As the recent passing of Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves reminds us, the mid-’60s were surely the heyday of adventure fiction on television. In addition to MI, there were numerous other TV series devoted to action and adventure in the
In addition to its well-publicized, disastrous experiment with moving Jay Leno to primetime, NBC has done some good things this year. Perhaps the best of these is the new sitcom Community. The concept is simple but rich in characters and
Although it’s ambiguous about much, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island makes two things extremely clear: Leonardo DiCaprio is a seriously big movie star, and delivering on genre expectations excuses a multitude of sins as far as audiences are concerned. The Scorsese-directed
If you want to identify the most controversial person in television, forget about Glenn Beck and Keith Olberman. The answer is obvious: Jay Leno. The once and now returning host of NBC’s Tonight Show has incited hostility and outright hatred
The Fox Network’s venerable action-drama series 24, now in its eighth year, has always had to perform a very difficult balancing act: trying to surprise viewers who expect to be surprised, while somehow staying sufficiently connected with reality to sustain
NBC CEO Jeff Zucker In a move that bodes well to strengthen TV programming overall in both primetime and late night, NBC has confirmed that Jay Leno will be moved back to his original 11:30 slot and his 10 p.m.
Press reports and even jokes on last night’s Jay Leno Show point to the likelihood that NBC’s experiment with moving Leno from late night to prime time is over, and that the instigator of the changes, Conan O’Brien, will have
In the classic manner of series television, the USA Network’s latest new dramedy, White Collar (Fridays at 10 EST), smartly combines elements common to numerous other contemporary TV crime dramas, especially other USA Network shows, in a way calculated to
Monk has been one of the best fiction series on U.S. television during the current decade, and tonight’s concluding episode (9 p.m. EST, USA Network) promises to tie up the few remaining vagrant plot strands. The show’s producers have done
Edward Woodward, star of the iconic 1980s U.S. TV series The Equalizer and acclaimed films such as The Wicker Man and Breaker Morant, has died at the age of 79 after a long illness. Woodward was best known for portraying
Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture-animation version of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol had a fairly blah opening weekend at the North American box office, finishing first with an unexpectedly miserly total of $31 million in ticket sales. Industry insiders had
Government broadcaster PBS is running a new, five-part series on a subject naturally interesting in our time: American Experience: The 1930s. Episodes are available for online viewing here. The program is just what one would expect from PBS: earnest, well-researched,
After several years of mostly miserably failed attempts to ride the wave of crime dramas most of the other TV networks were successfully navigating, ABC has turned to the TV and cinematic crime drama maestro Jerry Bruckheimer for help. The
The new ABC sitcom Hank is rather short on big laughs, but it’s well-stocked with good ideas and sound values. The big question is, will ABC give it a chance? Hank is the first of two family-oriented comedies ABC is
The smart new sitcom The Middle presents a positive but realistic view of Middle America’s pursuit of the American Dream. Set in the fictional small town of Orson, Indiana, The Middle (8:30 EDT) follows Hank in ABC’s new Wednesday night
So what we have here are two worlds. One, without God and controlled by thoughts of evolution, is a spectacularly dreary, unhappy place without love or meaning. On the other hand, even a fictional God brings the world meaning, joy,
After a couple of weeks of unsubstantiated rumors, it has been confirmed that the forthcoming film The Invention of Lying is indeed intended to satirize religion and religious believers. New York Post critic Kyle Smith has seen the film and
As overly serious police procedurals have begun to saturate the primetime network TV schedules, the FOX network has quietly but wisely been exploring alternatives. Introduced a few years ago, the highly popular House varied the formula by moving it to
Given the huge advertising and publicity push, plus the presence of star actor Matt Damon (Bourne spy film series) and star director Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s series of heist films), I thought The Informant! had a good chance to win the
The latest episode of PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery includes a surprise: criticism of communism. The U.S. TV network PBS and the British Broadcasting Corporation, both government-owned, tend to soft-pedal the evils of communism while placing every imperfection of life in the
Filmmaker George Romero has had exactly one good idea in his life: the original, 1968 zombie film Night of the Living Dead. Since then, he has been coasting on a reputation as a maker of smarter than average horror films.
Director Ang Lee’s films tackle a wide variety of ostensible subjects and genres, but they’re consistent in conveying antinomian-individualist platitudes. After his big international success with the superb martial arts saga “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Chinese-born film director Ang Lee
Following on the heels of the strong opening weekend for the relatively intelligent alien invasion story District 9, Quentin Tarantino’s World War II adventure Inglourious Basterds opened at number one at the U.S. movie box office this past weekend, taking
Proving once again its claim to the hotly contested title of Stupidest Television Network, ABC has canceled “The Goode Family” and “Surviving Suburbia,” continuing their business strategy of desperately trying new things and failing to give them a chance to
The return of the popular mystery-comedy series Monk and Psych for new seasons on the USA Network (at 9 and 10 p.m. EDT, respectively) is a bittersweet thing for most followers of the popular show featuring Tony Shaloub as the
