Is ‘Sterling Point’ the Show of the Summer? Plus, ‘Tires’ Season 3.

The Watch - The Ringer

In this episode of The Watch, hosts Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald dive into the latest TV news, spotlighting the highly anticipated return of Richard Price and Steve Zalians to

Key takeaways

• The return of Richard Price and Steve Zalians to television marks a significant moment for crime drama fans, especially given their acclaimed work on 'The Night Of.'

Main topics

• Return of Richard Price and Steve Zalians to television
• Netflix's new series 'Sterling Point' based on 'Ghetto Side'

Notable quotes

"It could be like a food and travel podcast. We could be a political podcast. We could make it a podcast about economic discovery and financial wellbeing."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with the hosts reflecting on the changing nature of media

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:05) I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk. Speaker 3 (0:10) Now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me in the studio here to explain the bond market, it's Andy Greenwald. Can Speaker 1 (0:23) anyone in this room explain the bond market? Speaker 3 (0:24) All I know is Scott Besson puked yesterday. Speaker 1 (0:27) You keep saying this, but I thought there was going to be like TMZ DC gotcha footage of him actually like. yakking in a bucket. No, Speaker 3 (0:34) I mean like he intervened, man. He had to come in and start buying back. Speaker 1 (0:38) Is that what you quants call it? Is that what it is? Look at my quant. Is that like... Is Kevin Warsh going to puke at the next? Speaker 3 (0:46) No, I just it's just it's just my lingo. It's just my my way of speaking. Andy, it's great to see you on Thursday. We're Speaker 1 (0:52) getting out of touch, but I don't think so. Who says that? I was saying there were people who are like, maybe they're getting up there in years. I assure Speaker 3 (0:58) you that whoever says that is also worried about more in touch than they are with the bond market. Well, with everything, with geese, with the bond market, with Shane Gillis. whose new season of Tires debuted on Netflix, and we're going to talk about that. We have a bunch of news to get through. The watch at Spotify.com, the watch pod underscore at Instagram, and you can watch us on YouTube at the ringer-tv channel or on Spotify, where I hope you listen to us or wherever you listen to podcasts. And a little bit of housekeeping. Oh, good. So today, obviously, we're going to do some TV stuff, some TV news, and then Tire season three, like the first half of it. Not that this is like, you know, lost. You need to like breathlessly track the development of Valley Forge Auto. But then on Monday, we have a little bit of Lanterns, a lot of Furious, and then Van's going to join me for Lioness. I Speaker 1 (1:51) was going to say, this would be a good housekeeping moment to say that we're hosting a screening next week here in Los Angeles, but I just found out it's sold out. Yeah, I knew that. Speaker 3 (1:58) You knew that? Yeah, I just knew. Speaker 1 (2:00) Did you buy all the tickets? Speaker 3 (2:01) No, I had Scott Besson do it. I was just like, this is an incredible way. Speaker 1 (2:06) The Los Feliz 3 guys are at the box office being like, CR puked. He bought the whole thing. We're hosting a screening of The Bourne Identity next Wednesday for American Cinematheque. Speaker 3 (2:15) Well, Speaker 1 (2:16) for those of you who listen, who have tickets, thank you. Speaker 3 (2:19) Thank Speaker 1 (2:20) you for propping up our personal bond market. Okay, sorry. Didn't need to talk about that. The Speaker 3 (2:24) yields go up, but the interest goes up. It just doesn't make sense. Let me just do a quick... Does anybody in this room understand the bond market? What are bonds? What if Kyle is like, actually? Wouldn't surprise me. It's not that I doubt her. It's not that I doubt her intelligence. She's just never mentioned the bond market to me. Speaker 1 (2:40) People who know the bond market don't need to mention it. Speaker 2 (2:42) Is the bond market different than the stock market? Yes. Speaker 1 (2:45) Well, and it sounds like both are markets. Speaker 2 (2:47) Some are wet, some are dry. Can Speaker 1 (2:49) you Speaker 2 (2:49) explain to me Speaker 3 (2:49) the difference? Speaker 1 (2:51) I had one. I know you want to get into news. This is Speaker 3 (2:53) Thursday. We can let it rip. Speaker 1 (2:55) I had, didn't know what day it was. I had a quick thing, though. I don't know if you're following the story that was breaking to this morning or this week, that apparently there is a high-end phishing scheme where celebrities, authors, and journalists are receiving messages from prominent podcasts, or so they appear to be, saying, we'd love for you to appear on, for example, Fresh. This is Terry Gross. Well, no, I mean. Please come on Fresh Air. Much Speaker 3 (3:21) like this season of Lioness, the war has come home. It happened to Good Hang Podcast. I was getting there. I Speaker 1 (3:27) was getting there. Maybe Kaya can or I don't know if legally she can speak to it or not. She's Speaker 3 (3:30) like bond market. Speaker 1 (3:32) But anyway, you know, people who legitimately may legitimately maybe could have been guests on these podcasts were receiving messages and like some of them, you know, send in information. Some of them showed up on like Bruce Valance showed up on a Zoom where a black box said NPR. Speaker 3 (3:48) Really? Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:49) And then waited and then was like, oh, I get it. You know. But Speaker 3 (3:54) had he entered like his credit card information? It sounds like a prank. Speaker 1 (3:57) No, he did make a donation to National Public Radio. Yeah. This is a hell of a grip, by the way. Can you imagine if you got one? It's like, hey, it's John Ossoff. I know you're liking what I'm putting down right now. Would you make a small donation? But it's just some dude's PayPal. Anyway, my question for you is, why not us? Speaker 3 (4:16) Why haven't we been fished? Or why don't we start offering ourselves up for this kind of... Speaker 1 (4:21) I guess I kind of wanted to just put it on the table, bring you this news, and then wonder, like, is there a potential target? I don't want to help the scammers, but also I wonder if there's a certain mid-level celeb or thought warrior who might be susceptible to this grift. To call on our pod? Yeah, if it was just like, hey man, this is CR. I know you love listening to me on podcasts. Speaker 1 (4:45) I'd love for you to join us on The Watch to share your takes on... I mean, do you think that there's a fertile ground? Speaker 3 (4:53) How high up in Trump's cabinet do you think we could get? Who do Speaker 1 (4:57) you think would Speaker 3 (4:57) come on the pod? Speaker 1 (4:58) Stephen Chung. Speaker 3 (4:59) Oh, yeah. Speaker 1 (5:00) Easy. Yeah. You mean like actual? Like, Speaker 3 (5:03) do you think if I was like, hey, Scott, I just don't get it. I don't really know what's going on. Speaker 1 (5:08) Probably. I feel like Sean Duffy is very. Do you have a sec? Sean Duffy is media forward. Yes. Yeah. You know what I mean? I wouldn't want Speaker 3 (5:15) any of those fucking Speaker 1 (5:16) guys Speaker 3 (5:16) on this Speaker 1 (5:16) podcast. Speaker 3 (5:17) No, I Speaker 1 (5:17) know. Speaker 3 (5:17) This is a sacred Speaker 1 (5:18) space. Is there anyone that you think that I, I mean, again, I'm not. Speaker 3 (5:21) Do Speaker 1 (5:21) you have Natalie Speaker 3 (5:21) on? Speaker 1 (5:23) For the clicks? No, Speaker 3 (5:25) just to get as a psychological portrait. Speaker 1 (5:29) Who among us hasn't climbed into a trunk to be near to those that we love? Yeah, okay. Speaker 3 (5:37) I Speaker 1 (5:38) like that you immediately went White House. I think that you have political ambitions, both in terms of your career and maybe in terms of your career. You know what I mean? Like in terms of what you want to cover, who you want to be hobnobbing with. The Speaker 3 (5:49) thing about the watch is it can be anything we want it to be. Speaker 1 (5:52) Okay. You Speaker 3 (5:52) know? Speaker 1 (5:53) Yeah. Speaker 3 (5:53) It's sort of, uh, Play-Doh in that way. Like we can just kind of like mold it on to any kind of like experience we want to have with it. Well, it could be like a food and travel podcast. We could be a political podcast. We could make it a podcast about economic discovery and financial wellbeing. I Speaker 1 (6:09) was going to make it a resistance podcast until Alex Vindman went down in flames in Florida. And I was like, Jesus. I got to find a new grift. That's why we're covering tires today. That's Speaker 3 (6:20) right. We're just two Speaker 1 (6:22) years late for the vibe shift. Speaker 3 (6:24) Let's talk about some shit we're excited about. That's what I have this called. There was a couple of announcements this week in the world of TV that piqued our interest. Number one is the return of two watch goats. Yeah. Speaker 1 (6:38) I Speaker 3 (6:38) mean, accomplished screenwriters, in some cases, best-selling authors. But Richard Price and Steve Zalian are back at it again. They made one of my favorite TV shows of all time, The Night Of. Richard Price obviously has been a guest on this show as is Steve Zalian. Yeah, we had him. And Price is the author of Clockers and the author of Freedomland and Samaritan. Lush Life. One of my favorite books. He's also the screenwriter behind Color of Money and Sea of Love and many other screenplays. They collaborated years ago with HBO on The Night Of with Riz Ahmed and John Turturro and now are reuniting to adapt a nonfiction book from 2015 called Ghetto Side. Now, Zalien hasn't done a TV project or really I don't think any project since Ripley, which was my favorite show of the year it was released and very high up on your list. This is based on this 2015... book by Joe Leovi. And this is the log line. On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home. One of thousands of black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes. But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift. And you say what? Speaker 1 (8:05) Skag season. Yeah. So I think the one thing that I don't know if you mentioned in your beautiful preamble is that this is going to be for Netflix. Speaker 3 (8:14) This is for Netflix. Thank you. Speaker 1 (8:16) I think it's interesting primarily because this has HBO all over it because of Price's long association with the network. He did the... Road Speaker 3 (8:28) on the Wire. Speaker 1 (8:29) Yes, but also what was the show that we liked that we almost, it's like been memory hold because of COVID. with Ben Mendelsohn. Outsider. Yes. And Jason Bateman. And it just seems like since the, yes, and it seems like since the headlines were like Night of Reunion, not sequel, but spiritual sequel in the sense of these guys working together on a crime story pulled from the headlines, or in this case, pulled from a nonfiction book, that would feel like a natural home for it. And I find it interesting that Netflix swooped in and just got it. You can look at this a number of ways. You can look at it as Netflix. reinforcing what we talked about last week about how this is true crime adjacent. So it kind of fits in with some of their programming. You can look at it as they were very up. Netflix was very opportunistic in snapping up Zalien's Ripley from Showtime where it was floundering. And I think they turned it into, again, we loved it. It's a masterpiece. I think it did well enough for them because it got Emmy consideration. So that could be a sign of them once again, just being like. smart movers when the market shifts. Too bad, because I Speaker 3 (9:30) mean, the dream in life would be for them to continue to make stuff in the Ripley-verse. And I think Andrew Scott is probably a little old to keep playing Ripley. But that being said, like some of the stuff that happens at the end of the first season of Ripley or that season of Ripley would suggest that maybe they had designs on. When Speaker 1 (9:48) we talked to Zalien about, I mean, I think the desire was to do more of them, but I think the lift may have just been too hard because it was so exacting and such a demanding and involved and ultimately beautiful. production. Yeah. The third piece that I would just look to is I would just I would windhorst fingers anytime Netflix swoops in and tries to drink HBO's milkshake only because we've talked about it before, but there is a division within Netflix led by former HBO executive Nora Skinner, who they're, I think, actively trying to recreate some of the good, prestigious creative vibes. Speaker 3 (10:20) Literary projects. Yeah. So Speaker 1 (10:22) that all makes sense. But the main takeaway is this is awesome for us. We'll have a show to make next year. Speaker 3 (10:27) I wonder if Zalien's going to direct all of it like he did with Ripley. And I also wonder if Robert Elswit, who shot Ripley, would maybe be available to shoot this. Hope they shoot it in Los Angeles, obviously. That would be essential, I think, if you're going to make a show about L.A. crime to shoot it here. Has there been any development? Have you heard anything about any of the Jordan Harper noirs getting developed for TV or for... Speaker 1 (10:55) Um, I, my under, no, but I think, well, I guess my understanding of it is that Jordan, who wrote, um, Everybody Knows, a book we loved two years ago and his new book, uh, Violent Masterpiece, I just finished this year because he is also a screenwriter and has worked on TV. And, you know, I, this, this came up during the rewatchables that, that he's actually the guy who was writing and potentially would have show run in series, the LA Confidential TV series from years ago. My understanding is that he wants to make these himself as well. He should, but I don't know where they stand. Speaker 3 (11:28) Speaking of seizing the means of production. Speaker 1 (11:31) You're good at this. Speaker 3 (11:32) Charlie Hunnam. Yes. Fascinating. Speaker 1 (11:34) Made Speaker 3 (11:35) his name as the lead of Sons of Anarchy, an FX, long-running FX show. You Speaker 1 (11:40) don't think he made his name on Undeclared? I would say that Sons of Anarchy was a bigger deal than Undeclared, but I thought he was delightful on Undeclared. Thank you. Thank you for seeing me. And Speaker 3 (11:48) I also find him delightful in The Gentleman, the movie. Oh, yeah. Right. But he's best known for Sons of Anarchy. And funnily enough, he is reuniting the cast of Sons of Anarchy, or most of it, for a show called Legends, which will also be on FX, which was Sons of Anarchy's home for a long time. Speaker 1 (12:07) This is not the Steve Coogan show that we covered briefly. Speaker 3 (12:09) And I believe that this is... So the logline is that the original cast of Sons of Anarchy reunite at a convention, a fan convention, and something goes off the rails. And they are... They put in peril, I imagine. The way I'm reading this is that this is a, it has real single camera action comedy written over, like maybe docudrama style. Maybe not, I don't know. But like Hunnam apparently is like very creatively involved in this. Is he the writer of this? I Speaker 1 (12:43) believe this is his project. Speaker 3 (12:45) This is his project. It got Kurt Sutter's blessing. He is the creator of Sons of Anarchy, longtime showrunner of that show, and reunites many of the cast members, Katie Segal, Ron Perlman, Theo Rossi, et cetera. So Hunnam developed it Speaker 1 (12:59) with Jonathan Groff, who is an incredibly accomplished and very, very funny and talented writer, showrunner. He was... He worked on English Teacher? He did not work on English Teacher, but he worked on... Oh my God, happy endings. Oh, right. Speaker 3 (13:15) For Speaker 1 (13:15) many years. And blackish and came up with Conan O'Brien. And so there is a, there's an established comedy mind here. Okay. For a show that I think will probably be more than comedy. But the main comp here is that they're galaxy questing themselves. Speaker 3 (13:30) Yes. Speaker 1 (13:30) Right. Have Speaker 3 (13:31) you guys done that on rewatchables? No. Do you like Galaxy Quest? Love Galaxy Quest. I don't know that I've ever seen it. Really? Yeah. I'm just being completely honest between these two walls. Nobody Speaker