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CBS revives Murphy Brown


Brock
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13 hours ago, LittleRickyII said:

Do you remember anything about Lou's office set?  There's a strange thing about that set that makes it appear that the wall between Lou's office and the newsroom was movable.  In the scenes inside that office, the wall is angled towards the right, apparently so that the studio audience has good visibility of Lou's office (and I've read that Lou's office was at the far end of the stage, so that would make sense).  But in scenes in the newsroom, the wall is angled towards the left.  So it seems they would swing the wall back and forth depending on whether they were filming a scene inside Lou's office or in the newsroom.  In some episodes they have to go back and forth repeatedly between the newsroom and Lou's office, which would mean an a lot of swinging of that wall.  I would think that would be very distracting for someone sitting in the studio audience because they would have had to repeatedly stop filming every time they need to move the wall.  Does any of this ring a bell?

I think I read  about this over on Ken Levine's blog recently and it was a movable wall. 

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"Movable walls" are not uncommon and have gone back decades, perhaps mostly for the set adjacent to the swing set. Saw a "Laverne & Shirley" back in the day and if memory serves (probably doesn't), it was the kitchen set (original basement apartment) wall that moved to accommodate the large bar set next to it for the "Lucy-like" block comedy scene, which included a fight in the bar, including a bit where they ended up in a ship-like crows nest!

It was the 5th season episode called "What Do you Do With A Drunken Sailor" featuring Ed Begley Jr. as Shirley's brother and aired October 18, 1979. ;)

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  • 4 months later...

Well, it was fun while it lasted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/arts/murphy-brown-canceled-cbs.html

Contrary to what those charming folks at Fox News had to say, the show was not a "ratings disaster" and didn't get the axe until about four months after its death was falsely reported. I can only assume that the ratings, while pretty good (certainly significantly better than Will & Grace this year) didn't justify the production costs for the show, which were probably pretty big. Also, I got the impression that after Les Moonves got the boot, CBS lost interest in the show. This is the saddest I've ever been at a TV show's cancellation for a variety of reasons. I can only imagine how the cast and crew must feel. 

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I haven't seen any of the new episodes, nor much of the original run, but I am sorry they're not giving it another chance. When done right, multicams can be so good, and cancellations like this only fuel the argument that it's an outmoded form of entertainment that deserves to be supplanted by single-cams, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. 

If anything, it's a shame Will & Grace is still coming back for another season when Murphy Brown and The Cool Kids aren't. My opinion on that show has soured for a variety of reasons (including the complete loss of whatever comedic timing Debra Messing once possessed), and I'm not that wild about the original episodes anymore either, but the new batch has really lost my interest. With one exception, I can't think of any episodes this season that I truly enjoyed. I haven't even watched the last five and currently have no desire to. 

To quote the late Brandon Tartikoff, "Situation comedy is not dead, it just has to be done better."

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