TV Talk: Aaron Donald on ‘Secret Celebrity Renovation;’ ‘Quantum Leap’ is back on NBC

Although he’s made his NFL career as a Super Bowl winner with the Los Angeles Rams, Pittsburgh native Aaron Donald says he still feels “a lot of love, a lot of support in Pittsburgh” in this week’s episode of CBS’s “Secret Celebrity Renovation” (8 p.m. Friday, KDKA-TV).

It’s the show’s second Pittsburgh-based episode this season, following a Billy Gardell hour set in Penn Hills that aired in late July.

This time, the series is in the Lincoln-Lemington-­Belmar neighborhood where Donald grew up, renovating his childhood home that’s now more of a family gathering place (his family currently lives elsewhere, but Donald’s childhood home has been preserved as a “hangout house”).

A 2010 Penn Hills High School grad who played football for the University of Pittsburgh through 2013 before getting drafted into the NFL, Donald completed his Pitt degree in communications in 2020.

Donald’s return to Pittsburgh on “Secret Celebrity Renovation” includes obligatory beauty shots of the city skyline as Donald recounts how his father instilled in him a work ethic.

In addition to featuring Donald and his wife and kids, the episode includes appearances by his father, Archie; brother, Archie Jr.; and Donald’s Penn Hills High School defensive line coach, Demond Gibson.

Donald works with “SCR” foreman “Boston Rob” Mariano (“Survivor”), tearing up living room carpet to reveal well-preserved hardwood floors and renovating the kitchen and the basement home gym. (CBS said Donald and his family members were not available for interviews.)

Mariano said “SCR” films episodes in an overlapping fashion, so he was in Pittsburgh in May to start the project for Gardell’s episode, flew to Denver to start another episode and then returned to start work at Donald’s childhood home. And, yes, Mariano visited the family of his wife, Beaver native Amber Brkich (they met on “Survivor”): “I graced them with my presence for lunch,” he said, “and I think that was all they wanted.”

Mariano said Donald’s episode of “SCR” marked the first makeover this season for a basement/workout room.

“He wanted to maintain that feeling of it being like a dungeon,” Mariano said, “the place where he learned a love of working out and he shared that with his dad.”

What’s next for Mariano? He and his family live in Florida, where Brkich works as an admissions director for a private school. He has his own design/construction company, but he’s also still got his TV work, including hosting a Boston-based show for Hearst’s Very Local streaming channel.

He’s not confident there will be another season of “Survivor” in his or Brkich’s future.

“I love ‘Survivor,’ and they’ve been so great to us over the years,” Mariano said. “I’ve said no (to returning) a million times, and I keep going back. So who knows what the future holds, but I don’t envision a scenario of going back and playing on the island that would really make sense. I think we just have too big of targets (on our backs) right now.”

‘Quantum Leap’

As broadcast TV’s relevance continues to erode, network dramas are in retreat. Taking chances, trying new approaches to storytelling — that’s largely a thing of the past.

Instead, broadcast dramas are returning to simpler stories with more broadly drawn characters.

The original “Quantum Leap,” created by Charleroi native Don Bellisario, aired on NBC from 1989 to 1993 and was a critical darling because, at that time, its time-traveling stories represented something new and different. NBC’s “Quantum Leap” revival, premiering at 10 p.m. Monday on WPXI-TV, is unlikely to win critical praise because it represents a step backward. The new “Leap” offers nothing new beyond a team at HQ — shades of “The Equalizer” reboot — including Point Park University grad Mason Alexander Park as an A.I. scientist.

Raymond Lee makes a decent first impression as the new Leaper, physicist Ben Song, who travels through time, leaping into the bodies of people in assorted time periods and helping them in some way, similar to what Sam Beckett did in the original. (Scott Bakula, who played Beckett, is not in this sequel series so far.)

Monday’s episode was not the original pilot — the original pilot will now air as a later episode — but this new first episode has a lot of exposition that adds to the feeling that this “Leap” is a broadcast throwback.

The new “Leap” does have the added element of a connection to Beckett and his hologram companion, Al (the late Dean Stockwell), but that serialized story seems destined to drag on endlessly unless and until Bakula reprises his role.

‘Law & Order’ reminder

As noted in this space a few weeks ago, with the Steelers game on WPXI-TV on Sept. 22, NBC’s season premieres of the three “Law & Order” shows will air at the same time, 8 to 11 p.m. Sept. 22, but for one week only they will be on MeTV, Channel 11.2, over the air.

WQED film show returns

WQED-TV’s “Filmmakers Corner” begins its 14th season at 10 p.m. Saturday featuring an interview with Pittsburgh writer/producer/director Kevin Hejna. Artist/educator Will Zavala previews the documentary “Pittsburgh Police 1969.”

Kept/canceled

Hulu renewed “The Handmaid’s Tale” for a sixth and final season.

HBO Max renewed “Rap Sh!t” for a second season.

Amazon’s Prime Video canceled “Paper Girls” after a single season; Hulu did the same with comedy “Maggie.”

Channel surfing

… ABC’s “20/20” (9-11 p.m. Friday, WTAE-TV) is the latest national news show to cover the “mysterious death” of Greensburg-area dentist Larry Rudolph’s wife, Bianca, while on safari in Zambia. … PBS will offer live coverage from the BBC of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, 4 a.m.-12 p.m. Monday, with a recap special 8-9:30 p.m. Monday that will push episode two of Ken Burns’ “The U.S. and the Holocaust” to Sept. 20 and episode three to Sept. 21. … CNN premieres “The Murdochs: Empire of Influence” (9 and 10 p.m. p.m. Sept. 25), a multi-part docu-series about the history of Rupert Murdoch’s companies (subsequent episodes will air at 10 p.m. Sunday). … A new season of “Alaskan Bush People” premieres at 8 p.m. Oct. 2 on Discovery Channel and discovery+. … Ratings for Monday’s Emmy Awards telecast were the lowest in recorded history with just 5.9 million total viewers.