While the wedding of Great Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton is still 11 days away, tonight's premiere of Lifetime's "William & Kate" at 8 p.m. can be seen as the opening act in the American TV story.
Morning network news shows have already been preparing their audiences -- which become more heavily female after 8 a.m. -- with features and promotions for the upcoming nuptials. This is obviously a story targeting women, especially women planning their own wedding and looking for those little touches that may come from this ceremony.
And those promoting the story are obviously trying to recapture a fairytale atmosphere that existed on the small screen three long decades ago.
Frankly, it's not there. This is a story that lacks real romantic drama. Kate's an attractive woman and William is, well, second in line to replace Queen Elizabeth. So there's a natural story there.
But Lifetime's attempt to turn the story into a two-hour movie shows the difficulty. It's the story of a pair of college chums who begin a romance complicated by those darn tabloid photographers. But there's little tension in the story, despite the best efforts of the writers.
Plus, the magic of a royal romance has pretty much been done in by the tragic endings of the the big one: Charles and Diana. The first ending, of course, was the collapse of the marriage in public bitterness. The second, the death and very public funeral of Diana, which book-ended the elaborate coverage of her storybook wedding.
Still, one of the basic rules of TV is that everything is a big deal today, a bigger deal than ever before, so the networks and news channels are planning pretty elaborate coverage of the festivities.
If it's a topic you're interested in, BBC America's probably the best place to follow the story, with specials and plenty of live commercial-free coverage planned for the big day.
Even Turner Classic Movies is getting in the game though, airing a wedding night marathon starting at 7 p.m. on April 29 with 1951's "Royal Wedding."
Here's a scene from Lifetime's "William & Kate," which premieres tonight at 8:
On TV: Tonight's airing of PBS' "American Masters" at 8 p.m. on Channel 10 looks at "John Muir in the New World" and features reenactments filmed on location in Wisconsin, and a number of Wisconsinites in front of and behind the camera. Lawrence University Prof. Peter Peregrine plays Muir's father, and Lawrence senior Mark Hirsch plays the naturalist as a University of Wisconsin student.
- As expected, ABC is killing two of its remaining soaps: "All My Children" ends in September and "One Life to Live" ends in January. "General Hospital" will be the sole ABC soap.
- Former Channel 4 anchor Contessa Brewer revealed in a conversation with Martin Bashir on her MSNBC show that she's four months pregnant.
- BET has ordered new seasons of "The Game" and "Let's Stay Together," at 22 episodes each.
- Nickelodeon has ordered a fifth season of "iCarly."
- Last Thursday's premiere of NBC's "Paul Reiser Show" was the network's lowest rated comedy premiere ever, with Nielsen Media Research counting 3.3 million viewers.
A personal report from Robert MacNeil: "PBS NewsHour" veteran Robert MacNeil returns to the newscast tonight to start a series called "Autism Now," that came from his personal experiences with his grandson, Nick. It airs tonight at 6 on Channel 36, but here's an advance look of the first of six installments:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
