After I retired from all-hours television monitoring, I decided to try to get by somehow, some way, with just basic cable. And I even have a Top 10 for the year...

2012

Dec

MY COFFEE WITH LARRY By Noel Holston

It was November, 2004 when I met Larry Hagman for coffee at a rather nice Manhattan hotel. It was probably the most intimate moment I ever had interviewing a celebrity...

2012

Nov

TWO AND A HALF AMENS By Noel Holston

Two and a Half Men finally made me laugh. Well, OK, the half man did. It was a first, and as a much-appreciated bonus, I didn’t even have to watch the show...

2012

Nov

MAUDE'S DILEMMA REVISITED By Noel Holston

It’s hard to imagine laugh lines that flip about abortion in a prime-time entertainment show today, but Maude’s most famous episode actually aired without creating a huge stir in November 1972...

2012

Oct

JON GNAGY: THE MAN WHO TAUGHT TV VIEWERS HOW TO DRAW By Noel Holston

Jon Gnagy was a TV star before Lucy, before Berle, before Kukla, Fran or Ollie. A self-taught artist, he decided teaching was his true calling, and television was the ideal classroom...

2012

Sep

ANDY WILLIAMS: NOT NOW, NOT EVER, NEVER! By Noel Holston

For kids and teenagers of the time, it was Andy Williams' TV show, not his Billboard charters, that mattered...

2012

Jul

WHAT IT WAS, WAS ACTING: REMEMBERING ANDY GRIFFITH By Noel Holston

Andy Griffith played kind, gentle men so well and so often over the course of his six decades in show business that his occasional visits to the dark side were all the more electrifying...

2012

Jun

'PASS THE BISCUITS' PART OF THE HATFIELD-MCCOY POP-CULTURE LEGACY By Noel Holston

All the hoo-hah about Hatfields & McCoys got me thinking about Pass the Biscuits, Mirandy. History Channel’s hit miniseries may well be the most accurate take on the notorious rivalry, but Mirandy is surely the funniest...

2012

May

GOING MENTAL By Noel Holston

About this time a year ago, I watched Patrick Jane shoot and kill a man who claimed to be his nemesis — and like millions of fans of CBS’s The Mentalist, I was left wondering how creator Bruno Heller and his writers could keep Jane out of prison...

2012

May

DOES POPULAR CULTURE PROMOTE VIGILANTISM? By Noel Holston

Should we paying more attention to America's tradition of self-defense and vigilantism, and how it's being celebrated by popular entertainment?

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