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DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

Bianculli's Blog

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

The Cold Light Reader

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Dateline Donovan
Contributors

DAVID HINCKLEY

All Along the Watchtower

ED BARK

Uncle Barky's Bytes

ALEX STRACHAN

TV That Matters

MIKE HUGHES

Open Mike

ED MARTIN

Ed Martin's TV Mix

KIM AKASS

Aerial View

MONIQUE NAZARETH

MNtv

BILL BRIOUX

TV Feeds My Family

ROGER CATLIN

TV Eye

GARY EDGERTON

Must-Click TV

TOM BRINKMOELLER

Raised On MTM

GERALD JORDAN

Crossing Jordan

NOEL HOLSTON

The Grassy Noel

TVWW ARCHIVE

Contributors Archive
 
 
 
 
 
2011
Oct
17
HARRY BELAFONTE BIO ANOTHER HBO TREAT -- AND TRIUMPH By David Bianculli
 
 
Monday night at 10 ET, HBO premieres Sing Your Song, a 90-minute biography of Harry Belafonte that has a lot in common with that network's recent, equally triumphant and illuminating George Harrison documentary. Both are loaded with rare photographs, recordings and film and TV clips. Both drop more big names than a Who's Who compendium. And both look at artists who were as concerned with social activism, and personal enlightenment, as with making music...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
15
'WALKING DEAD' OR ALIVE? SEASON 2 RETURNS STRONGLY, EVEN WITH BACKSTAGE CHANGES By David Bianculli
 
 
Long after the surprise success of AMC's zombie apocalypse series, The Walking Dead, last year, but well before Sunday's 10 p.m. ET launch of Season 2, executive producer Frank Darabont and AMC parted ways, for reasons still unexplained. The question is: Does the new season of Walking Dead still pack the dramatic intensity and ability to shock it did last year, when it racked up an audience more than that of the network's Mad Men and Breaking Bad?...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
12
KICKOFF CURSE LIVES -- AND, ACROSS THE BOARD, BAD NEW SHOWS DIE! By David Bianculli
 
 
Already in this new season, three new fall shows have been canceled: NBC's The Playboy Club and Free Agents, and CW's H8R. One of them, Free Agents, may have fallen victim to TV's Kickoff Curse -- but all of them share another common denominator that makes their demise something to celebrate here at TV WORTH WATCHING. All of them were terrible...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
9
'BREAKING BAD' AND 'DEXTER' -- DIFFERENT SHOWS, SAME ULTIMATE ENDING? By David Bianculli
 
 
The second episode of Season 6 of Showtime's Dexter was televised Sunday night at 9 ET. An hour later, on AMC, Breaking Bad concluded Season 4. And so far as I'm concerned, the two outstanding, unusual drama series share more than an evening's proximity. When they do finally wrap up their daringly dark story lines, I predict they'll end the same way. They'll end, I suspect, with loving relatives learning about their misdeeds, and squaring off against them in a raw, potentially fatal confrontation, fueled by disbelief, anger and betrayal...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
6
'PARKS AND RECREATION': THANKS FOR THE NICE TV SURPRISE By David Bianculli
 
 
Thursday's new episode of NBC's Parks and Recreation (8:30 p.m. ET) came as a preview DVD in the mail -- and its contents came as a total surprise. The pre-credits open, the best lampoon of public radio since Alec Baldwin promoted his "Schweddy balls" on Saturday Night Live, may be my favorite TV moment of the year. But for very personal reasons...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
5
FX'S 'AMERICAN HORROR STORY': IT'S CREEPY AND IT'S KOOKY, MYSTERIOUS AND SPOOKY, IT'S ALTOGETHER OOKY By David Bianculli
 
 
I've road-tested my advance copies of FX's American Horror Story, the aggressively twisted new series premiering Wednesday night at 10 ET, to peg it as TV's most polarizing series since Twin Peaks. I love it, and see all sorts of potential in it. Others dismiss it immediately and harshly: "The Shining called," sneered one person whose opinion I respect. "It wants its crappy first draft back"...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
4
SCORSESE'S HBO GEORGE HARRISON BIOGRAPHY IS LYRICAL, MUSICAL, AND BEAUTIFUL By David Bianculli
 
 
One of the very first images in director Martin Scorsese's fab four-hour HBO documentary biography, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, shows the former Beatle playing hide-and-seek with the camera, partly obscured by a bunch of colorful tulips. By the next time we see that same image, near the end of the two-part program, it's saturated not only with color, but with meaning...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
2
KEN BURNS & LYNN NOVICK: THE TVWW INTERVIEW (PLUS, A REVIEW OF 'PROHIBITION') By David Bianculli
 
 
Two months ago, while on the Television Critics Association press tour, I wrote about the then-upcoming documentary series Prohibition, co-directed for PBS by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick...However, I saved a fuller review of the show, and excerpts from a private chat with Burns and Novick before their TCA press conference, until now...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Sep
29
SHOWTIME'S 'HOMELAND' ONE OF YEAR'S BEST -- AND MOST UNSETTLING -- NEW DRAMAS By David Bianculli
 
 
Showtime's Homeland, a new drama series about a returning POW and the CIA agent who suspects him of having gone over to the enemy, is based on an Israeli series, but producers have made this Americanized version all their own. And, thanks to a superb cast and a brilliantly fresh approach to storytelling, they've also made it a better TV series than anything the broadcast networks have turned out this fall...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Sep
26
2011 FALL TV DOLDRUMS ALMOST OVER -- AFTER A FEW MORE NOT-SO-GREAT DAYS AHEAD By David Bianculli
 
 
Be patient a little longer. TV is about to improve greatly with a sudden crop of exciting new offerings -- starting Sunday with a sudden glut of quality TV. The newest Ken Burns documentary epic on PBS, Prohibition, begins Sunday, as do Showtime's new Homeland series and the same network's Season 6 premiere of Dexter. But between now and then, we've got four new less than superb prime-time premieres with which to contend...
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 

David Bianculli

Founder / Editor

David Bianculli has been a TV critic since 1975, including a 14-year stint at the New York Daily News, and sees no reason to stop now. Currently, he's TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and is an occasional substitute host for that show. He's also an author and teaches TV and film history at New Jersey's Rowan University. His 2009 Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour', has been purchased for film rights. His latest, The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific, is an effusive guidebook that plots the path from the 1950s’ Golden Age to today’s era of quality TV.
 
 
New From TVWW

PBS' 'Frontline’ Examines Pension Promises and — Spoiler Alert — Finds the Math Doesn’t Add Up
By Alex Strachan
 
 
 
 
The Decadence of ‘Versailles’ Comes to Ovation
By David Hinckley
 
 
 
 
Prescribing Mamie Gummer in 'Emily Owens, M.D.'
By Ed Bark
 
 
 
 
Looking for a Free Ride? HBO Can Deliver
By Christy Slewinski
 
 
 
 
'Pass the Biscuits' Part of the Hatfield-McCoy Pop-Culture Legacy
By Noel Holston
 
 
 
 

Dispatches From TVWW

'Extinction: The Facts' is a Sobering Call to Action
By David Hinckley
 
 
 
 
How 'Mayans' Has Been Influenced by the Show's Creator Elgin James
By Mike Hughes
 
 
 
 
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Take on Ernest Hemingway, the Man and the Myth
By Alex Strachan
 
 
 
 
In the Final Season, Sutton Foster's Liza is Now the Genuine Version of Her 'Younger' Self
By Monique Nazareth
 
 
 
 
Season 2 of 'City on a Hill' Returns with Kevin Bacon, Aldis Hodge, and Boston Corruption
By David Hinckley
 
 
 
 

This Day in TV History

1957: Julie Andrews Stars in 'Cinderella'
By TV WW