Though she came to prominence in the 1980s sitcom “Who’s the Boss?”, 1970 Carnegie Mellon drama school grad Judith Light began her career on a daytime soap (“One Life to Live”) and has been most often seen in dramatic roles, including “Transparent,” “American Crime Story” and filmed-in-Pittsburgh “Manhunt: Deadly Games.”
Light’s latest starring role is in anthology limited series “The Terror: Devil in Silver,” now streaming its first episode on AMC and Shudder. The series will air on linear AMC later this year.
Based on the novel “The Devil in Silver” by Victor LaValle, who wrote the six-episode TV adaptation, it finds Light cast as a patient at a psychiatric hospital where a man named Pepper (Dan Stevens, “Downton Abbey”) gets imprisoned after a fight with his girlfriend’s ex.
“Devil in Silver” references the classic “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in an early episode, but Light said, aside from the setting, the two stories are not alike.
“It is about patients in a mental facility, but this is not about people who can, in certain ways, stand up for themselves,” Light said during a Television Critics Association virtual news conference Monday, citing the horror element that courses through each edition of “The Terror.” “Whether the monster that they talk about, the devil in silver, (is) real or not real — and that’s something that people are gonna have to make up their minds about — there’s no Nurse Ratched, nobody like that.”
Aasif Mandvi (“Evil”) plays the New Hyde Psychiatric Institute’s leader; CCH Pounder is one of the nurses and John Benjamin Hickey (“The Big C”) is the hospital’s creepy founder.
Light’s Dorry has been stuck at New Hyde for years, and she comes off initially as a creepy loon. But deeper into the season, it’s clear Dorry may be tuned into the place’s malevolence in a way that could help (or hurt) Pepper.
“You do find out her origin story, and you find out one of the things that I think has been most important for me in choosing this role is that it talks about the role of women and how they are treated in our society,” Light said. “(Dorry) had a husband who didn’t want to put up with her mood swings or her creativity or her artistry. He put her in this facility and left her there for over 30 years and never came back. You’re going to see all of the things that happened to her and how she reacted to being in this place, how fragile she is, how needing of friendship and relationships she is, how she wants to be the person who welcomes everybody to New Hyde because she’s been there the longest and she knows the most. She wants to be validated, and she’s fragile and she’s heartbreaking.”
Light said she was drawn to “Devil in Silver” by the chance to work with LaValle, Stevens and director Karyn Kusama (“Destroyer,” “The Consultant”) and by the show’s topic.
“One of the things that was really important to me was that we got to talk about mental health in this country,” Light said. “And what does it mean to be in a world and a health care system that diminishes people, not everywhere, but in many places.”
Light also said she still relies on what she learned at CMU.
“Resilience, absolutely,” Light said. “Having a strong foundation of training that really comes into play in everything that I do. You know, they very kindly just gave me an honorary doctorate in 2023. So now I’m a doctor. So when you’re a doctor, you have to be very responsible to all the things that you get to do. So that, I would say, came directly from CMU.”
Broadway on PBS
If it’s May, it’s Broadway Fridays on PBS’s “Great Performances.”
This year’s roster includes a stage capture of American suffragists musical “Suffs” (9 p.m. Friday, WQED-TV), a West End revival of “Irving Berlin’s Top Hat” (9 p.m. May 15), performances of Broadway standards and pop hits in “An Evening with Nicole Scherzinger” (9 p.m. May 22) and Joel Grey narrating a documentary about the role of Jewish composers and lyricists in the creation of the modern American musical in “Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy” (9 p.m. May 29).
Kept/canceled
NBC renewed “The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins” for a second season.
• ABC renewed “Scrubs” and “Shifting Gears” for the 2026-27 TV season.
• PBS’s “Masterpiece” ordered an updated remake of “Monarch of the Glen.”
• Netflix announced the upcoming fourth season of “The Night Agent” will be the show’s last.
• Canadian comedy “Son of a Critch,” which airs in the U.S. on The CW, will end with its upcoming fifth season.
• NBC canceled Zachary Quinto’s “Brilliant Minds” and freshman comedy “Stumble.”
• Fox canceled Denis Leary’s “Going Dutch” after two seasons.
Channel surfing
HBO Max’s “The Pitt” hit No. 1 on Nielsen’s original streaming series chart for the first time (1.16 billion minutes viewed) for the week of March 30. … Prior to its fifth and final season, “The Bear,” debuting at 9 p.m. June 25, Hulu dropped a one-hour prequel episode this week, “Gary,” featuring Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Mikey (Jon Bernthal) on a trip to Gary, Ind. … Season 15 of “King of the Hill” debuts July 20 on Hulu. … Netflix pushed back the announced holiday season release of Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew,” which will now get a 49-day theatrical release beginning Feb. 12, 2027, before streaming on Netflix on April 2, 2027. … WWE’s “NXT Premium Live Events” will air on The CW beginning with “The Great American Bash” later this summer.