The NBC television network is more than just one channel in the prime time lineup of programming.

Under the umbrella of NBC Universal, the network consists of multiple platforms, including Sprout, which I am not really sure about other than it’s geared to children.

During the month of April, NBC Universal stages a “Summer Press Day” to reach a wider circle of TV critics outside the conventional winter and summer press tours, allowing an advance peak at new programs, some of which launch even before the summer officially arrives.

One big push for NBC, the TV network as opposed to its many cable outlets, is the 13-episode “event series” that debuts on May 28, which is fittingly called “Aquarius,” a possible reference to one of the songs in the 1968 Broadway musical “Hair” and the 5th Dimension hit song in their “The Age of Aquarius” album.

Starring David Duchovny as LAPD detective Sam Hodiak (a fictional character), “Aquarius” taps into the 1967 era of free love, drug experimentation and the Vietnam War then in full effect.

At the time, Charles Manson is putting together his cult family, which will culminate two years later in the horror of the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders.

In the premiere episode, Detective Hodiak and undercover narc Brian Shafe (Grey Damon) begin the search for a missing teenage girl, Emma Karn (Emma Dumont), who has fallen under the spell of Charles Manson (Gethin Anthony).

The officers know little about Manson and what he will come to represent.

Speaking to critics, John McNamara, executive producer of “Aquarius,” observed that the series is a work of historical fiction “that weaves some things about Manson that are true, some things that are fictional, and entirely fictional characters.”

From the preview of the first two episodes, “Aquarius” is a period piece of the turbulent late 1960s, where the counter-culture clashes with authority, and even the racial tensions in South Central Los Angeles continue to simmer when Hodiak and his partner investigate a murder scene.

Executive producer McNamara claims that “Aquarius” dives deeply into every character’s psyche, noting that Manson is a character you want to understand, and that it is “a mistake when you’re making drama to just say that (Manson) is a monster and just make him a monster.”

It's too early to tell if “Aquarius” succeeds in showing why Manson did monstrous things, but actor Gethin Anthony (“Game of Thrones”) has his work cut out for him to show how the cult leader got vulnerable women and others to join his cause leading up to the notorious murders.

Watching the full run of “Aquarius” may require a combination of stamina and obsession.

On a much lighter note, NBC launches two comedies in August heavily reliant on African-American casting.

Craig Robinson, the titular character in “Mr. Robinson,” plays the lead singer and keyboardist of the funk band Nasty Delicious, who takes a day job as a substitute music teacher to make ends meet.

Mr. Robinson is a quick hit with his music students, but the officious principal (Peri Gilpin) is not too fond of the teacher’s unorthodox style, or his crush on the pretty English teacher (Meagan Good), with whom he has an unfortunate past (he stood her up on prom night).

Craig Robinson, the actor and comedian, as opposed to his namesake character, has a deadpan delivery that has served him well in films like “Hot Tub Time Machine” and “Pineapple Express.”

His starring role in “Mr. Robinson” may be the ingredient to make this series a better-than-even bet for success.

On the other hand, “The Carmichael Show” would like to think of itself as an irreverent sitcom inspired by Jerrod Carmichael’s true-life relationships with his say-anything contrarian father (David Alan Grier), therapist-in-training girlfriend, ever-hustling brother and Bible-spouting mother (Loretta Divine).

Jerrod and his girlfriend, Maxine (Amber West), are an average young couple looking to break the news to Jerrod’s parents that they are going to live together.

The premise of the show is that these two will be put to the test navigating the boundaries of romance, family and sanity.

“The Carmichael Show” has the feel of a traditional sitcom where the comedy is predictable and formulaic, regardless of the fact that the cast is entirely African-American.

The only thing put to the test may be an audience’s willingness to endure the conventional.

In recent years, NBC Universal has had great success with programs on cable with the USA Network. Coming in June, “Mr. Robot” is a psychological thriller that follows Elliot (Rami Malek), a young programmer who works as a cyber-security engineer by day and as a vigilante hacker by night.

“Mr. Robot” puts Elliot at a crossroad when the mysterious leader (Christian Slater) of an underground hacker group recruits him to take down the CEOs of a multinational conglomerate with tentacles on the levers of power and wealth.

Also coming in June of the Syfy Channel, from the producers of “Orphan Black,” is the story of a trio of interplanetary bounty hunters in “Killjoys” as they chase deadly fugitives throughout the Quad, a distant planetary system on the brink of a bloody class war.

The Syfy Channel has a winner in the “Sharknado” franchise, and coming in July will be “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!”

Nothing was revealed about this latest installment at the Summer Press Day, but the “Sharknado 3” tote bags and beer can koozies distributed were enough to whet the appetite.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LOWER LAKE, Calif. – The Lower Lake High School and Konocti Unified Drama Department will president its annual spring musical this weekend.

This year’s cast of 24 students will be performing, “Cinderella,” directed by Tracy Lahr, adviser and instructor of LLHS Drama Club, and choreographed by Michelle John-Smith.

Shows will be at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 24, and Saturday, April 25, with a matinée performance at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 26, inside the Lower Lake High School multipurpose room, 9430 Lake St.

The cast and crew has worked hard for countless hours over the past three months, and they are ready to show their incredible talent to the community of Lake County.

This year’s cast includes Chloe Cox, Megan Smith, Weeden Wetmore, Natalie Carte, Rachel Cabral, Natalya Fortino, Dominic Cole, Edgar Cuevas, Avrill Pier, Joseph Hughes, Alya, Owaida, Tawnie Nell, Makena Ferdolage, Jordan Harris, Kaymen Barnes, Jeremiah Long, Samantha Hughes, Malajiahna, Robinson, Lily Wetmore, Sophia La Rose, Carley Pesonen, Vanessa Hughes, Kono Geary and Peerliss Brooke.

All students, including college students, will pay an admission fee of $10 at the door. Seniors (age 65 and older) will pay $11 and adults will pay $12.

All proceeds will go to the LLHS Drama department to help fund the next show.

For more information or any questions, please call Lower Lake High School, 707-994-6471, Extension 2735, to speak with drama instructor, Tracy Lahr.

Here’s a fine poem about two generations of husbands, by Pauletta Hansel of Ohio.

Husbands

My mother likes a man who works. She likes
my husband’s muddy knees, grass stains on the cuffs.
She loved my father, though when weekends came
he’d sleep till nine and would not lift
his eyes up from the page to move the feet
she’d vacuum under. On Saturdays my husband
digs the holes for her new roses,
softening the clay with peat and compost.
He changes bulbs she can no longer reach
and understands the inside of her toaster.
My father’s feet would carry him from chair
to bookshelf, back again till Monday came.
My mother likes to tell my husband
sit down in this chair and put your feet up.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2011 by Pauletta Hansel from her most recent book of poems, The Lives We Live in Houses, (Wind Publications, 2011). Poem reprinted by permission of Pauletta Hansel and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

FURIOUS 7 (Rated PG-13)

There’s not much to say to the uninitiated about “The Fast and the Furious,” now that the series is entering its last chapter, at least one starring Paul Walker, in “Furious 7.”

At this point, nearly 15 years after the first film, it’s hard to imagine anyone not familiar with the action juggernaut that is the wildly successful “Furious” franchise, where fast cars and high-octane action collide.

Under the charismatic leadership of Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto and Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner, the gang that loves to race in turbo-charged muscle cars is taking it to the limit this time, with one grand stunt involving parachuting their fast wheels out of a cargo plane.

“Furious 7” picks up where the last installment left off, with Dom and Brian returning to the States with pardons in hand for helping Dwayne Johnson’s FBI agent Hobbs on an overseas mission.

Trying to acclimate to domestic life in Los Angeles is difficult, particularly for Brian, now that he has a child with Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster).

Driving a minivan with his young son is not Brian’s idea of a challenge, though he’s a somewhat nervous father.

Trouble comes looking for the gang when the ruthless Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) decides to kill everyone involved with the death of his brother Owen (Luke Evans), the villain in the previous “Furious” film.

Deckard gets the drop on Hobbs, putting him in the hospital, but the tenacious agent won’t be down for long.

The gang, including the amnesiac Letty (Michelle Rodgriguez) and tech-whiz cohorts Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson), get wrapped up in a ludicrous plot of battling a high-tech terrorist (Djimon Hounsou) and his martial-arts henchman Kiet (Tony Jaa).

Significant plotting and sharp dialogue are expendable in a “Furious” film, and even more so here when the gang ends up making a deal with shadowy government operative Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) to retrieve a surveillance gadget called God’s Eye, which will make it easier to find Deckard Shaw.

The plan is for Dom and Brian, with the help of their gearhead crew, to track down the terrorist cell in Azerbaijan and rescue expert computer hacker Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), who invented the dangerous software program that can track anyone and anything everywhere in the world.

“Furious 7” is an orgy of fact-paced action and exhilarating stunts, with the parachuting of chase vehicles from a cargo plane being rivaled by the absolutely stunning flying jump of a prized and extremely rare W Motors Lykan HyperSport from one high-rise tower into another in Abu Dhabi.

It’s not just cars that are flying in “Furious 7;” so are fists. Bare-knuckle fights between Dom and Deckard are essential to the action, and with Jason Statham in fine form as a super-villain, one could only expect that he would engage in such display of machismo.

Fittingly, “Furious 7” is a tribute to the late Paul Walker, who died prior to the completion of filming. His best scene involves balancing on an overturned bus that’s about to fall off a cliff, from which he manages to jump in time to catch the spoiler on Letty’s Plymouth Barracuda.

With the very unfortunate and untimely death of Paul Walker, one would think the “Furious” franchise has come to an appropriate end. Only time will tell, but my guess is that an enterprise this lucrative may well continue.

THE LONGEST RIDE (PG-13)

Not even Clint Eastwood’s spitting-image son Scott can make a dent in the “Furious 7” onslaught at the box office.

The audience for “The Longest Ride,” the latest film version of a Nicholas Sparks novel, is no match for the crowd yearning to glimpse Paul Walker for one last ride.

Still, though arguably this is not the best venue for him, the cowboy-hat wearing Scott Eastwood, whose chiseled good looks are reminiscent of a young Clint from “Rawhide” days, has the masculine sex appeal to be a breakout star in his own right.

In the setting of rural North Carolina, Eastwood’s Luke Collins works the family ranch to help support his mom (Lolita Davidovich), but his passion is competitive bull-riding, a dangerous sport that caused him serious injury.

Getting back in the ring to ride bucking bulls, Luke’s entry in a local competition draws notice from comely college co-ed Sophia (Britt Robertson), and they meet cute when Luke tosses her his black cowboy hat as a souvenir.

This being a film inspired by Nicholas Sparks, “The Longest Ride” is all about romance. In true fashion, common to Sparks’ work, there has to be a parallel romantic story, and it comes when Luke and Sophia, on a first date, rescue an old man from a car wreck.

The old man is Ira Levinson (Alan Alda), and boy, does he have a love story to tell, one that dates back to World War II days when he meets Ruth (Oona Chaplin), a refugee from Austria. The younger Ira is played by Jack Huston, and of course, the film is full of flashbacks.

“The Longest Ride” is predictable fare, but it benefits from the presence of rising young talent in Scott Eastwood and Britt Robertson, but the true romantic sparks come from Oona Chaplin and Jack Huston/Alan Alda.
  
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

I don’t think I’ve ever sold anything that, later, I didn’t wish I had back, and I have a list of regrets as long as my arm. So this poem by Melissa Balmain really caught my attention.

Balmain lives in New York State, and her most recent book is Walking in on People, from Able Muse Press.

Love Poem

The afternoon we left our first apartment,
we scrubbed it down from ceiling to parquet.
Who knew the place could smell like lemon muffins?
It suddenly seemed nuts to move away.

The morning someone bought our station wagon,
it gleamed with wax and every piston purred.
That car looked like a centerfold in Hot Rod!
Too late, we saw that selling was absurd.

And then there was the freshly tuned piano
we passed along to neighbors with a wince.
We told ourselves we’d find one even better;
instead we’ve missed its timbre ever since.

So if, God help us, we are ever tempted
to ditch our marriage when it’s lost its glow,
let’s give the thing our finest spit and polish—
and, having learned our lesson, not let go.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2014 by Melissa Balmain, “Love Poem,” from Walking in on People, (Able Muse Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Melissa Balmain and Able Muse Press. Introduction copyright 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

An interesting programming choice for the Lifetime Network was scheduling a head-to-head contest for their eight-part original series “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles” on the same date and time that the AMC Network launched the highly-anticipated final seven episodes of “Mad Men,” in which ad-man Don Draper is the chief protagonist.

Lizzie Borden is a real person, famously acquitted of the ax murders of her father and stepmother in the late 19th century, while Don Draper is purely fictional, in more ways than one, considering that his character’s real name was long-ago revealed to be Dick Whitman.

The parallels between Christina Ricci’s Lizzie Borden and Jon Hamm’s Don Draper are curiously rooted in the behavior of manipulative characters often showing disregard for truth and the feelings of others.

The key difference, of course, is that Don Draper, though often slick and conniving, is no murderer. Well, at least, not as far as we know up to now. We’ll see what seven episodes bring.

Lifetime’s “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles” is a followup to the cable network’s very successful launch of last year’s “Lizzie Borden Took an Ax,” which also starred Christina Ricci and Clea DuVall as the Borden sisters, Lizzie and Emma, respectively.

Set in 1893, the “Chronicles” begins four months after Lizzie Borden was acquitted in the controversial trial held in her hometown of Fall River, Massachusetts, a place where the Borden sisters remain, though ostracized from polite society.

As revealed to the nation’s TV critics during the winter press tour, in explaining the historical fiction of the series, Christina Ricci said that Lizzie’s story is about “what happens after the trial as she continues to misbehave, shall we say.” Indeed, that is very much the case, even as Emma turns a blind eye to the bizarre behavior of her younger sibling.

Greed and ambition are factors in Lizzie’s ongoing battles with her wayward half-brother (Andrew Howard), who becomes a convenient foil in a larger struggle with her father’s business partner (John Heard). In the first two episodes, let’s just say that untimely deaths for several persons are not mere coincidences.

People that are close to Lizzie, like Broadway luminaries and an underworld kingpin, start to mysteriously die under brutal and strange circumstances.

The legendary Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo (Cole Hauser) becomes determined to prove Lizzie’s involvement in their ultimate demise, though his presence is curiously unwelcomed by the town’s inept marshal.

Keeping in mind that others besides Ricci involved in the production referred to the “Chronicles” as historical fiction, the storylines nevertheless work off some of the rumors that have swirled about the case, including that Lizzie engaged in lesbian acts with the maid in her employ.

At the winter press conference, one reporter had the temerity to observe that Christina Ricci is the “queen of the creepy smile.”

Well, he was spot-on. But that’s one reason why Ricci is so good in this type of role, and it’s a good enough to stay tuned to all episodes of “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles.”

While the Lizzie Borden fictional history is practically an open book, the AMC Network has gone to great lengths to keep news about “Mad Men” so tightly under wraps that we can’t even reveal whether Don Draper wears his fedora while driving a late model automobile. OK, I am exaggerating but AMC was not exactly forthcoming.

Basically, a request for a preview screener was not accommodated because they had run out of press kits. As if to provide comfort, the AMC publicist said the critics had been admonished not to reveal any details, so there was little point to watching an episode in advance.

So, therefore, what are the clues we can gather about what is to come? The series creator, Matthew Weiner, told the press in January that he was “extremely interested in what the audience thinks, so much so that I’m trying to delight them and confound them and not frustrate and irritate them. I don’t want them to walk away angry.”

Oh well, that doesn’t really clear up matters. What might be more telling is a promo reel on the AMC Web site entitled “Mad Men by the Numbers.” It tells us that during the course of the series 942 cigarettes were smoked and 369 drinks were poured in the office.

More notable is that Don Draper has gone through nine secretaries and that he’s slept with 18 women. Going by these metrics, more booze will flow and Don, though still married to Megan, could have a fling with one of the cast regulars. Could it be Christina Hendricks’ statuesque Joan Harris or Elisabeth Moss’s Peggy Olson, or some wild card?

Unlike network television, where repeat episodes come long after the season ends, cable tends to repeat the same episode during the course of the week, thus allowing you the likelihood of not having to choose Lizzie Borden over Don Draper, or vice versa.

Both series will be worth watching. My only quibble with “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles” was the occasional use of very contemporary language that does not fit the period.

On the other hand, one of the best things about “Mad Men” is how it captured the mood and tempo of Madison Avenue advertising during the 1960s.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.