Critics Notebook: Why Spring TV Has Us Seeing Stars

In February, when David Boreanaz signed on for NBC’s latest attempt at rebooting Rockford Files, much was made on social media of the latest coup in the star’s impressive streak of television work — a 27-year run that stretched from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Angel to Bones to SEAL Team.

Less than a month later, Joel Kinnaman (The Killing, Robocop) was a regular on three different shows that premiered within 10 days of each other.

Boreanaz is in many ways a relic of TV’s old business model: 22 episodes per season premiering promptly in September and ending efficiently in May, limiting actors to a single regular small-screen role and the occasional miniseries or guest turn filmed during a hiatus.

Kinnaman, on the other hand, embodies a new model, with different standards of ubiquity. Few actors can compete with the tight window in which he could be seen playing a slimy cop (Detective Hole), a slimy finance guy (Imperfect Women) and a somewhat-less-slimy retired astronaut (For All Mankind). But many of the medium’s biggest names are doing double duty this spring, forming interlocking circles of stardom — from Kurt Russell (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, The Madison) to Michelle Pfeiffer (The Madison, Margo’s Got Money Troubles) to Nicole Kidman (Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Scarpetta).

Kidman has, in many ways, become the poster girl for what television stardom looks like in 2026. When the Oscar winner did Big Little Lies and Top of the Lake: China Girl in 2017, she was in a vanguard of actors recognizing that TV was offering opportunities and variety that movies simply could not — especially for women, and especially for women past a certain age. But it was still a moment in which “Why do television?” was a viable, if judgy, question, similar to how the main character in Margo’s Got Money Troubles, played by Elle Fanning, is asked why she’s doing OnlyFans. It hasn’t been so long since television was disreputable.

Since then, though, while Kidman has done beloved commercials explaining why it’s important to visit movie theaters, her more frequent home has been on streaming, with shows like Lioness, Nine Perfect Strangers, The Perfect Couple and more. Several more. From Apple to Netflix to Paramount+ to Hulu to HBO, if you need a rich matriarch embroiled in the complications of murder or abduction, one no longer needs to seek “a Nicole Kidman type.” You can have Nicole Kidman.

One of the oddest maladies of our current TV era has been a desensitization to Nicole Kidman. And not just to Nicole Kidman, but to the sort of beloved, big-name and award-winning actor whose presence in a new streaming show or HBO mini used to be cause for breathless excitement.

When Steve Carell did The Morning Show and Space Force, “The Office Star Returns to TV!” was the ballyhooed news angle. He delivered one of the best performances of his career as a therapist in Apple’s The Patient just a couple of years later, but mentions of the show today elicit blank stares. By the time Rooster, Carell’s college-set HBO comedy, premiered this March, little mystique remained.

When she moved from The West Wing to Mad Men to Top of the Lake to The Handmaid’s Tale, Elisabeth Moss was perhaps the MVP for a generation of TV. But Shining Girls, The Veil and Imperfect Women haven’t had anything close to the same impact. No matter that Shining Girls featured some of Moss’ best work and gave her the opportunity to flex her directing muscles outside the world of Gilead.

The idea that an iconic figure like Kidman might have “disappeared” TV shows on her résumé — series that nobody but your friendly neighborhood TV critic could possibly remember — may sound absurd. But some expertise is required to be able to reference Roar among Kidman credits, much less prove that Nine Perfect Strangers and The Perfect Couple are two entirely separate shows.

Yes, there’s a tendency among me and my peers to joke whenever Kidman pops up in a show, like she’s the artistic equivalent of cilantro — an essential seasoning to some, the flavor of soap to others and probably overused for and by all. But I don’t want to treat her and her prolific A-list peers as a sign of anything inherently negative in the small-screen space.

Expats, a terrific series of which Kidman was the least interesting part, wouldn’t have been made without Kidman’s name, its reflective glow allowing Amazon to fill the rest of the cast with less-known actors like Ji-young Yoo or Brian Tee. Roar, an Apple TV anthology executive produced by and featuring Kidman, wasn’t great, but the moment I begrudge a streamer for attempting an audacious fleet of feminist fables is the moment I should quit doing this.

One of the pleasures of TV this spring has been the reminder of how spectacular Michelle Pfeiffer can be when well-utilized — and getting to witness different sides of her talent simultaneously. Paramount+’s The Madison is a tale of two shows, one a dire lampooning of snooty New York elites and one a searing portrait of grief and healing anchored by Pfeiffer’s raw intensity. There are few similarities between that performance and Pfeiffer’s broader, funnier turn in Margo’s Got Money Troubles, an Apple series that also features Kidman at her loosest and most charming.

Jon Hamm, Kerry Washington and Bryan Cranston, doubtlessly aware that they’ll forever be associated with dramatic antiheroes Don Draper, Olivia Pope and Walter White, have detoured wildly and often, with Hamm and Cranston embracing frequent zany supporting and guest turns and Washington showing a relaxed side opposite Delroy Lindo in Hulu’s (now canceled) Unprisoned. They know there’s time to return to antiheroism.

A medium that makes ample space for those performers, that lets Pfeiffer and Kidman be haunted one moment and silly the next, that allows Matthew Rhys to go from terrifying (The Beast in Me) to quirky (Apple’s forthcoming Widow’s Bay) in the space of months, is a robust one. (Though somebody needs to write Elisabeth Moss and Claire Danes a comedy in which they play sisters who absolutely never cry.)

But there still have to be some concerns that, as fewer TV shows are being produced and the ones that are produced have shorter episode counts, the industry is becoming more star-dependent. This is a problem that Broadway and the West End are facing, too; while there might be appeal in building a new play or musical around an up-and-coming drama school grad, it’s easier to sell tickets if you cast a big name with six weeks free to slum it treading the boards. You gain visibility and promotability, even if you remove a previously vital training ground.

One of the most notable things about NBC’s take on Rockford Files is that it’s a pilot, one that might or might not go to series eventually. Pilot season used to employ hundreds of actors, putting fresh-faced potential breakouts in front of casting directors, because there was too much production happening for every series to get a name-brand star. But with fewer pilots and smaller-batch shows, it’s possible to simply wait for the real Nicole Kidman to have a window of availability rather than select from a shrinking middle class of working actors.

You don’t need to seek out the next Nick Offerman if the real Nick Offerman is available and willing to be tremendous in both Death by Lightning and Margo’s Got Money Troubles within the same awards season, forcing voters to choose between Offerman with mutton chops and Offerman with a bushy beard. You needn’t find out if there are other Scandinavian actors with comparably reptilian charisma to Joel Kinnaman’s if Joel Kinnaman is available for three shows in a single month.

Could David Boreanaz do that? No, really. Could he?

This story appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.