When you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go... Down-tonnnn! Okay, I've gotten that out of the way, my worst pun of the year. So far. But let's do talk about Downton Abbey, the most watched and talked-about series PBS has had since, oh, The Civil War...

2011

Dec

MADRIGAL MYSTERY TOUR: A LOVING ROMP THROUGH THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS By Noel Holston

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... a partridge. In a pear tree. Really. This was a few years back, when we were still courting. But I'm reminded of her generosity and creativity every year about this time...

2011

Nov

FIGHTING FOR PBS'S 'FIGHT OF THE WEEK' By Noel Holston

If it please the court, I'd like to advocate on behalf of The Advocates. It's a series whose time has come. Again. The Advocates was a weekly public-TV presentation from 1969 through 1974, revived as a bi-weekly program for most of 1978-79...while the fisticuffs were all verbal, it could pack a wallop. Many an intellectual hotshot left the arena with his or her ego bruised...

2011

Nov

AN ARTISTIC CHAIN REACTION: MUSIC BY 'OZ'-MOSIS By Noel Holston

Art is a never-ending seduction. One thing leads to another. And another and another. Examples of art begetting art are innumerable, from Chagall's take on A Midsummer Night's Dream to the W.H. Auden poem inspired by Breughel's Fall of Icarus...and there is perhaps no better example of this artistic chain reaction than the immortal 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, which will have its umpteenth annual showings this weekend on TBS...

2011

Sep

IS THIS A $16 MUFFIN? (NO.) By Noel Holston

Speaking at an RTDNA conference the other day, Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News, decried the lack of investigative reporting by television news operations these days. "I think a lot of people shy away from it because it's expensive and it's difficult and it takes a lot of time...We succeed at 60 Minutes by doing it and by caring about it and by working hard to make it as interesting as we can, because there is a place for it and I think there's a hunger for it out there..."

2011

May

PEABODY AWARDS AT 70: 'OSCAR WRAPPED IN AN EMMY INSIDE A PULITZER' By Noel Holston

I'll never forget the time George Foster Peabody made Jon Stewart cry. Well, in manner of speaking. It was back in May 2006. Mr. Peabody, by then, had been gone from this mortal coil about 68 years. Stewart, the incorrigibly irreverent host of The Daily Show, was on stage at the Waldorf-Astoria's grand ballroom, overseeing the presentation of the awards that bear the late, great philanthropist's name...

2010

Sep

WHY FOX'S 'GLEE' SHOULDN'T WIN THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE By Noel Holston

I wonder what's next for "Glee". Knighthood? An installation at the Louvre? The Nobel Peace Prize? Nothing much would surprise me now that the Fox musical-comedy-fantasy-melodrama, which begins its second season Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET, has become the most over-praised TV series since, well, I can't think of a close second, let alone an equal...

2010

May

GUEST BLOG #91: NOEL HOLSTON PONDERS TV'S FONDNESS FOR DOUCHES WILD By Noel Holston

Is it just me, or has mainstream, prime-time TV undergone a little douche coup? Seems like everywhere I turn lately, there's some character insulting some other character by tossing out the d-word. As in, "What a douche." As in, "You're such a douche"...

Posts 41-48 of 48

1 2 3 4 5

Noel Holston

Noel Holston wrote about TV, radio and popular culture for the Orlando Sentinel, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Newsday before going to grow wine bottles near Athens, GA.

New From TVWW

Noel Holston

PBS' 'Frontline’ Examines Pension Promises and — Spoiler Alert — Finds the Math Doesn’t Add Up

The Decadence of ‘Versailles’ Comes to Ovation

Prescribing Mamie Gummer in 'Emily Owens, M.D.'

Looking for a Free Ride? HBO Can Deliver

'Pass the Biscuits' Part of the Hatfield-McCoy Pop-Culture Legacy

Dispatches From TVWW

'Extinction: The Facts' is a Sobering Call to Action

How 'Mayans' Has Been Influenced by the Show's Creator Elgin James

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Take on Ernest Hemingway, the Man and the Myth

In the Final Season, Sutton Foster's Liza is Now the Genuine Version of Her 'Younger' Self

Season 2 of 'City on a Hill' Returns with Kevin Bacon, Aldis Hodge, and Boston Corruption

1957: Julie Andrews Stars in 'Cinderella'