I am pleased to acknowledge the renewal of The Rookie for a 7th season. That means ABC has either renewed or cancelled all of its current drama series. The last two shows on the bubble are The Connors and Not Dead Yet. I hear things are looking much better for The Connors, which is a shame, because I also really enjoy Not Dead Yet. But, The Connors deserves an actual finale, after all these years.
The Dynasty (Apple Plus) is such a tough format for audio description, but I really feel like this is getting best-case scenario audio description. This episode was all about “deflate gate” and it was interesting to hear Tom Brady’s thoughts. Top/Middle tier.
I will talk about American Idol (Hulu). No, they didn’t suddenly find audio description, but what an interestingly vaguely racist results show. America seems to like tiny young white girls with small voices, and basically all the POC on the show were singing for their lives. All three gospel boys, who can sing circles around Tristan by the way, had to fight for what ultimately became an immediate reduction in their numbers. Nothing tremendously new here, but it is disappointing to see that the judges have to use their saves just to make a Top 14 that looks diverse.
Tracker (Paramount Plus) saw Justin Hartley’s lead trying to find a guy who may have skipped out on a wedding. Or perhaps, something much more nefarious happened. The audio description on Tracker is solid. I have always acknowledged that they spend less time on describing these minor characters that only appear in this one episode. As a crime drama, it does that thing well. Top tier.
The Gentlemen (Netflix) is closer to the end. Interestingly, this is not competing or submitting at the Emmys for Limited Series, so I wonder if Netflix is looking into another season. But, I think I’m almost done. It feels like, once that phone call was made at the end of the episode, there’s really no going back. Pretty solid stuff. Top/Middle tier.
And finally, since I decided to look at MAX’s Hop a few days ago, I felt it only fitting I swing over to Paramount Plus and see what’s going on with their new Dora reboot. Yeah, I just watched an episode of Dora The Explorer for you. So, parents of blind kids, I don’t know if you know this… but you probably do. Your kids do not matter. I didn’t realize this was such a problem, and I promise to take more of a look at kids TV. Maybe they think kids can’t complain. I don’t know. Despite this being a brand new reboot for Paramount Plus, this show completely lacks ANy audio description. While I admit, listening to the format, audio description would be sparse, it also means that any kid watching this will *never* have any visual reference. They may not even know what Boots and Swiper are unless mom and dad take the time. If this was an introduction for a little one to dora for the first time, and they were blind, I’m not sure how much fun your kid would have. Again, for this show, I totally acknowledge this is much harder to describe than Hop. but zero description? No. Inappropriate. The big difference between Dora and Hop is that Dora has a big opening theme song they sing, and Hop just has an opening with no song, so at least they could use the opening to introduce kids to these characters. Dora doesn’t allow for that during the title sequence. I’ve seen some wonders happen in audio description, and I think an experienced narrator would have brought something to the new Dora.
