedy, and an integral part of NBC’s popular ‘Must-She TV’ Monday night line-up. In addition, Caroline… has become one of the top-selling US comedies worldwide, airing on leading foreign broadcast and cable networks.
Following its popularity in US, the Indian premier on Star World enjoyed a successful but brief stint. Inspired by the show, Star Plus had also launched a show Krishna Sharma CA starring Shraddha Nigam, which unfortunately did not enjoy a good run and had to be revamped.
The distinctive illustrations of cartoonist Bonnie Timmons, which accent each episode of the series, won an Emmy Award in 1996 for “Outstanding Individual Achievement in Graphic Design and Title Sequences.”
English Entertainment
Ellison takes his Paramount-Warner Bros case straight to theater owners
The Skydance chief goes to CinemaCon with promises and a skeptical crowd waiting
CALIFORNIA: David Ellison strode into a room packed with thousands of cinema owners and executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday and did something rather bold: he looked them in the eye and asked them to trust him.
The chief executive of Paramount Skydance vowed that his company would release a minimum of 30 films a year if regulators greenlight its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has made theater owners deeply, and loudly, nervous.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison told the crowd. “Once we combine with Warner Bros, we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually across both studios.”
It was a confident pitch. Whether it landed is another matter. Cinema operators have already called on regulators to block the deal, and scepticism in the room was hardly concealed.
Ellison pushed back by pointing to recent form. Paramount, born from the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media last August, plans to release 15 films this year, nearly double the eight it put out in 2025. Progress, he argued, was already underway.
He also threw theater owners a bone they have long been chasing: all films, he pledged, would run exclusively in cinemas for a minimum of 45 days, drawing applause from a crowd that has spent years fighting for exactly that commitment across the industry.
“People can speculate all they want,” Ellison said, “but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment. And we’ll show you we mean it.”
Fine words. The regulators, however, will have the last one.
