Categories Life Poll Print Media

10 TV Shows With the Most Wasted Potential

Life

by Daniela Gama | Collider | April 10, 2023

Whether you binge-watch it or take it easy by watching an episode a day, cuddling up with a television series is one of the best ways to spend time and keep boredom at bay. Luckily for us viewers, tons of streaming services provide audiences with great watches. While some turn out to be really entertaining, offering viewers thought-provoking and entertaining narratives, others fall short of expectations.

Less often than we’d like, a TV show lives up to its true potential throughout its entire running time; a great series can indeed count on a very promising premise but end up disappointing viewers when it comes to its execution. From Dead Like Me to Heroes, Reddit analyzes which TV shows could’ve been better if only they went in another direction.

Continue reading 10 TV Shows With the Most Wasted Potential

Categories Life Poll Print Media

The Best Detective Shows of All Time

100 Best TV Detective Dramas of All Time

by Grant Suneson & Hristina Byrnes | 24/7 Wall St. | November 13, 2021

The detective show genre is one of the most popular on television. Audiences love the suspense and intrigue of hard-working detectives doggedly searching for clues to hunt down criminals and bring them to justice.

There have been hundreds of detective shows over the years, some much better than others. Some of these shows ran for well over a decade, while others became cult classics after just a few seasons on the air. To determine the 50 best detective shows in TV history, 24/7 Tempo considered audience reviews from the Internet Movie Database.

The best detective shows have redefined the genre, putting their own spin on what a detective show can be. Some are funny, some are dark and gritty, and some have psychologists, supernatural healers, and even murderers serving in the detective role.

The shows on this list are not just good detective series, many have gone down as some of the most popular and well-reviewed programs in all of television history. These are the 100 best TV detective dramas of all time:

Continue reading The Best Detective Shows of All Time

Categories Billions Video

VIDEO: Ranking Your Favorite Billions Character – March 5, 2021

Andy Staples Show Ranks Billions Characters

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | March 5, 2021

Andy and The Athletic’s Max Olson rank their favorite characters from the hit Showtime series, Billions. Damian Lewis gets some props not just about Billions, but about his previous NBC show Life. See where Axe ranks here:

 

Categories Billions Interviews Magazine Print Media

Industry Mag Staten Island Cover Story – July 19, 2020

Accents and How He Handled Overnight Fame

by Joel Keller | Industry Mag Staten Island | July 19, 2020

He may be an officer of the British Empire, but the London native is best known for playing Americans, including Bobby Axelrod in Billions.

Damian Lewis has been playing American characters on and off (mostly on) for 20 years, since he was cast as Maj. Dick Winters in the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. He’s played so many American characters that people are genuinely shocked to hear his natural west London-accented voice. He’s so used to it that sometimes he forgets to go back to his natural voice.

“I go get my groceries in an American accent,” he told ABC News in 2016. “And I get halfway through paying and I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m British, and I have no idea why I’m talking in an American accent to you, but I’ve been doing it all week.”

His American roles have been so prominent in his career that BBC America’s website actually has a listicle with the title “7 Roles Featuring Damian Lewis’ Real Accent.”

Suffice to say, playing American characters has been very good to Lewis. He won an Emmy in 2012 for his powerful turn playing war hero-turned-terrorist Nicholas Brody in the first season of Homeland, and since 2016, he’s played scheming billionaire Bobby Axelrod in another Showtime series, Billions. “Hello, I’m Damian Lewis, one of those pesky Brits,” he said somewhat apologetically when he went up to accept his Emmy.

Continue reading Industry Mag Staten Island Cover Story – July 19, 2020

Categories Band of Brothers Billions Forsyte Saga Homeland Life Messages Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Queen of the Desert Run This Town Spy Wars The Forsyte Saga Wolf Hall

Binge Worthy Series and Movies Featuring Damian Lewis – March 18, 2020

Self-Quarantine with Damian

by Gingersnap | damian-lewis.com | March 18, 2020

Coronavirus. CoVid-19. Pandemic. Social Distancing. Self-Isolation. Quarantine. Flatten the Curve. Stop the Spread. Stay the F Home. These words and phrases are flooding our everyday lives at home, at work, and as we go down the rabbit hole on social media.

If you’re looking for some escapist TV and movies during self-isolation, we’ve rounded up some of the best Damian-filled films and shows to binge, stream, or watch OnDemand. Let’s get started.

Homeland – Find it on Amazon Prime, Hulu, or Showtime OnDemand. Arguably one of the best television series with masterclass acting and storytelling. CIA officer Carrie Mathison (Clare Danes) fears and US Marine Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis)  is plotting a terrorist attack on America after being turned during his eight years held captive by al-Qaeda. It’s a compelling rollercoaster ride of red herrings, intrigue, politics and subterfuge.

Continue reading Binge Worthy Series and Movies Featuring Damian Lewis – March 18, 2020

Categories Life Poll Print Media

Picking Your Favorite Television Detective – Aug 11, 2019

‘Bleeding Cool’ Makes Their Picks

by Jeremy Konrad | Bleeding Cool | August 10, 2019

We here at Bleeding Cool love bringing you the latest news about comics, toys, movies, and of course, television. What you don’t know is that behind the scenes battles rage and arguments galore are settled on a daily basis. What are these about? The important things, like which Doctor is THE Doctor. Which Michael Scott quote rules them all. Is Twin Peaks ruined forever after the Showtime season. You know, the BIG questions. So, we decided to bring you our answers. This week, we pick our favorite television detectives of all-time. Some of our writers made their choices, let’s see if you agree with them.

Andy Wilson: Damian Lewis as Detective Charlie Crews — Life (NBC)

Life was what they took from him. Life is what he got back.” Falsely convicted, Det. Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) emerges from prison after 12 years and the recipient of a $50 million cash settlement and returns to his former job as an LAPD detective with a new zen attitude, an affinity for fresh fruit, and a secret side investigation to find out who set him up. Among those on his suspects list is the hero cop father of his new partner, who herself is kind of a mess, dealing with drug addiction and daddy issues. Life was an amazing show, cancelled too soon after only a season and a half– a victim of the 2007-08 Writers Strike. Crews was an amazing detective because of the quirks and new outlook he got while in prison. He was also single-mindedly focused in a way that was almost scary as he searched for… revenge? justice? We’ll never exactly know. But he’s the only cop who could ever get away with driving a Maserati Quattroporte riddled with bullet holes, or a custom Bentley Continental GT listening to a Buddhist tract on attachment to material possessions and say, “I am not attached to this car.” He was so chill, so zen, so focused. The writing on this show was fantastic, and it’s why Charlie Crews is the greatest tv detective.

Read the rest of the original article at Bleeding Cool

Categories Forsyte Saga Print Media

Ten Actors Who Shone Even Before They Were Stars – June 28, 2018

Damian Lewis: The Guy Has Been a Godsend to TV

by Matthew Gilbert | Boston Globe | June 28, 2018

Damian Lewis as Soames Forsyte & Gina McKee as his wife in the 2002 miniseries The Forsyte Saga

A lot of the TV actors and actresses we’ve come to love have a past. Turns out that before they could get a good table at an exclusive restaurant, they were nonetheless doing some fine work. Here are 10 examples of memorable early performances by now famous actors and actresses.

DAMIAN LEWIS

“The Forsyte Saga”

The guy has been a godsend to TV, with his work on “Homeland,” “Billions,” “Wolf Hall,” “Band of Brothers,” and a fine network procedural called “Life,” on which he played a cop released from prison on DNA evidence. I have a particular fondness for his work on “The Forsyte Saga,” a 2002-03 adaptation of John Galsworthy’s novels and a remake of a seminal late-1960s PBS series. It’s an engrossing literary soap about a wealthy family torn between passion and Victorian repression, with Lewis’s Soames Forsyte as the upholder of the latter. Lewis is ice cold, pale, and pathetic, as Soames clings to his Victorian delusions, stuffing his emotions down, his eyes a brutish blue. As his unloving wife, Irene, Gina McKee is perfection.

Read the rest of the original article at Boston Globe

Categories Band of Brothers Billions Fashion and Style Hamlet Hearts & Bones Homeland Interviews Life Magazine The Goat or Who is Sylvia? Theatre Wolf Hall

Rake Magazine Interview: A True Leading Man – Feb 15, 2018

Easy Company

by Tom Chamberlin | The Rake Magazine | February, 2018

Source: The Rake Magazine – Photo by: Kalle Gustafsson

In an exclusive interview with The Rake, Damian Lewis tells Tom Chamberlin why we all, in spite of ourselves, love an anti-hero.

Lewis – from Life to Homeland, Wolf Hall to Billions – has become the finest purveyor of modern drama’s moral ambiguities. In fact, writes Tom Chamberlin, if you can think of an actor who has influenced our golden age of television more than him, speak up…

Among the more ambiguous archetypes of the celluloid age, that of ‘leading man’ is perhaps the least defined. Far from the specific criteria of commedia dell’arte and melodrama, in which the characters are demarcated (bad guy = black hat and moustachioed, etc.), the leading man is purely subjective. Arguably he is the origin of celebrity, pulling screen presence into the limelight of fame. But the list of leading men over the years has shown that no colour, size, hair, manner or cultural identity has ever had dominion over the sobriquet. That is until Damian Lewis entered the fray. For Lewis is a man who, above anything else, is an exemplar of leadership and integrity at a time when the acting world could use a dose of it.

Damian Lewis takes charge of rooms when he enters them. Photoshoots with celebrities are often led by either the photographer, who squeezes every image he or she can from the available time; the stylist, whose job is to make sure a well-curated variety of clothes appears in the magazine; or the publicist, who tends to be the powerbroker. The ‘talent’ can often struggle through the day (except, of course, former Rake cover subjects), regarding the experience as a necessary nuisance. Not so with Mr. Lewis.

Continue reading Rake Magazine Interview: A True Leading Man – Feb 15, 2018

Categories Life Media Print Media

A Toast to the Greatest Cop Show Time Forgot – Sept 30, 2017

A Toast to the Greatest Cop Show Time Forgot

by Karen Han | The Daily Beast | September 30, 2017

Happy 10th, Life! On its tenth anniversary, it only seems fair to give Life another day in court.

Life is a difficult name to live up to. There’s the board game, there’s the cereal, there’s the thing itself—and then there’s the TV show. The series, created by Rand Ravich, ran for two seasons and a total of 32 episodes from September 2007 to April 2009. Over the course of its run, it didn’t quite seem to gain any real traction; much of what was said about it was less original observation and more comparison to other shows, specifically Monk and House, which also followed a procedural structure and featured a straight man/weird man routine. Unfortunately, Life hasn’t fared much better in the decade that’s passed since the pilot. The only context in which it’s been mentioned has—in a stroke of irony—been in reference to its generic name. But even just a quick survey of the show will make it clear that Life is far from generic.

The show centered on Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis), a detective recently reinstated after serving 12 years out of a life sentence for a triple murder he didn’t commit. He was partnered with Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi), a recovering alcoholic and drug addict working her way back into the good graces of the department. While the show followed the typical “cop show” template of solving a murder each week, it also set up a larger arc: that of Crews’ solo investigation into who’d actually committed the triple murder, and why he’d been set up to take the fall.

Continue reading A Toast to the Greatest Cop Show Time Forgot – Sept 30, 2017

Categories Broadcast Media Desire Media

Damian Lewis Brings British Quirk to Jaguar Short ‘Desire’, Hollywood Reporter, April 24, 2013

Damian Lewis Brings British Quirk to Jaguar Short ‘Desire’

Jaguar
Damian Lewis

The Emmy winner tells THR about his Sundance London collaboration with the automaker and his decision to put a humorous spin on the Bond-esque hero: “There’s not a lot of comedy in ‘Homeland.'”

Continue reading Damian Lewis Brings British Quirk to Jaguar Short ‘Desire’, Hollywood Reporter, April 24, 2013

Categories Media Personal and Family Life Print Media

Vogue Archive: No Place Like Homeland – Jan 20, 2015

Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory British Vogue Interview

by Staff | British Vogue | January 20, 2015

“Do you know, I think you might wear a suit better than any man I’ve ever met.” In the intimate and strangely forbidden confines of a lift at the National Theatre, Helen McCrory’s heavily made-up hazel eyes are drinking in her husband’s tall, tailored frame.

“Thank you,” he replies, faintly awkwardly, looking down at the same Tom Ford tuxedo he wore to accept the best actor Emmy award only last month. “Does this mean you want me to do all the washing-up for a week?”

A gypsy laugh bubbles up from deep inside McCrory’s tiny dancer’s body.

“No, my darling, of course not! Just the bedtime stories…”

It’s a rare day of togetherness and, despite a stoic, unwaveringly professional determination to get the photographs absolutely right – freezing winter winds notwithstanding – Mr and Mrs Damian Lewis are enjoying every minute of this short holiday from work and the parenting of their two children, Manon, six, and Gulliver, five. Curling herself into her husband, McCrory locks eyes with him as he puts a protective hand between her shoulder blades and gently rubs her slender back. They seem in a little world of their own on the top of Waterloo Bridge, talking quietly and constantly to each other, oblivious to both the photographer’s lens and the gawping Londoners who keep falling into the traffic in their astonishment at getting a real-life Homeland fix in the middle of the week.

When one frazzled woman with a pushchair stops dead in her tracks between the couple and the camera and stares, open-mouthed, at the nation’s favourite redhead as if he were a painting, they laugh tolerantly until she manages to pull herself together. This, after all, is their reality. And, for a couple who were recently invited to a state dinner for David Cameron at the White House and were sat not, as they had suspected, somewhere “between the kitchens and the loo” but on President Obama’s table, nothing is terribly surprising. “He did, yes. Yes, he did. He did say it was his favourite programme,” Lewis later admits, between hungry mouthfuls of chicken stew and gulps of red wine in a nearby South Bank brasserie.

Continue reading Vogue Archive: No Place Like Homeland – Jan 20, 2015