Tarantino may join "Justified" / "ALF" returns to streaming / Iglesias joins NBC's "Hungry" / CBS "Cal Fire" update

Plus the weekend calendar, "Severance" on Apple TV+, "Grey's Anatomy" cast shake-up, "Sort Of" renewed, and more

Inside.com Part of   Network February 25, 2022

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is in talks to direct some episodes of the upcoming FX "Justified" revival series. The new series is based on the Elmore Leonard novel "City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit," and will feature Timothy Olyphant reprising his role as US Marshal Raylan Givens. More: Tarantino and Olyphant recently collaborated on the film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." This would also mark Tarantino's return to the work of Elmore Leonard, whose novel "Rum Punch" inspired the writer/director's 1997 film "Jackie Brown." The new show rejoins Givens after an eight-year break, and finds him living in Miami and raising his 14-year-old daughter part-time. VARIETY

Shout! Factory picked up the distribution rights for the '80s sitcom "ALF" and plans to bring the series to digital platforms in the US. Lionsgate previously controlled the "ALF" rights and had streamed the show via Tubi, but this agreement ended in 2021. More: Shout! acquired the full 102-episode run of the "ALF" live-action series along with the TV movie "Project: ALF" and two animated shows, "ALF: The Animated Series" and "ALF Tales." The company is also planning to develop new digital media content around the familiar alien character. "ALF" centered on a wise-cracking alien named Gordon Shumway who moves in with the everyday suburban Tanner family; the titular acronym stands for "Alien Life Form." An "ALF" reboot was in development at Warner Bros. TV in 2018 but the project has since stalled out. DEADLINE

WEEKEND CALENDAR FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25 TYLER PERRY'S A MADEA HOMECOMING: This comedy from writer/director Tyler Perry is the 12th film in the "Madea" franchise and his first since formally retiring the character in "A Madea Family Funeral." Perry once again stars as Mabel "Madea" Simmons, who's planning a celebratory dinner for her great-grandson's college graduation. Cassi Davis-Patton, David Mann, Tamela Mann, Brendan O'Carroll, and Jennifer Gibney co-star. [Netflix] VIKINGS: VALHALLA: Sequel series to History's "Vikings," set 100 years later, during a time of conflicts between the Vikings and the English, as well as Christianity and paganism. Sam Corlett, Bradley Freegard, Frida Gustavsson, Laura Berlin, Caroline Henderson, and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson co-star. [Netflix] JUVENILE JUSTICE: Debut legal drama series from South Korea, starring Kim Hye-soo as a cold and aloof judge who's put in charge of a juvenile court, despite her inability to connect with young people. Kim Mu-yeol and Lee Sung-min co-star. [Netflix] BACK TO 15 (DE VOLTA AOS 15): Portuguese-language fantasy-drama series from Brazil, starring Camila Queiroz as a 30-year-old who returns to her hometown for her sister's wedding, then finds herself magically transported back in time to when she was just 15, and transformed back into her teenage self (Maisa Silva). [Netflix] MERLÍ. SAPERE AUDE: Teen drama series from Spain, spun off from a previous series, "Merlí," and centered on Pol Rubio (Carlos Cuevas) as he goes to university, following in the footsteps of his favorite high school teacher. [Netflix] RESTLESS (SANS RÉPIT): Franck Gastambide stars in this French thriller as a corrupt police officer whose life spirals out of control after he begins receiving anonymous threats from a witness to his crimes. Cinematographer Régis Blondeau makes his directorial debut with this film. [Netflix] THE AMBER RUFFIN SHOW: The late-night comedy talk series -- featuring a combination of sketches and monologues -- returns for the second half of its second season this week. [Peacock] LAW & ORDER: The original NBC procedural drama series that launched the franchise is back for a 21st season, with its first new episodes since 2010. Sam Waterston and Anthony Anderson reprise their roles as DA Jack McCoy and Detective Kevin Bernard; new cast members include Jeffrey Donovan, Hugh Dancy, Camryn Manheim, and Odelya Halevi. New episodes debut Thursdays on NBC and come to both Hulu and Peacock on Fridays. [Hulu and Peacock] NO EXIT: Thriller from director Damien Power ("Killing Ground"), starring Havana Rose Liu as a college student who's stranded at an isolated highway rest stop during a blizzard with a number of strangers, one of whom is hiding a dark secret. Danny Ramirez, David Rysdahl, Dale Dicky, and Dennis Haysbert co-star. [Hulu] RENO 911! DEFUNDED: New season of the mockumentary series, parodying law enforcement reality shows, featuring 11 30-minute episodes. Regulars Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Niecy Nash, Cedric Yarbrough, Carlos Alazraqui, Ian Roberts, Joe Lo Truglio, Mary Birdsong, and Wendi McLendon-Covey all return; George Lopez, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and Jamie Lee Curtis guest star. [Roku] VAN GO: Reality series from Magnolia starring Chewy Design Co. founder Brett Lewis, who transforms ordinary vans into tiny custom homes on wheels. Season 2 hits Discovery+ today. [Discovery+] THE FRENCH DISPATCH: 2021 anthology comedy film from writer/director Wes Anderson, following correspondents for the French foreign bureau of the fictional Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun as they prepare the newspaper's final issue. The cast includes Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Jeffrey Wright, Bill Murray, and Owen Wilson. It debuted at the Cannes Film Festival. [HBO Max] THE PROTÉGÉ: 2021 revenge action-thriller from "Casino Royale" director Martin Campbell, starring Maggie Q as a skilled assassin who's hunting down her mentor's killers. Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton co-star. [Amazon] WAY OF THE CHEETAH: Nature documentary from National Geographic, following a female cheetah in Kenya who's raising five cubs in a territory dominated by a coalition of male siblings. [Disney+] SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27 SUPER PUMPED: THE BATTLE FOR UBER: Scripted drama series, based on the 2019 book by Mike Isaac, following the dramatic rise and fall of Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who was ultimately ousted following a number of public controversies and a boardroom coup. Kyle Chandler, Kerry Bishé, Hank Azaria, Elisabeth Shue, and Arianna Huffington co-star; Quentin Tarantino provides narration. The show -- an anthology of controversial stories from the world of business -- has been renewed for a second season, which will focus on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. [Showtime]

Iglesias, McPartlin and Burrows of "Hungry" CASTING UPDATES HUNGRY: The new multi-camera comedy from star and executive producer Demi Lovato added Gabriel Iglesias and Ryan McPartlin as series regulars. As well, sitcom vet James Burrows will direct the pilot. The series -- from writer/producer Suzanne Martin ("Will & Grace") -- centers on a group of friends who met through a support group for people with food issues. Valerie Bertinelli, Alex Brightman, and Ashley D. Kelley have also been cast. [NBC / Peacock] CAL FIRE: Max Theriot formally signed on to take the lead role in the CBS drama pilot, which he also produces and co-wrote. It's unknown if the actor plans to depart the cast of Paramount+'s "SEAL Team" or balance his time between the two shows. "Cal Fire" centers on an ex-con who joins a firefighting program as a way to shorten his sentence; it was inspired by Theriot's experiences growing up in Northern California's fire country. [CBS / Paramount+] GREY'S ANATOMY: Deadline reported that Richard Flood, who has portrayed Dr. Cormac Hayes in the medical drama series for three seasons, plans to step away within the next few weeks; ABC and Shondaland declined to comment on the story. [ABC / Hulu] BIG SKY: Bernard White joins the mystery drama series for the second half of its second season in a recurring role as cartel kingpin Verr Bhullar, the father of Season 2 heavies Ren (Janina Gavankar) and Jag (Vinny Chhibber) Bhullar. The series is based on the books by C.J. Box, and stars Kylie Bunbury and Katheryn Winnick as private investigators Cassie Dewell and Jenny Hoyt. [ABC / Hulu]

REVIEW: "SEVERANCE" ON APPLE TV+ Apple TV+'s new very dark, very sad corporate thriller "Severance" centers around a dystopian sci-fi premise that feels almost like a collision of Phillip K. Dick and Charlie Kaufman's sensibilities. We follow employees of the high-tech Lumen Corporation, which has developed a way to surgically divide people's minds. When they're at home, they recall nothing about what happens when they're at the office, and once they've taken the elevator down to Lumen's basement "Severed Floor," they remember nothing about the world outside its walls. This obviously comes with some initial benefits for the "Outies" -- the portion of staffer's minds that gets to experience the outside world. For those sides of their minds, it feels like not having to put in a day's work at all; they show up to the Lumen office, take the elevator down, and a moment later, they emerge ready to start their evening. In particular, our mild-mannered protagonist Mark (Adam Scott) has suffered a crippling emotional tragedy in the "real world," and waits impatiently for the chance to go to work and forget the reality of his actual life. The scenario, overall, isn't quite as satisfying for the "Innies," the versions of employees who never get to experience the world outside of their jobs. They're stuck in a prison of their own creation, a string of endless workdays broken up only by the process of getting ready to leave for the day and then re-arriving, and maybe the occasional corporate-sponsored waffle party. Newcomer Helly (Britt Lower) notes that it's impossible to even tell if a weekend has passed. Friday night just seamlessly transitions back into Monday morning, and you have to try and notice if your body feels rested up. Their one saving grace is total ignorance about the world outside and the lives being enjoyed by their "Outies"; they get to just imagine that their toil is productively benefitting their counterpart. There's a lot of meat to dig on here, and the scripts (from first-time series creator Dan Erickson) ask a lot of probing, existential questions about the connections between memory and identity, and the meaning of "work." Are the "Outies" and "Innies," in any meaningful way, the same person, even though they don't share any memories and experiences, or are they just two totally separate identities occupying the same body? Since the "Innies" can't choose to leave, are they functionally slaves of Lumen Corp., even though their counterparts opt to show back up to work every day? When their "Outies" do find another job, and stop coming to work at Lumen, is this functionally the same as dying for the no-longer-accessed "Innies"? And so forth. There are more than enough weird and challenging segments rooted in these ideas to make "Severance" a compelling watch, and director Ben Stiller has brought a chilling, minimalist aesthetic to the whole enterprise, landing somewhere in the middle of a realistic office environment and a nightmarish, inescapable business-themed afterlife. Still, it's much stronger when considering the larger implications of its sci-fi premise than it is as a satire of 2022 work culture or actual life in a cubicle. The show seeks to function on both levels at once, it seems, but it's a bit too broad and surreal to really serve as an incisive look at the nature of modern work. We can relate to Mark and Helly's dilemma at its existential core; who am I if I don't know anything about my life, and I seemingly exist just to complete mundane tasks? But even though real cubicle life can feel boring and suffocating, in reality, it's more numbing and self-negating than directly panic-inducing. I've certainly hated office jobs before, but I'm not sure "Severance" so much captures the stifling suffocation of sitting behind one of these desks for 8 hours, so much as the constant nagging horror of being alive and having self-awareness. Staffers with brain implants being taken to rooms where their spirits are routinely crushed so they can get back to data entry, suffering waking dreams where black goo seeps over their cubicle walls and threatens to asphyxiate them, these are potent images from a sci-fi thriller, but I wouldn't say they reminded me of my last office gig. In some ways, I can't help but feel like Stiller -- a guy who was famous in his early 20s and probably has not had a terrific amount of office jobs like these -- lacked the daily, quotidian insight into how it feels to be a cog in a big multinational machine, and went for big memorable imagery and archetypes instead. "Severance" is a fascinating show with a lot of good ideas, and a melancholy take on the dual nature of consciousness; it's a dread-inducing nightmare, but also the only way we have of experiencing the world around us. I'm just not sure it's ALSO a particularly adroit send-up of work culture in 2022 America. But hey, that's asking a lot. THE BASICS Title: "Severance" Where to Watch: Apple TV+ Episodes: 3 so far (Season 1) Running time: About 60 minutes each Genre: Sci-fi thriller

HBO Max and CBC renewed the comedy series "Sort Of" for a second season. Bilal Baig co-created the show and also stars as Sabi, a gender-fluid millennial balancing a number of identities, from sexy bartender to youngest child of a large Pakistani family. More: The series debuted at the 2021 Toronto Film Festival, and then hit HBO Max in November of last year. "Save Me" vet Fab Filippo co-created the series with Baig; the two serve as showrunners together. DEADLINE

Netflix released a teaser for the upcoming second season of the anime series "Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045." The series is set within the "Ghost in the Shell" franchise's "Stand Alone Complex" continuity. More: Season 1 debuted in April of 2020, and received relatively poor ratings from both audiences and critics. The series revolves around the counter-terrorist group Public Security Section 9, who are now operating as private mercenaries under the leadership of fully prosthetic cyborg Motoko Kusanagi. Season 2 will premiere on Netflix in May. SLASHFILM

QUICK HITS Now you can build your own commercial real estate investment portfolio and trade individual buildings like stocks.* "Squid Game" star Lee Jung-Jae signed with CAA for representation as a director, producer, and actor; Lee is the first-ever male TV actor to earn a SAG Award nomination for an entirely non-English language role. Actor Sally Kellerman, who was Oscar-nominated for her performance as Maj. Margaret "Hot Lips" O'Houlihan in the 1970 film "M*A*S*H" and later appeared in a number of notable TV roles, passed away on Thursday at age 84. Filmmaker Bob Hercules ("Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise") is developing a documentary about late-night talk show icon Tom Snyder, in collaboration with the subject's daughter, Ann Marie Snyder. Actor Lauren Graham shared a clip of "Gilmore Girls" on Twitter earlier this week, initially sparking rumors of a new streaming revival; Graham later clarified that she had no new "Gilmore" news to share, and just "thought it was fun." Netflix announced the Brazilian comedy caper series "O Cangaceiro do Futuro," reuniting actor Edmilson Filho with frequent co-star Chandelly Braz and writer/producer Halder Gomes. Loop TV provides fully licensed TV content for businesses. Ditch cable and satellite. Switch to Loop TV for free. Sign up today.* *This is sponsored content

Lon Harris is the writer and editor of Inside Streaming and was the very first person to ever write an Inside newsletter. He lives in Los Angeles, California, and also writes about TV and film for Fandom, Screen Junkies, Rotten Tomatoes, Gamma Ray and others. Plus he has a Game of Thrones podcast called "Casterly Talk" and competes on The Movie Trivia Schmoedown as "The Professor." Editor Jonathan Harris is a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles.

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