Kicking off the diary today with an announcement. Tonight (3/21/25) at 8PM EST, I am hosting a panel on Diversity and Representation in Audio Description for Film and Television. I have invited a wonderfully diverse panel of audio description professionals to join me, and discuss if audio description is currently doing what it needs to do to support the diversity of the ensembles on screen, what could be done that could make a better focus on representation, and is the industry itself supporting a diverse talent pool and making efforts to hire the most appropriate talent for the job.
You can easily listen if you have an echo device. Or, you can download the Amazon Alexa app onto your phone. From there, simply prompt Alexa to “open ACB”. She will then give you a welcome prompt and ask you to choose an ACB Media channel from 1-10. You should say “ACB Media 6”, and she’ll respond by launching that channel.
This conversation is being hosted on the American council Of The Blind’s platform (ACB Link is also an app you can use to join), and the Audio Description Project is the sponsor. Join me tonight, if you want, on ACB media 6 at 8PM EST.
TV Shows Watched: Adolescence: S1E2 (Netflix) with audio description, Dope Thief: S1E2 (Apple Plus) with audio description, Long Bright River: S1E1 (Peacock) wit audio description, Survivor: S48E4 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, The great North: S5E5 (Hulu) no audio description, The Daily Show: Wednesday (PAramount Plus) no audio description, and The Masked Singer: S13E6 (Hulu) no audio description.
I absolutely guessed The Masked Singer celeb when they opened up about their health crisis. There was really one person who came to mind, and I was right, and everything else just validated it until the reveal confirmed it. No spoilers, in case you watch… without audio description.
Best Episode: Adolescence- I’m surprised at how quickly this is catching on and becoming a new phenomenon. I’m happy for it, the show is excellent. I just didn’t expect a British drama without a really big name to dominate the charts. The second episode is pretty great, and it is amazing to think they are trying to make this look like it is shot in real time. There’s something up with that best friend. She was acting dodgier than a grieving best friend might.
Runner Up: Dope Thief- This is turning out to be a really solid show as well. The second episode really starts to show you how totally screwed our main duo is, though Brian Tyree Henry still has way more screentime. it is hard to consider Wagner a co-lead right now based on screentime.
Best Audio Description- Long Bright River-i really thought this was a terrific track. this is a mystery, so the clues matter, but we got some solid character descriptions, and the tracking of specific hair color that did absolutely matter. Also, specific vehicles. For a show on Peacock to have this good of an audio description track is rare.
Runner Up: Dope Thief- it is so close, because basically the four show that had audio description all had strong moments, but I ent with Dope thief, because there’s an intense shootout, there were bodies discovered, the surviving female is using a tablet to speak, and Brian Tyree Henry made his dog a makeshift diaper so he could have him in the car.
Best Performance: Brian Tyree Henry (Dope Thief)- He’s pretty great. He has to try and act tough, but he’s clearly in over his head. You can see the panic in him multiple times in the first episode, when he’s working to get his grandmother out of the house, and later when he realizes the bad guys know where he lives. But, he’s also having to deal with his friend who won’t answer his phone, and he finally just breaks down at the end of the episode and starts sobbing. The person he’s with thinks it’s about what she’s talking about, but we know he’s just had a terrible, horrible, no good, really bad day.
Runner Up: Amanda Seyfried (Long Bright River)- I had my preconceived notions about her range going into this. despite her Oscar nomination, I haven’t seen a mature performance from Seyfried that I actually believed. So, asking me to believe she could play a lead detective in a murder mystery seemed like a tall order. She’s surprisingly good, and has come a long way. I’ll proudly admit I was wrong. She can hold her own. She has so many great moments toward the end, when you see the flashback with her and “the pink haired girl”, but also when she rushes home because she realizes she and her son may not be safe. Karen has come a long way.
Best Moment Of Audio Description- The Diaper (Dope Thief)- I have to say… knowing that Brian’s character in dope Thief was concerned with not dying, and saving his dog in the process, but also took the time to duct tape a towel around his dogs bottom half for the car ride, was pretty hilarious in a show that rarely allows levity. I was glad to have that moment, and it was purely visual, with no verbal recognition of what he had done.
Runner Up: The Pink Haired Girl (Long Bright River)- They really tracked that girl rather well. It paid off, when we had that reveal as to who she was, and the second reveal at the end of the episode.
Worst Of…- Someone went home on Survivor, and even though this is episode 4, and they did focus a little on them, I couldn’t remember him from previous episodes. This is why having some knowledge of what people look like is helpful. I mean, it helped a lot in Long Bright Road to know this one character had pink hair, and I’ll always remember that now. I really had no idea who just went home. i mean, i do, because I saw tribal council, but was he in the first three episodes?
