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The Daily Star, Oneonta, N.Y., Friday, March 26, 2021 4 By Rachel Jones TV Media A ldis Hodge ("One Night in Miami," 2020) and Kevin Bacon ("Crazy, Stupid, Love," 2011) return to Boston as Assistant District At- torney Decourcy Ward and cor- rupt-but-revered FBI agent Jackie Rohr, respectively, in the Season 2 premiere of the pop- ular crime drama "City on a Hill," airing Sunday, March 28, on Showtime. Set in the early '90s, Season 1 saw the beginning of an un- usual alliance as Ward and Rohr teamed up despite their vastly different personalities and outlooks. The new season is set to revolve around a fed- eral housing project in Bos- ton's Roxbury community, where drugs, crime and corrup- tion are all living next door. Pernell Walker ("The Deuce") joins the cast as coalition lead- er Grace Campbell, whose dedication to improving the community is sabotaged by gang activity. In contrast to Campbell's Good Samaritan personality, Rohr is desperate to salvage his career by capitalizing on the city's faulty criminal justice system. However, it won't be easy for him with Ward as his ever-present antithesis. With Ward quickly picking up on Rohr's latest scheme, it's really only a matter of time be- fore the hostile kinetics be- tween the two erupt into full- blown combat, especially giv- en that the pair have quite a history together. In Season 1, they took down a group of masked armored-car robbers in the north Boston neighbor- hood of Charlestown. While much has changed in the new season, Ward is still his old bu- reaucracy-cleaning self while Rohr remains true to his tradi- tional, often illegal, ways. What truly stands out about "City on a Hill" is the collective brilliance of the actors. Bacon owns the screen in his role as the brash antihero Rohr. Be- tween using drugs and cheat- ing on his wife, Jenny (Jill Hen- nessy, "Standing Up, Falling Down," 2019), Rohr is all about snatching the worm be- fore everyone else. Meanwhile, Hodge, with all of his gravitas and morality, provides the per- fect counterbalance to Bacon as Ward, the personification of all that is good and hopeful in Boston. That being said, Season 2 is going to shake things up quite a lot as our leads face various new trials and tribulations. In an interview with EW, Bacon explained, "We're going through different levels of fear, terror [and] self-reflection when it comes to who these people are in the space they're in. Even Jackie has those mo- ments where he has to look in the mirror and say, 'Who am I? And is this who I really want to be?'" While Season 2 will see the return of series regulars Lauren E. Banks ("Plain Fiction," 2018), Mark O'Brien ("Blue Bayou," 2021), Amanda Clay- ton ("Dirty Dead Con Men," 2018) and Matthew Del Negro ("Magnum PI"), it will also feature a variety of guest stars, including Keiko Elizabeth ("How to Get Away with Mur- der"), Lucia Ryan ("The Last OG"), Kameron Kierce ("The Best of Enemies," 2019), Shan- non Wallace ("Dynasty"), John Doman ("The Trial of the Chi- cago Seven," 2020) and Mi- chael O'Keefe ("The Enemy Within"). The first season premiered in June 2019 and was renewed for a second season barely two months later. Filming for Sea- son 2 began in late February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut it down. Luckily, production was already com- pleted on all eight one-hour episodes of Season 2 by that time, leaving mainly post-pro- duction duties. The TV drama was originally inspired by a real-life campaign called the Boston Miracle, which led to a drastic decrease in the city's youth homicides in the 1990s. Created by a crimi- nology professor named David Kennedy, the program was de- veloped as a problem-oriented policing program aimed at pre- venting violence in U.S. cities. It earned its name after it pulled down the youth homicide rate by a staggering 63% in Boston, with particular focus on the Roxbury, Mattapan and Dorchester neighborhoods. Despite being set in the '90s, the showrunners are keen on keeping the storyline attuned to current issues. In an effort to stay timely, the network was quick to discuss with writers and cast members as the Black Lives Matter movement reached new levels in 2020. They made sure the scripts were as on point and relevant as possible, while still staying faithful to the context of 1990s Boston. A-list celebrities Ben Affleck ("The Way Back," 2020) and Matt Damon ("Jay and Silent Bob Reboot," 2019) top the list of executive producers, who, as Boston natives, have a unique talent for balancing authentici- ty with timeliness. In addition to executive pro- ducing the show, Affleck is also responsible for the original idea behind the series, then brought to life by Chuck Ma- cLean ("Marmalade," 2014) on a two-year contract. Follow- ing investigations into his al- leged inappropriate comments last year, however, MacLean's involvement in the series has been scaled back for Season 2. If the show gets a third season, it's unclear whether he will be part of it. One thing's for sure, though: the Season 2 renewal was nothing short of expect- ed, thanks to the first season's "wicked-good acting," ac- cording to Rolling Stone mag- azine's TV critic Alan Sepin- wall (something which Sea- son 1's viewership numbers and ratings seem to corrobo- rate). coverstory Aldis Hodge as seen in "City on a Hill" Boston's bad boy returns: Season 2 of 'City on a Hill' airs on Showtime By Adam Thomlison TV Media Q: How old are Phineas and Ferb? A: There are a couple of different answers to this question, and there are multiple timelines and time travel trips involved, so don't expect too much precision here. That said, they're somewhere between 8 and 10 years old. The Season 4 episode "Act Your Age" features an introduc- tion from the creators, Dan Povenmire and Jeff Marsh, who state that the episode takes place 10 years in the future. The story is about Phineas and Ferb getting ready to go to college. That means that it's most likely that they're 18 or 19 years old at the time, assuming they received a (relatively) normal Amer- ican education. So, that would make them 8 or 9 years old in the show's regular timeline. That being said, the Season 2 episode "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo" sees them travel forward in time 20 years and upon arrival in this timeline they're said to be 30 years old. That makes them 10 years old in the regular timeline. This discrepancy could easily be explained if they didn't take the standard educational route. If they're 10 years old, then in "Act Your Age's" future scenario they're going to college at 20, which isn't all that abnormal — it's pretty easy to picture Phineas and Ferb taking a gap year. Of course, that requires us to assume that they remain 10 years old throughout the course of the show. That's pretty standard for cartoons, which don't have to explain their actors visibly aging (Bart Simpson, for example, has been in elemen- tary school since 1989), but it does pose a problem if we're al- ready putting this much work into figuring out their ages. If we assume they're aging in real time, then they're both 25 years old when they start college in "Act Your Age." Q: Why is Jonathan Harris always billed as a special guest star on "Lost in Space"? He was in every episode, wasn't he? A: There are actually two competing explanations for this, though it's possible they're both true. Jonathan Harris ("The Third Man"), the somewhat overact- ing actor who played the villainous (at first) Dr. Smith, did ap- pear in every episode of "Lost in Space," but he reportedly wasn't meant to. As a result, he was listed as a guest, and they just never changed the credits. However, he was also the last person to be cast and so, for contractual reasons, he had to be billed last. This apparently seemed like an insult, so he demanded the "special" credit to make himself stand out. (He has admitted this himself in inter- views.) Demanding a special credit to satisfy your own self-opinion is a pretty diva-ish move, but that's very much in keeping with the Dr. Smith character. According to the first explanation, that character was sup- posed to be killed off inside the first season, after he fulfilled his instigating role in the story. That role, of course, was to dou- ble-cross the Robinson family and sabotage their ship. That might seem like too much dastardliness for a character to come back from, but Harris managed it. His campy, over-the- top performance reportedly impressed the producers so much that they decided to keep him around full time. Have a question? Email us at questions@tvtabloid.com. Please include your name and town. Personal replies will not be provided. hollywoodQ&A

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