Jane Fonda Wants to Be on Cable. Let's Put Jane Fonda on Cable.
I need a psychiatrist, and only the one in Klute will do. Jane Fonda, my favorite two-time Oscar winner (sorry Streep, Lange, and Wiest) just announced her desire to be on cable. Said the 72-year-old legend, "I have a sort of a vision of what it could be and that's all that I'll say. I think the best, edgiest writing is now on cable television. It's pretty exciting." How hasn't this happened already? The Michael Patrick Kings of the world should've been there for her, and when they weren't, the Monster-in-Law's were. Boo. Let's pitch ideas for her pay-cable comeback.
Title: News Night
Genre: Workplace comedy
Network: HBO
Description: It's impossible to forget Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome, where she combined wits and a Jessica Hahn haircut to play an upstart news correspondent. In News Night, she'd play a legendary news anchor at fearsomely female-dominated news station. This time, her harried professionalism will hopefully garner laughs instead of the scoop of the century.
Will Require the Jane We Saw in: Nine to Five and The China Syndrome. She'll need feminist subversion and journalistic integrity, respectively.
Title: Catherine
Genre: Historical drama
Network: Starz
Description: The network that gave you Spartacus: Blood and Sand returns with another lurid biopic of a legend: Catherine the Great. Jane has iron will and the ability to wear glorious Romanov furs, so this seems like a sure bet.
Will Require the Jane We Saw in: Julia. If she can handle a role as stalwart as Lillian Hellman, she can handle Catherine.
Title: Crimes of Fashion
Genre: Crime caper (with hints of camp)
Network: FX
Description: Glenn Close's performance in Damages made that series the most sinister mystery caper of the past ten years. If Jane took on a similarly viperous role and added a bit of feathered, The Devil Wears Prada flair, she'd scare the leg-warmers off any ingenue in sight. In Crimes of Fashion, a cutthroat fashion designer steals ideas and murders unproductive models. If Ugly Betty "went hard," it would be this series.
Will Require the Jane We Saw in: They Shoot Horses, Don't They -- except she'll need the ringmaster furor of her Academy Award-winning co-star Gig Young.
Or, you could just put her on Modern Family like we suggested.
Subscribe to the new Movieline on YouTube
Comments
Title: A Higher Authority
Genre: Legal Drama (with supernatural element)
Network: Showtime
Description: Fonda plays a tough-as-nails attorney with a national reputation as "fixer" when Catholic dioceses face financial or molestation scandals: she rolls in and handles the press, intimidates witnesses, pays off victims, etc. Is nominally Catholic, but the work has made her into a non-believing cynic. Gets called into a case in a dying rust-belt city on a typical high-profile case, in the midst of her investigation suspects there may be an actual miracle afoot. Series tackles her spiritual reawakening, how that affects her ability to do her job, the 'Doubt'-like mystery of the church scandal, and the byzantine church politics she navigates.
Will Require the Jane We Saw in: Agnes of God
Favorite comment ever.
(I was going to work in an Agnes of God reference, but I'm so glad I didn't. Meg Tilly and I owe you hugs.)
LEGEND???????
GET REAL!!!!!
She's won two Oscars? She's been nominated for six? She is a Fonda? She might be a legend.