America's been adapting British series for decades. All in the Family came from Til Death Do Us Part. Three's Company was originally Man About the House. NBC's The Office owes its existence to Ricky Gervais' BBC The Office. Dramas like Life on Mars, Cracker, Eleventh Hour and Queer as Folk started in England, too. Now it's going the other way...

2010

Mar

TRIBUTE: ROBERT CULP OF 'I SPY' DIES By Diane Werts

Robert Culp might well be the poster boy for not knowing what we've got till it's gone. His blend of relaxed amiability, authority, smarts and relaxed wit have rarely been matched on TV...

2010

Mar

FLICK PICKS: RAY HARRYHAUSEN'S REIGN OF SPECIAL EFFECTS EPICS By Diane Werts

The god of special effects blesses us Friday night. Ray Harryhausen inspired generations of movie makers with his stop-motion mastery from the 1950s to the 1980s...

2010

Mar

DVD UPDATE: 'T.A.M.I. SHOW,' 'MAD MEN,' 'THE PRISONER' REBOOT By Diane Werts

Mad music, mad design, mad remake -- this is one mad week on TV DVD...

2010

Mar

DVD UPDATE: HOW MANY EPISODES SHOULD A TV SEASON HAVE? By Diane Werts

I've been meaning to address is something I've noticed in season sets for vintage series from 40-50 years back. They've got as many as 39 episodes per season, compared to today's 22-ish. (Or on cable, 13-ish.)

2010

Mar

FLICK PICKS: AKIRA KUROSAWA (& GINGER ROGERS) By Diane Werts

Ginger Rogers is in the money for St. Patrick's Day. Turner Classic Movies' salute to this versatile actress continues with a double feature of her snappy Warner Bros. Depression musicals 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933. But first, on Tuesday night, TCM's March salute to Akira Kurosawa spotlights his crime thrillers -- a side of the director little known to Americans who think first of his period samurai epics...

2010

Mar

WATCH THIS: YOU ARE THERE, EXCEPT YOU'RE NOT By Diane Werts

Now you know how TV shows manage to afford the cinematic look of all that location shooting we've been seeing. They don't...

2010

Mar

DVD THIS WEEK: POLYESTER CHEESE! By Diane Werts

Sometimes you just need to watch something awful. Shut down your brain. Let the recycled plots, banal dialogue and bad acting wash over you. Maybe even mock it madly, MST3K-style...

2010

Mar

READ THIS: OSCAR MANIA ACCELERATES By Diane Werts

Just like the Super Bowl, there's always overkill when it comes to the Oscars. Which take place this coming Sunday (8:30 p.m. ET on ABC), in case you missed the 7,000 promos, ads, pre-shows and other assorted hype/hoopla...

2010

Feb

DVD THIS WEEK: ALICE'S TV WONDERLAND By Diane Werts

Those wacky DVD distributors, always looking for a bandwagon to jump on. This week, it's the one led by Tim Burton's phantasmagorical movie Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp, which hits theaters Friday...

Posts 201-210 of 441

20 21 22 23 24

Diane Werts

Associate Editor

Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

New From TVWW

Diane Werts

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'