There's a reason I put "reality" TV in quotes: Most of it isn't. Scripted shows tend to have more relationship to the real world than The Real World...

2009

Feb

OH REALLY?: COMMERCIALS MAKE TV BETTER! By Diane Werts

So posits a study in the Journal of Consumer Research that suggests "commercial interruptions can actually improve the television viewing experience...

2009

Feb

THAT'S FUNNY: BUT GEORGE CARLIN WAS ALSO IMPORTANT By Diane Werts

He didn't live to see it, and that makes me so mad, I could say all of the seven words you can never say on TV...

2009

Feb

HOT SPOT(S): ANYTHING BUT THE SUPER BOWL By Diane Werts

Burned out on Super Bowl before it starts? We've found some quality TV alternatives to that pigskin thing...

2009

Jan

TV WORTH BUYING: 'GET SMART' DEAL By Diane Werts

Great price on Amazon's deal of the day -- Don Adams' 1960s spy spoof Get Smart, an enduring comic treat from writers Mel Brooks (pre-feature films) and Buck Henry (pre-Saturday Night Live), with mod icon Barbara Feldon playing savvy Agent 99 to Adams' silly Agent 86...

2009

Jan

COSTELLO'S QUADRUPLE 'SPECTACLE' By Diane Werts

If you haven't seen Elvis Costello's smart Sundance Channel interview/ performance series Spectacle, here's a great chance to catch up...

2009

Jan

TALK TALK: INSIDE THE COMEDY STUDIO By Diane Werts

Conan O'Brien is the latest James Lipton interviewee/victim on Inside the Actors Studio on Bravo...But not before Lipton grills/sucks up to a whole bunch of other funny folks in a Monday daytime marathon...

2009

Jan

TAPE THIS: 'PROFIT' IN ITS ENTIRETY FRIDAY By Diane Werts

Sorry for the late heads-up, but I just noticed Chiller is airing Adrian Pasdar's entire kinky Profit series Friday...

2009

Jan

THINK AGAIN: TUNE BACK IN TO 'ER' By Diane Werts

ER doesn't often intersect with Monty Python, but a strange connection came to me watching last Thursday's fresh NBC episode. Like the guy being dragged off by the plague corpse collectors in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, this hospital drama is "not dead yet"...

2009

Jan

FLICK PICKS: RICARDO MONTALBAN TRIBUTE ON TCM By Diane Werts

What, no Wrath of Khan?! Nope, not in Turner Classic Movies' all-day Friday salute to beloved actor Ricardo Montalban, who died Jan. 14 at the age of 88...

Posts 341-350 of 441

34 35 36 37 38

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'