‘Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies’ Sinks Under Its Own Ambition: TV Review

Steven Naismith hailed his rampant Bravehearts for going on the offensive to bring a six game losing streak to a halt with a first half battering of Ross County.

Ari Aster has made a career out of the horror and twisted comedy of anxiety. Regardless of where each individual audience member is in their life or the experiences they’ve had, this is what makes films such as “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” universally loved and relatable.

Sydney Sweeney is under interrogation.The star plays imprisoned informant Reality Winner in HBO's upcoming film, , which is written and directed by first-time filmmaker Tina Satter and based on her 2019 play, . In the minute-long teaser, a bare-faced Sweeney's Reality Winner is seated in front of the camera as she's barraged with question after question after question about leaking confidential documents while working at the NSA. The teaser closes with Reality asking, «Why do I have this job if I'm going to be helpless?»On June 3, 2017, 25-year-old former American intelligence specialist Reality Winner is confronted by FBI agents arriving at her home to question her suspected role in the mishandling of classified information.

The Anne Rice Cinematic Universe is potentially getting bigger.

Roman Kemp's latest social media post came with a warning and an apology to his mum as she shared how he lost his clothes while taking a dip in a thermal rival while on holiday. The Capital FM DJ had been taking a well-earned break in Costa Rica when his personal disaster struck.

The lead stars of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies made an appearance at Deadline’s Contenders Television awards-season event to talk about their experiences on the musical.

"Grease" fans: a new series is here.  The new Paramount+ TV musical "Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies" takes place four years before Sandy Olsson ever attended Rydell High or met any of the Pink Ladies and tells their origin story. It stars Marisa Davila, Ari Notartomaso, Cheyenne Isabel Wells and Tricia Fukuhara as the founders.

Tory voters should vote Labour at the next election if their candidate is best placed to beat the SNP, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives has suggested. Douglas Ross risked a split with Tory leader Rishi Sunak as he said people should “do what’s best for the country” to help loosen the nationalists’ grip on Scotland.

Owen Wilson is back, with brushes, as the longtime host of a beloved but fading Burlington, Vermont-based PBS instructional art show. Paint from IFC Films opens on 800+ screens.

McKinley Franklin author “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies” might not spotlight characters from the original 1978 film like Didi Conn’s Frenchy or Stockard Channing’s Rizzo, but it does set the stage for their impending reign on Rydell High. Though tampering with any reiteration of the cultural cornerstone that is “Grease” has proven unsuccessful in the past, showrunner Annabel Oakes was clearly up for the challenge. So, how does one begin to cast the characters for a prequel television series based on the beloved movie? Casting directors Leigh Ann Smith and Conrad Woolfe of Indigo Casting accredit showrunner Oakes’ clear vision. “[Oakes] had lived in that world with these characters for so long,” Smith tells Variety. Adds Woolfe, “We didn’t necessarily feel pressure [casting these characters] because Oakes had done such an incredible job of expanding the universe in her imagination before we even came to the table to do the casting.”

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. For some, one of the best scene in 1978’s “Grease” is when Sandra sleeps over with her new group of girl friends from Rydell High as they sing “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee,” hair rollers in and heartthrob celebrities like Elvis plastered on their teenage girl bedroom walls. Now, the origins of that beloved girl gang, who call themselves the Pink Ladies, are at the center of a new prequel series on Paramount+, released today. Set in 1954, four years before Sandy and Danny’s whirlwind romance, “Grease: The Rise of the Pink Ladies,” explores how four Rydell High outcasts forged a friendship and became the forebears to the Pink Ladies from the original film, such as Rizzo and Frenchy. However, despite the retro time period, the directors chose to present the story through a more progressive 2023 lens, imbuing ideas about sexual orientation and race throughout its 10 episodes.

, an all-new installment in the  franchise that expands the world of Rydell High and its two most formidable school cliques, the Pink Ladies and the T-Birds. In fact, the original musical series focuses on the former as it shows how an unlikely group of girls came together to form a refuge for the female misfits that they were on the verge of becoming and helped them transform into the coolest coeds in school.Simply put: «It's about four outcast girls [who] can’t really find their place at Rydell High, so they come together and they decide to start breaking rules,» Cheyenne Isabel Wells tells ET, before Ari Notartomaso adds, «And join a girl gang.»   The cast, including Wells (Olivia), Notartomaso (Cynthia), Marisa Davila (Jane) and Tricia Fukuhara (Nancy), as well as showrunner Annabel Oakes and music producer Justin Tranter break down what's in store for, from the catchy new song-and-dance numbers to the many connections to the original films.

What could the future possibly hold for an artist if they have grown too comfortable with success? If they have stayed put in that snug place of glory, but the times have moved on fast without them? These are the hefty considerations at the heart of “Paint,” a slight comedy that sadly embraces neither the worthwhile questions that surround its central premise nor the story’s dark humor potential.That’s too bad, because writer-director Brit McAdams’ narrative feature debut is rooted in a genuinely fascinating subject that apparently served as an inspiration for “Paint.” McAdam’s muse is Bob Ross, a real-life American public television mainstay of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Being the host of a successful PBS show called “The Joy of Painting” during that time, Ross built a loyal audience who loved and were mesmerized by his soothing voice, and even haunted by his creative process and ease with a brush, as Ross slowly created his art in front of curious eyes, narrating it softly and philosophically.

When Deadline featured Alexander Rodnyansky for its International Disruptors column back in 2021, the media mogul said he’d “had five lives” when looking back at his prolific media career which spanned documentary filmmaking, founding Ukraine’s first indie TV network 1+1, managing Russian media company CTC and producing indie films.

, an all-new installment in the  franchise that expands the world of Rydell High and its two most formidable school cliques, the Pink Ladies and the T-Birds. In fact, the original musical series focuses on the former as it shows how an unlikely group of girls came together to form a refuge for the female misfits that they were on the verge of becoming and helped them transform into the coolest coeds in school.Simply put: «It's about four outcast girls [who] can’t really find their place at Rydell High, so they come together and they decide to start breaking rules,» Cheyenne Isabel Wells tells ET, before Ari Notartomaso adds, «And join a girl gang.»   The cast, including Wells (Olivia), Notartomaso (Cynthia), Marisa Davila (Jane) and Tricia Fukuhara (Nancy), as well as showrunner Annabel Oakes and music producer Justin Tranter break down what's in store for, from the catchy new song-and-dance numbers to the many connections to the original films.

Grease: Rise Of The Pink Ladies has been praised in early reviews, albeit with some caveats.The musical comedy series serves as a prequel to the 1978 classic Grease, taking place four years prior in 1954 to tell the origin story of the Pink Ladies girl gang.According to a synopsis, the show “follows four fed-up and misfit students who band together to bring out the moral panic that will change Rydell High forever and become the founding mothers of the first high school clique known as the Pink Ladies”.Ahead of the show’s UK premiere on Paramount+ on April 7, critics have released reviews of the show’s first four episodes which paint an encouraging picture.Entertainment Weekly, who awarded the show a B- rating, described the show as “uneven” but “when Rise Of The Pink Ladies leans in to this vision of the protagonists as equal-rights innovators, it sings”. It adds that these highlights are “too often muffled by a surplus of mostly forgettable music, overly long episodes, and lukewarm central love stories”.ScreenRant particularly praised the show’s cast and said the series “offers plenty of enjoyment” even if it doesn’t justify its existence: “Regardless of whether this is a show that needed to be made, Grease: Rise Of The Pink Ladies is an entertaining trip into Rydell’s past, and one that deserves some credit for facing thorny topics head on.”In a C+ review, Consequence was slightly more critical, saying that it suffers from being connected to the Grease IP.

The first “Murder Mystery” from 2019, written by James Vanderbilt (“Zodiac”), was a fun star-studded throwback to the 1980s Agatha Christie films like 1982’s “Evil Under the Sun,” with salt of the earth Brooklynites Nick and Audrey Spitz (Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston) thrown into the mix. The script was a smart, genre-savvy affair coupled with Sandler-style lowbrow comedy, a combination that almost worked, but was undone by the lackluster direction by Kyle Newacheck.

Charna Flam “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies” music producer and songwriter Justin Tranter says their prolific career actually started with a passion for musicals. “Musicals are why I started making music as a kid. Even though I was in a rock band and now I make pop music, musicals are why I started making music in the first place,” the Grammy-nominated songwriter told Variety at the Paramount+ series’ premiere Wednesday night in Los Angeles. Tranter has worked with Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa, Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga, the Chicks, Leon Bridges, Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, just to name a few. After “fighting hard” to join “Rise of the Pink Ladies” and providing demos for showrunner Annabel Oakes, the two then teamed up with choreographer Jamal Sims for the series. Along with some co-writers, Tranter wrote and produced 30 original songs for the 10-episode season.

The White House has issued a statement condemning Russia’s detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich “in the strongest terms,” and is reiterating State Department warnings that U.S. citizens residing or traveling in Russia “should depart immediately.”

the Journal reported.Russia’s Federal Security Bureau, a successor to the Soviet KGB, accused Gershkovich of trying to obtain classified information. The agency claimed that “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex,” the Journal said.