March Roundup: A Classic Crossover, Shook Over 'Adolescence,' 'The Chosen' in Theaters and TV & So Much 'White Lotus'

March Madness took over but without a basketball in sight!

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It’s the hot season in Thailand but I know in other parts of the world, spring is sprung and March kept me busy with a variety of stories. Some were blasts from the past while others focused on an iconic Last Supper and more than a few involved a certain HBO series on MAX set in Thailand. Let’s dive into this roundup:

The Chosen, that drama series that follows the story of Jesus Christ (Jonathan Roumie) is just dropping its first two episodes in theaters and then will air on Amazon’s Prime Video starting in June.

The Chosen Season 5 is now available in theaters, soon on TV. (The Chosen)

I threw together a post helping people see the trailer but also find out where and how to watch the fifth season of the series, which will explore the Last Supper among other big moments.

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The year was 1985 and you wouldn’t think a sitcom and drama would have a crossover but that’s exactly what happened when Cheers stars Carla (Rhea Perlman), Cliff (John Ratzenberger) and Norm (George Wendt) encountered St. Elsewhere’s Drs. Auschlander (Norman Lloyd), Westphall (Ed Flanders) and Craig (William Daniels) in the Cheers bar on the medical series.

Both series premiered in the fall of 1982 and while both were stuck at the bottom of the ratings in their first seasons, Cheers would go on to be a ratings beast and run for 11 years while St. Elsewhere was critically loved and was regularly on the bubble for all of its six seasons. You’d think that both series being on NBC would make a crossover easy but that wasn’t necessarily the case, as prolific TV writer/producer Tom Fontana, who co-wrote the St. Elsewhere episode with John Masius and John Tinker, told me for this TV Academy story. You can read the interview with Fontana here.

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Adolescence: This is how you do a 4-episode limited series and make it more impactful and memorable than shows with many more episodes as well as shorter movies. The story about young Jamie (a fantastic Owen Cooper) killing a classmate and how it impacts his and his family’s lives is so compelling even when we examine how the law enforcement team handles the case as well as chilling one-on-one episode with Jamie and therapist Briony Aristen (Erin Doherty). Here were my thoughts after I’d watched the first three episodes (I watched the final episode soon thereafter). In short, Adolescence one of the best pieces of work I’ve ever seen and needs to be talked about.

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The Amazing Race: Keeping an eye on U.S. broadcast TV, Boyd and I are always happiest when The Amazing Race is airing. So it was only fitting that I had to grab some time with longtime host Phil Keoghan about the new season as well as his own love of travel, which I found out started way before the reality competition series did. Here’s my post where Phil gives an update on his other reality competition series, Tough as Nails, but you can also watch the video right here.

Phil Keoghan (center) with greeters on the Hong Kong leg of this season’s The Amazing Race. (Photo: CBS/Paramount)

Travel! Travel! Travel! I had to go back to the United States in January so I thought I’d do something different and take my time getting there. The result was me spending various amounts of time in 7 cities, 5 countries over a course of three weeks. It was a rollercoaster of experiences so I threw together a video with the high points from each stop. I plan on making some shorter videos to highlight how to utilize your time when traveling to include more, not less, so keep an eye out for those.

When All Else Fails… I say travel as much as possible! Not just your annual vacation but make mini trips and jaunts to places you’ve been to before as well as new places. There’s a great world out there that is ready to be explored and my only regret is I wish I had done more travel earlier in my life. But here I tell the story of my first plane ride and how a typing competition helped me get there.

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I knew the third season of The White Lotus would be of interest to me since last year it shot here in Thailand (Koh Samui, Bangkok and Phuket) and had a great cast including familiar faces like Walton Goggins, Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Boon, Leslie Bibb, Parker Posey, Jason Isaacs and the returning Natasha Rothwell. Then there were the new faces like Tayme Thapthipthong, Sam Nivola, Sarah Catherine Hook, Patrick Schwarzenegger and Aimee Lou Wood. Let’s not forget Blackpink singer LaLisa Manobal making her acting debut! Needless to say, I wrote a lot about this show for various publications, here on Coffee TV & Me and, since I participated in the Bangkok junket last month, I had plenty of video to post on my YouTube channel.

Chatting it up with Natasha Rothwell here in Bangkok at The White Lotus press junket in February.

For the international arm of Variety, I talked to the Thai Film Tourism in Bangkok for a lowdown of how a big show like The White Lotus was drawn to Thailand in the first place and how 2025 is looking for the Land of Smiles in terms of foreign production. Read it here.

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Also, to balance all the TV coverage, I didn’t forget that people seem to love hearing about our cats Mango and Miso so here’s a post where Miso was just being inquisitive and super cute one day and I happily captured it with my Iphone.

Until next time…