Ted Danson: dead or alive? When we last saw evil businessman Arthur Frobisher in FX’s fantastic “Damages,” he was lying shot up in some swamp.
Co-star Glenn Close couldn’t get away from fans’ questions. ” ‘Is he dead? Was he dead?’ ” she said people asked her on the street. “I don’t know,” she would reply. “It’s a long shot.” Well, apparently the people making “Damages” don’t know, either.
FX boss John Landgraf said last week that Frobisher survived. The show’s producers said his character would be back, but implied it would be only in flashbacks. “Arthur returns, and that’s all I’ll say about that,” Todd Kessler, co-creator, executive producer and writer, told TV critics gathered in Los Angeles.
Either way, Danson, whose portrayal of Frobisher was the best supporting acting on TV the past year, is happy he’ll be back when the show returns in January.
“I’ve never had carte blanche to be as narcissistic, except in real life, as I did in this part,” he quipped. “When I was in my 30s, playing an easygoing, womanizing bartender (on “Cheers”) was great. But when you’re in your 60s, this is way more fun. …
“I’m so grateful to be part of this cast, part of this show. It has made me really excited about going to work as an actor again, and that is worth everything to me.” Danson told me that he went to Close’s acting coach, Harold Guskin, to get some pointers on playing such a self-important character. Just do whatever you want, Guskin said. If you don’t want to say all the words in the script, you don’t have to.
Poirot returns.
Be still, my leetle grrrey cells. David Suchet will return next summer to “Masterpiece Mystery” with four new stories from Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels, about the impeccably dressed French (oops, sorry, Belgian) detective.
“Masterpiece” mistress Rebecca Eaton says Suchet wants to finish “the entire canon” of Poirot before he hangs up his acting shoes.
That could be tough, since there are more than 50 novels and short stories featuring Hercule and his stupendous spats.
Also on tap: Four Miss Marple mysteries, featuring Julia McKenzie, so delightful as Mrs. Forrester in Cranford, as the latest incarnation of the small-town busybody.
And Kenneth Branagh is stepping down from his Shakespearean throne to essay the continuing role of Kurt Wallander, Swedish police detective with a private life more messed up than that of the beloved inspectors Morse and Tennyson combined.
On the road with Ken.
Ken Burns’ 12-hour traipse from Acadia to Big Bend to Glacier to Gates of the Arctic should be beautiful and packed with historical wonder — even if the boyish filmmaster with the bowl haircut stays true to form and runs a couple of hours too long.
“The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” is the Burns documentary factory’s Next Big Thing, coming to PBS in fall 2009.
