Ani Bundel has been blogging professionally since 2010. This is her second major independent site launch. A DC native and Keyboard Khaleesi, she spends all her non-writing time photographing her cats. Regular bylines also found on MSNOW.
PBS
PBS and Masterpiece are on a roll now that the end-of-year pledge drive has wrapped up and the first debuts for the 2025-2026 television season have arrived. Patience Season 1 has rolled out to solid enough reviews and an already greenlit Season 2, and Grantchester Season 10 is bubbling along
Paramount+
Ask anyone who works at Paramount or Skydance how the merger is going — it was initially supposed to close by the end of June 2025 — and they'll tell you everything is fine, on track, and nothing to worry about. (We're all fine here; how are you?
PBS
For those seeking a bit of good news in 2025, may I direct your attention to your local PBS station. It's there, as a digital channel, part of the broadcast channels on your cable box, as an app on your TV, iPad, or phone, with livestreaming channels available
Disney/Hulu
One of the unsung silver linings of the 2020 pandemic is that it forced the BBC to think differently about what it greenlit when things began to return to a new normal in 2021. Between the need to restart production quickly and the Black Lives Matter movement prompting the public
BritBox
BritBox and the BBC have announced that their co-production, The Other Bennet Sister, adapted from the 2020 best-selling Pride & Prejudice retelling, has begun filming in Wales. The BBC first announced the project in October 2024, but it was only a few weeks ago that BritBox boarded the series. At
Amazon Studios/Prime Video
Amazon Studios may continue to pour money into its The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power project, but it's not spending quite as wantonly as it did in the first couple of seasons. After spending $1 billion (with a B!) on the show's first
Acorn TV
Christmas comes but once a year; however, when it comes to U.K. Christmas specials of fan-favorite series, it seems any time of year will do. For example, with the running exception of Call the Midwife, PBS has never aired any of the Christmas episodes from their imported and co-produced
BritBox
It is accepted conventional wisdom that Agatha Christie has three major sleuths in her canon: Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple, and Tommy & Tuppence Beresford. Poirot and Marple are obvious candidates, as both appear in upwards of dozens of novels and short stories; however, Tommy & Tuppence's popularity
PBS
It's been a decade since Grantchester first debuted on PBS, initially launching in January 2015 on this side of the pond, directly following episodes of Downton Abbey Season 5. The show has come a long way from the direct adaptation of James Runchie's six short stories
Netflix
In America, The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been co-opted by the Walt Disney Company, which adapted Victor Hugo's enormous tome-sized novel into one of its standard-issue animated musicals in the mid-1990s. (One that has not yet been chosen for a live-action remake, small mercies.) However, the Disney
Starz
Of all the companies most harmed by the streaming revolution, independent cable networks, which had only recently come into their own in the late aughts, have suffered the most catastrophic losses. However, one cable network, Starz, isn't going down without a fight. For one thing, it has managed
PBS
The 250th anniversary celebration of Jane Austen's birth in December continues to be a central focal point for the entertainment industry in 2025. Thus far, we've had a feature film, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, and the PBS series Miss Austen. Still to come: The Other