The impressive first scene of Boss, the new Starz drama starring Kelsey Grammer as a volatile and domineering Chicago mayor, locks in entirely on Grammer's Tom Kane as (seen above) he receives a death sentence from his doctor -- a long, dispassionate description of the probable effects, short-term and long-term, of his rare brain disease...

2011

Oct

EYE REMEMBER, MAMA: CBS LOGO TURNS 60 YEARS OLD By David Bianculli

One of the most recognizable logo brands of the 20th century, one that's still around (with modernized variations) here in the 21st, celebrates its 60th anniversary Thursday. It's the CBS eye, which, only in the most literal sense, is a black eye on the face of the CBS network. Otherwise, it's a marketing triumph that would make Don Draper weep with pride. The CBS Eye, with the CBS Television Network identified in the pupil, and with the eye floating behind a sky of black-and-white clouds, was broadcast for the first time on Oct. 20, 1951...

2011

Oct

IT'S A ZOMBIE JAMBOREE AT AMC, WITH 'WALKING DEAD' REGISTERING MONSTER RATINGS NUMBERS By David Bianculli

TVWW managing editor Diane Werts has beaten me to the punch on this one, reporting on the amazing audience estimates for Sunday's Season 2 premiere of AMC's The Walking Dead in her For Better or Werts column -- But those numbers, like the show, bears repeating. They really are shocking -- and multiplying about as quickly as a zombie epidemic...

2011

Oct

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

'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

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

'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

'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

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

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...

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