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January 22 - 28, 2023 WHATS UP! T11 The critically and popularly beloved comedy "What We Do in the Shadows" aired its fourth season on FX last summer. But before that even debuted, the ca- ble channel had already re- newed it for not one but two more seasons. There's no word yet on when the fifth season will air. And we can't even guess based on past seasons — the first two were in the spring, Season 3 aired in the fall and Season 4 in mid-sum- mer. This is probably the least pre- dictable mockumentary sitcom about vampire roommates ever on television. The FX execs clearly had a good time making the two-sea- son renewal announcement. "There's a lot of life left in our fa- vorite vampires from Staten Is- land, and FX couldn't be more thrilled to commit to two addi- tional seasons of this phenome- nal series," Nick Grad, the chan- nel's president of original pro- gramming, said. The show is riding a critical high going into its next season. In the fall, it finally won its first Emmy (for its costume work), after being nominated for piles of them over the years. Q: Was "Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure" done in one long trip, like his previous series? A: Michael Palin ("Monty Py- thon's Flying Circus"), the great comedian who found a second career as a great travel docu- mentarian, shared a note on the website devoted to his 1999 se- ries "Michael Palin's Heming- way Adventure." It offered some warm personal details about his motivation for recreating the travels of legendary author Er- nest Hemingway, some behind- the-scenes info, and a fair bit of sass. He admitted up front that this one drew fewer viewers than his previous specials — namely "Full Circle" (1997), "Pole to Pole" (1992) and "Around the World in 80 Days" (1989) — and acknowledged it may have been due to people missing the spirit of the big trip that was such a feature of those previous shows. But in the same sentence, he also launched into a spirited defence. "Though people may have missed the simplicity of one sin- gle long journey, we did visit some exotic places and do some very strange things," he wrote. He also called it "some of the best work I've done." "I'm very proud of it. I used the same crew as on 'Sahara,' so it looked wonderful, and John Pritchard won the BAFTA award for best sound. So there." The fact that it was not a sin- gle journey is never addressed directly in the series. It's edited in such a way that he does ap- pear to just be hopping from place to place around the world — from Hemingway's birthplace in Illinois to Europe, Cuba, Afri- ca and ultimately back to the U.S. But the premise of his previ- ous specials was specifically that he was tracing one long, contin- uous path from a start point to an end point, and the challenges of doing so are part of the story. That's not to say there's no arc to the Hemingway special — it's arranged in chronological order, with Palin visiting all the signifi- cant places in Hemingway's life in the same order the great man did. Have a question? Email us at questions@tvtabloid.com. Please include your name and town. Per- sonal replies will not be provided. Advance Pest Control 2 x 2 TAKE 5 Solution on page T23 Use the clues above and beside the grid to fill in the squares BY ADAM THOMLISON TV Media Q: Alan Rickman was able to "turn off" his accent for a scene in "Die Hard." Did he do any other roles where he didn't have his British ac- cent? A: When the whole enter- tainment world (fans included) mourned the death of Alan Rickman ("Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," 2001) in 2016, one of the things many pointed to was his voice. Vox. com writer Caroline Framke called it "one of the best voices ever to appear on film." And while most, when they imagine it, will think of a very posh and polished English ac- cent, that wasn't the only one he could do. It's just the only one most directors wanted of him. "Die Hard" (1988) is certain- ly the most famous example of him doing a different one, but there are more. See, for example (because not many did), his turn in the forgotten 1998 crime drama "Judas Kiss," in which he did a New Orleans accent (or tried to — reviews were not great). He also did an even more par- ticular kind of American accent when he played Ronald Reagan in the 2013 prestige drama "The Butler." And a few years earlier, he seemed to have a hoot doing a Texas accent in a 2002 episode of the animated sitcom "King of the Hill." Miles away from that, both ar- tistically and geographically, he spoke some pretty believable Russian-accented English in "Rasputin" (1996). Before we spend too much time praising his accent work, it's worth pointing out that his "Die Hard" performance had some detractors — namely, folks who question why his German- terrorist character only some- times sounded German. Aside from the one pivotal scene you point to when he pretends to be someone else, he mostly just sounds like he's English, the way Rickman usually did. Q: Is "What We Do in the Shadows" coming back? If so, when? A: Centuries of myth and FX's ratings both lead to the same conclusion: It's hard to kill a vampire. Alan Rickman of "Die Hard" fame HOLLYWOOD Q&A www.advancepestcontrolnwa.com Family Owned, Competitively Priced, Quality Service Since 1981 Rogers 479-636-5590 Springdale 479-756-1788 Eureka Springs 479-253-8967 PEST CONTROL TERMITE FERTILIZATION WEED CONTROL PRE-EMERGENTS