In an era of streaming services galore, it may seem like just about any past TV show can be found on at least one platform. That wasn't the case for Las Vegas, which aired for five seasons and more than one hundred episodes on NBC before ending in 2008. Fortunately for the show that starred Josh Duhamel and the late James Caan, that's about to change. The surprisingly addictive drama is coming to streaming before the start of the 2024 TV schedule, and the news was a reminder of what Duhamel told CinemaBlend about scripted vs. unscripted television.
How To Watch Las Vegas Streaming
All five seasons of Las Vegas will arrive for viewers with a Peacock Premium subscription on Friday, December 29. If you're looking for something fun to watch in the final days of 2023, the drama that ran from 2003-2008 could be a great fit, and not just because Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation" could get stuck in your head. The show centered on an elite surveillance team at the Montecito casino in Las Vegas, with James Caan's Ed, Josh Duhamel's Danny, and James Lesure's Mike manning the cameras. Caan was a series regular for the first four seasons, before departing in Season 5 and boosting Josh Duhamel to leading man position.
The cast was filled out by Molly Sims as Delinda, the casino's entertainment manager; Nikki Cox as special events director Mary; Vanessa Marcil as casino host Sam; Marsha Thomason as pit boss Nessa; and eventually Tom Selleck as owner A.J. Cooper in his final major TV role before the launch of Blue Bloods, which soon enters its final season. As somebody who discovered Las Vegas back when Season 3 was airing back in 2005, I'm definitely excited to have access to the earlier seasons a lot easier than DVD box sets!
Las Vegas was also Josh Duhamel's first major TV role, although he'd go on to join the Transformers franchise as well as series like Jupiter's Legacy and The Thing About Pam. Most recently, however, Duhamel was found in the unscripted sphere as host of CBS' Buddy Games, and the news about Las Vegas coming to streaming left me thinking back to what he told CinemaBlend about unscripted vs. scripted.
Unscripted Vs. Scripted, According To Josh Duhamel
I spoke with Josh Duhamel this fall for the premiere of Buddy Games, a new competition series that pit teams of close friends against each other for mental and physical challenges that were difficult for them, but fun to watch from home. Duhamel was the "test dummy" as well as host, co-creator, and executive producer for the show, and I can say as a Las Vegas fan that it was not something that I could have pictured for Danny McCoy.
Buddy Games was Duhamel's first foray into hosting, and although he was unable to discuss Las Vegas during the SAG-AFTRA actors strike, he shared this when I asked what it was like for him to embrace unscripted:
I never had any thoughts about hosting anything. It was never something I thought I would do, but this came about. They wanted me to host it, and I was like, 'Well, I know this world. I don't think there's anybody that would be as enthusiastic as I would about doing it.'... I wanted to get dirty. I wanted to actually do all the things I was asking them to do and not standing off in the distance observing, but actually being a part of it in some way as the camp counselor. I was just super excited to have the opportunity to get out there and do this.
There were no stunt doubles for the challenges on Buddy Games, and some were so grueling that I was surprised Josh Duhamel actually tried before the competitors did! I went on to ask the actor-turned-host if the challenges are entirely planned ahead of time or change in the moment, and he explained:
Well, that's one of the things that I, again, having never hosted or been a part of an unscripted show like this, didn't really know how it was gonna work. We would sit there and they would test them and I would be there for the test. They had a team... it was just like a test team, basically. We would work it through and I'd be like, 'Well what if we did [this]? This is gonna take too long. This isn't gonna [work]. What if we had them do this?'
After so many years of work on scripted projects on the big and small screens, adjusting the plans for challenges was new for Josh Duhamel. Any Las Vegas viewer knows that his character was no stranger to action, but it works very differently for a reality competition show. Duhamel went on:
There's certain things that I'd be like, 'Well, why don't we do this?' And the nice thing about doing unscripted is it's not scripted, so you can actually change things on the fly. The way the games actually play out.
If you haven't checked out Buddy Games just yet to see Josh Duhamel hosting (and in "test dummy" mode), you can find the full first season streaming with a Paramount+ subscription. CBS has not yet announced whether a second season will be on the way, but watching the first could be a fun way to pass the time until Las Vegas arrives on Peacock on December 29.
