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John Peaslee, the writer and producer who worked alongside his longtime creative partner, Judd Pillot, on such sitcoms as Coach, Just Shoot Me!, According to Jim and Liv and Maddie, has died. He was 73.

Peaslee died Monday of natural causes at his home in Sherman Oaks, Pillot announced. The two had collaborated for 35 years.

“I will be forever thankful to the universe that I was with him for several hours that day, that I was able to hold his hand, recount all the stories — way too many to tell, but not nearly enough to fill the hole in my heart,” Pillot wrote on Instagram.

Peaslee and Pillot teamed on ABC’s Coach from 1989-93, on NBC’s Just Shoot Me! from 2002-03, on ABC’s According to Jim from 2005-09 and on Disney Channel’s Liv and Maddie from 2013-17.

The pair also created ABC’s A Whole New Ballgame,...

Television history is littered with failed sitcoms headlined by comedians that audiences seem to love — in the right show. Turn up in a stinker, however, and the shows are gone in a blink. Matthew Perry was great in Friends, but no one wanted Mr. Sunshine. Audiences adored McLean Stevenson in M*A*S*H but said goodbye to Hello Larry. Jon Cryer scored with Two and Half Men but was booted from his Extended Family this year.

Here are four more comedy stars who flopped multiple times while trying to get sitcoms off the ground…

1 Jason Bateman

Bateman received two well-deserved Emmy nominations for his performance as Michael Bluth in Arrested Development, recognition that came decades after his breakthrough as a Tiger Beat cover boy in Silver Spoons and The Hogan Family. In between, however, he starred in several sitcom flops that lasted a year or less, including It’s Your Move...

Spoiler Alert: The following story reveals details from Episode 4 of HBO Max’s And Just Like That...

The fate of the Sex and the City franchise favorite Stanford Blatch begins to unravel in the fourth episode of HBO Max’s And Just Like That, following the death of Willie Garson in late September of pancreatic cancer.

It’s not fair to say his exact fate has been revealed as of yet considering Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) bestie has departed the states for Tokyo for business reasons. This leaves endless possibilities for a proper plan to explain why Stanford will never be seen on the series again.

When we see Carrie in episode four titled, “Some of My Best Friends,” she has decided to sell off the home she shared with Mr. Big (Chris Noth) after his death in the premiere episode. She has now found solace at her famous Brownstone once again,...

[Warning: The below contains Major spoilers for And Just Like That…, Season 1, Episode 4, “Some of My Best Friends.”] HBO Max‘s Sex and the City sequel series And Just Like That… kicked things off on a seriously dark note, but the show’s latest installment, “Some of My Best Friends,” brought shreds of light back into Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) life. After deciding to sell her apartment following the death of Big (Chris Noth), Carrie seeks the professional help of Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury) who is an expert at selling New York real estate. The two women strike up an interesting friendship as the installment carries out, sharing personal stories about their love lives. (Credit: HBO Max) And it seems as though this budding relationship could bring Carrie forward in her life. “Seema is a very important character because she’s single,” showrunner Michael Patrick King tells TV Insider. “Nothing in our franchise ever said everybody should couple up ...

Spoiler Alert: This article contains details from the latest season two episode of And Just Like That. Dear John, please stop leaving poor Carrie letters. On Dec. 23, Sex and the City fans got another shocking surprise in the twisting saga of And Just Like That. In the episode "Some of My Best Friends," Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) took Mr. Big's (Chris Noth) ashes back to her old apartment—in a Barney's shopping bag she pulled out from storage. Walking his ashes into her old closet she gently placed the remains on a shelf as she told him, "Just until I figure out where you really want to be." Somberly, she stepped into...

It took roughly four months for Nirvana to become Nirvana.

You already know the mythology: Two duders about 100 miles outside of Seattle (Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic) recruited a Virginia-based drummer (Dave Grohl) and put out the band’s grungy second album, Nevermind, on Sept. 24, 1991. Then, in a Tasmanian Devil cyclone of flannel, cheerleaders, and ohwellwhatevernevermind, they redefined pop music for a couple of years as a crucible for angst. But in reality, as this new box set — which commemorates the record’s 30th anniversary by pairing the original...

Camille Saviola, whose many stage and TV roles included the Bajoran religious leader Kai Opaka in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the mother of the hapless Turtle in Entourage and characters in Nine and Chicago on Broadway, has died. She was 71.

Her death was announced on the Star Trek website WarpFactorTrek.com. Additional details were not immediately available.

Showbiz & Media Figures We’ve Lost In 2021 – Photo Gallery

Longtime friend and actor Harvey Fierstein tweeted: “She was a friend for 40 years who could always be counted on for a laugh, a shoulder or a kick in the ass. The Italian Godmother of Soul! Farewell.”

Actor Wilson Cruz, who said he performed with Saviola at many AIDS benefits over the years, tweeted: “What a presence this woman was! My heart is heavy. My love to Camille’s family and family of friends throughout the industry. She will be missed.”

A Bronx native...

“SNL” is back, now deep into its 46th season. The most recent new episode, which aired on Feb. 27, was hosted by Nick Jonas, who also acted as the musical guest. The cold open sketch saw cast member Aidy Bryant once again dress up as Ted Cruz for a game show in which contestants win the Covid-19 vaccine.

Since Donald Trump lost the election and is now all the way out of office, Alec Baldwin very well might be done playing Trump. He hasn’t appeared since the episode immediately after the election in November — he held up a little “Thank you” sign at the end of it.

But with Trump’s impeachment trial over — and once again making some TV appearances and speeches — it seems like it’s certainly possible he could pop back up on “SNL” at some point.

This week, on Saturday, March 6, there Will Not be a new episode of “SNL.

Martin Markinson, a producer and theater owner who took Torch Song Trilogy to Broadway and returned the venue now known as the Hayes Theatre to theatrical use, died Thursday, January 7 at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was 89.

Arlena Markinson, his wife of 58 years, said the cause of death was cancer. The producer had been battling the disease for two years.

In addition to the Tony-winning Torch Song Trilogy (1982), Markinson, over a five-decade career, produced such notable Broadway productions as The Gathering starring Hal Linden (2001), Honeymoon in Vegas, Gigi and the Gloria Estefan musical On Your Feet (2015), as well as George Gershwin Alone (2001), Getting and Spending (1998), Corpse! (1986), Peter Nichol’s Passion (1983), Ned and Jack (1981). He served as associate producer on Chicago (1975), Poor Murderer (1976), Some of My Best Friends (1977), Cheaters (1978) and Whoopee! (1979).

Another of Markinson’s contributions to Broadway: The 1979 purchase, with nephew Donald Tick, of what was then called the Little Theatre,...

Lee Wallace, who starred in several Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, died Dec. 20 in New York after along illness. He was 90.

Born Leo Melis in Brooklyn on July 15, 1930, he moved with his family to the Lower East Side. He later attended New York University and studied with Lee Strasberg, and Canada Lee, then joined the US Army.

Upon his discharge, he studied with Michael Howard. He did many years in the regional theatre, moving to Broadway and appearing in Zalman or the Madness of God, Grind, and Some of My Best Friends.

Roger Berlind Dies: 25-Time Tony-Winning Broadway Producer Of ‘Amadeus’, ‘Book Of Mormon’, ‘Mean Girls’ & 100-Plus Others Was 90

Wallace also appeared in such films as Batman, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, and Private Benjamin.

Survivors include actress Marilyn Chris, to whom he was married for 45 years; a son, Paul, and his family in Northern California.

Burial will be at Sharon Gardens Cemetery in Valhalla,...

Exclusive: The Sarah-Jane Stratford novel Radio Girls has been optioned by @nyindieguy productions’ Ira Deutchman. The book is a historical novel set in 1920’s London which combines actual events and characters with a fictional mystery at its center. It is based on the real-life character of Hilda Matheson, an MI5 agent during WWI who became an influential producer in the early days of BBC Radio. The story is told through the eyes of a young Canadian woman, who falls into a job at the BBC where she gets caught up in the conflict between Matheson and her more conservative male superior. Along the way she unearths a conspiratorial plot with enormous consequences and potential danger to herself, the institution she works for and the whole of the European continent. The book was published in the UK, North America and Germany in 2016.

Deutchman, the former Fine Line Features chief who produces and teaches at Columbia U,...

President-elect Joe Biden will give his first post-election interview to Lester Holt during Tuesday’s NBC Nightly News, our sister site Variety reports.

The full interview will air during the newscast at 6:30 pm Et, after which it will be available on NBC News’ website and NBC News Now. Portions of the sit-down, which was filmed in Wilmington, Delaware, will also be featured on Today, Nightly News and MSNBC on Wednesday.

More from TVLineTVLine Items: Cybill's Showtime Pilot, Flight Attendant Free Preview and MoreSNL: Trump Sadly Sings 'Macho Man' After Losing Election -- Watch VideoJoe Biden Makes...

When “Saturday Night Live” took a break from comedy following the 2016 election to have Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton perform a piano rendition of “Hallelujah,” the reaction was divisive — the cold open was either saccharine or a moving tribute. On Saturday, “SNL” showed it was willing to poke fun at itself when Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump sat down in front of a piano in response to the election being called for Joe Biden.

Saturday’s cold open, performed about 12 hours after Biden was declared president-elect, assembled a cast of characters that had become all too familiar during this election week. There was a perpetually awake Wolf Blitzer, played by Beck Bennett, and Alex Moffat’s John King, whose fingers had been reduced to nubs thanks to 85-straight hours of operating CNN’s touchscreen electoral map.

And Jim Carrey and Maya Rudolph, as Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, offered...

Hours after President-elect Joe Biden was finally recognized as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, his Saturday Night Live counterpart Jim Carrey took the stage to deliver a victory speech.

“We did it! Can you believe it? I honestly can’t. It’s been so long since something good happened,” Carrey’s president-elect said.

“Like I’ve said many times, I don’t care if you voted for me or not, I’m going to be a president for all Americans. Whether you’re from a liberal state like California,...

After several weeks of partially losing the political plot, Saturday Night Live came out blazing tonight as Donald Trump’s reign of error begins to end, at least officially.

In a throwback to the first SNL after the election of 2016, the skit saw Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump give a concession serenade, kind of. But that all came after Jim Carrey’s Joe Biden and Maya Rudolph’s Kamala Harris gave their victory speeches, with a bold swipe at The Police’s easily mockable frontman

As Biden again this season, The Cable Guy actor joked that the end of the near week long wait for a final result in the election was “having sex with Sting: What a release, man.”

Riffing off the real-life Biden’s remarks tonight, the SNL Biden promised unity and to be Potus “for all Americans whether you’re from a liberal state like California or...

President Donald Trump sang a sad, sad swan song in the Saturday Night Live episode that aired barely 12 hours after Joe Biden (finally) won the election.

The cold open saw CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (played by Beck Bennett) — after he checked in on stump-fingered map-a-magician John King (Alex Moffat) — admit that more than wanting to see Biden and running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (Jim Carrey and Maya Rudolph) celebrate, people “also want to see Trump sad,” so he threw to what he eye-rolled would be Potus’ “gracious and factual” concession speech.

More from TVLine'snl' Video: Watch Dave Chappelle's Best...

Election Day turned into Election Week for the 2020 presidential election, but just a few hours before the show went live, President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris took the stage in Wilmington, Del. to deliver their first speeches since the 2020 presidential election was called in their favor. Naturally, the writers at “Saturday Night Live” were poised and ready for this moment, using it for the Nov. 7 post-election cold open sketch.

“I know I’m supposed to be a neutral news anchor, but god damn it, that feels good,” Beck Bennett as Wolf Blitzer exclaimed at the start of the sketch, which you can watch above.

It then cut to Jim Carrey as Biden walking behind a podium to address the nation. “We did it. Can you believe it? I actually kind of can’t. It’s been so long since something good happened,” he said, comparing the “edging closer...

President Donald Trump is heading into election day with a singular message: “It’s fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.” Pinned to the top of his ever-prolific Twitter feed is a jaunty compilation of him awkwardly undulating to the 1978 Village People classic.

If you’ve been on Twitter at all these past few weeks, you’ll have noticed that Trump often busts out the moves to “Y.M.C.A.” and other Village People songs at his rallies — to the point where his dancing was recently spoofed...

Victor Willis, vocalist and co-founder of disco greats the Village People, told President Donald Trump to stop using two of the group’s most famous songs, “Y.M.C.A.” and “Macho Man,” at his rallies.

In a Facebook post last week, Willis said the decision came after Trump had law enforcement officers clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square with tear gas, batons and explosive devices so he could take a photo in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. Demonstrators had gathered in Lafayette Square to protest police brutality...

A&e is doubling down on its hit police series Live Pd and has ordered a live treasure format fronted by Jeff Foxworthy and series searching for WWE memorabilia.

The cable network is taking the total number of episodes of Live Pd to over 450 with the bumper renewal. The three-hour live show hosted by Dan Abrams, which is produced by MGM’s Big Fish Entertainment, will hit its 300th episode this summer.

Live Pd is exec produced by Dan Cesareo, Lucilla D’Agostino and John Zito for Big Fish and Elaine Frontain Bryant, Shelly Tatro, Sean Gottlieb, and Brad Abramson for A&e.

What’s It Worth? Live is a treasure format hosted by comedian and collector Jeff Foxworthy. Across eight two-hour episodes, the show, broadcast live from Atlanta, will see viewers given the chance to bid of and purchase an array of extremely rare, intriguing and valuable personal treasures, sold by...

The first and most important thing that happened as a result of the staging of "Sticks and Stones" at the Met Theater as part of the Act One Festival was that Scott Swan and I got our first agent. Barbara Baruch worked for Ambrosio/Mortimer, a smaller boutique agency at the time, and from the moment we met her, she seemed like what I imagined an agent to be. She was nurturing, she was a cheerleader, she was a ballbuster, and she was always, always, always in our corner. Our time with her was unfortunately too short, and by the time the agency imploded in accusations of embezzlement, we were already repped by Gersh out of New York. Barbara was first, though, and she was the first one to start pushing people to come see our show and to read our work. The strangest thing about those early days is...

As Kim Wayans says in our extended feature on the 25th anniversary of "In Living Color," her brother Keenen was always encouraging on-screen talent to draw on real-life circumstances and relationships to inject truth into their work. That was, as Damon Wayans explains, the big difference between "Saturday Night Live," a writer-driven show, and "In Living Color," a character-driven show where actors were eventually encouraged to pitch characters and concepts and work them out with the writers. It's no surprise, then, that some of these characters would have personal connections with the performers. As you can see in anecdotes from Kelly Coffield, T'Keyah "Crystal" Keymáh and Kim Wayans, quite a few of them in fact came from other corners of their lives, be it someone they knew or something that would just organically spring to life in the day-to-day camaraderie of the show. Learn more about the inspirations behind classic characters like Benita Butrell,...

May 6th marks the ten-year anniversary of the Friends series finale. That night, over 52 million people tuned in to find out how it would all end. Would Ross finally get together with Rachel? Would female characters ever stop moving to Paris when their shows drew to a close? Who actually lived in Rachel and Monica’s apartment? Would coffee ever taste the same again? While we got most of those answers, we were left with a bitter taste in our mouths. Our best friends of the past 10 years left us feeling lonely. Knowing it was time for us to change the channel, the networks rushed to fill the void. NBC tossed out a few post-Friends options that failed to capture our hearts while ABC, Fox and CBS attempted to mix up the template with a few different offerings. Sadly most of them failed (and failed badly). While How I Met Your Mother...

Welcome to another edition of our upstart series, Mindhole Blowers, in which we troll the Internet and listen to DVD Commentaries to bring you what we hope is fascinating minutia. Typically, we look at movies (see our Mindhole Blowers columns on Cameron Crowe's Singles and Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), but today -- with the release of Horrible Bosses on the horizon -- I thought we'd take a look at a person, the fascinating and ridiculously durable Jason Bateman.

Jason Bateman has been acting now in Hollywood for 29 years. In that career, there are only two roles that I can identify in which he didn't play a variation on his "Jason Bateman" character, which is to say: Sly, dry wit and a personality halfway between ridiculously charming and spectacularly douchy. Those two roles were his first, as a kid in "Little House on the Prarie" and a...

Jay-z has fond memories of his years as a drug dealer on the streets of New York - insisting he had "fun" selling crack cocaine. The "99 Problems" hitmaker started peddling illegal substances at the age of 12 as he grew up in a tough area of Brooklyn, but finally turned his back on the trade when his rap career took off.

And he is adamant supplying crack on street corners was "usually" enjoyable, comparing it to socializing with colleagues around an office watercooler. In his memoirs, "Jay-z Decoded", the rapper writes, "It may sound strange, but it was usually a fun way to spend time. I got to hang out on the block with my crew, talking, cracking jokes. You know how people in office jobs talk at the watercooler? This job was almost all watercooler."

"But when you weren't having fun, it was hell. I got out just in time.

Gail Simone's Birds Of Prey made their return to the DC Universe this week in a new ongoing series. Written by Simone and illustrated by Ed Benes, the comic features original team members Oracle, Black Canary, Huntress and Lady Blackhawk, alongside new recruits Hawk and Dove. In an interview with Cbr, the writer explained that fellow scribe Geoff Johns convinced her to return to the book. "I'd actively avoided even thinking about it. Some of my best friends had crashed and burned when returning to books they had had popular runs on in the past and I could definitely understand that," she told the website. "But Geoff Johns reminded me that I still had stories I wanted to tell and he pointed out that (more)...

Joey Murphy and John Pardee have been upped to executive producers on ABC's Desperate Housewives.

Murphy and Pardee have been serving as co-executive producers and writers on the series, a production of ABC Studios. The writing team, longtime friends of Housewives creator/executive producer Marc Cherry, have been with the show -- which is heading into its fourth season in the fall -- from the start.

Along with Cherry, the duo will executive produce alongside George W. Perkins and recently upped Bob Daily.

Before Housewives, Pardee and Murphy worked with Cherry on several series, including the mid-'90s Fox comedy The Crew, which the duo co-created and produced and on which Cherry served as writer/executive producer. The pair also co-created the CBS pilots Family Business in 2001 and an untitled family comedy in 2002, both of which were written with Cherry, and were co-executive producers on CBS' Some of My Best Friends, on which Cherry was an executive producer/writer.

Murphy and Pardee also have served as co-executive producers on ABC's Bob Patterson, also from ABC Studios (then Touchstone Television), and were supervising producers on CBS' Cybill and NBC's The Jeff Foxworthy Show.

They are repped by Paradigm and attorney Michael Gendler.

ABC has given the green light to Desperate Housewives, an offbeat drama pilot from Touchstone TV and writer-producers Marc Cherry and Chuck Pratt. The project, a serial drama, takes a darkly humorous look at the sexy, insidious and incredibly secretive lives of the inhabitants of a neighborhood cul-de-sac. Cherry and Pratt penned the pilot, based on a spec script they had written, and will executive produce. Cherry's credits include NBC's The Golden Girls and CBS' Some of My Best Friends. Pratt's credits include the primetime soaps Melrose Place on Fox and Titans on NBC.