Tonight’s new episode is titled “Show Stoppers,” and boy, does it feature one. The special guest star, playing a potentially mad magician, is someone who’s both well-versed in performing magic acts and in stopping shows whenever he performs, or hosts. He’s Neil Patrick Harris – and he fits into this twisted ensemble like a bloody glove.

2015

Jan

MAN SEEKING WOMAN By David Bianculli

SERIES PREMIERE: Jay Baruchel stars in this new FXX series, which is worth seeking out because it’s so impressively unusual. It starts as the story of a young man suffering a painful romantic breakup and emerging, wounded and uncertain, into the singles life – and there’s nothing unusual about that. But it’s the way he sees that world, and reacts to it, that elevates Man Seeking Woman from the typical to the anything but. For full reviews, see Eric Gould’s Col

2015

Jan

YEARS BEFORE 'PETER PAN,' ALLISON WILLIAMS SANG THE 'MAD MEN' THEME -- SORT OF By David Bianculli

Two years before Allison Williams was cast as Marnie in HBO’s Girls, and four full years before she donned green tights to star in NBC’s Peter Pan Live!, she appeared in this fluidly filmed music video...

2015

Jan

PARKS AND RECREATION By David Bianculli

SEASON PREMIERE: For this seventh and final season of Parks and Recreation, Leslie (Amy Poehler) and company go back to the future – to the jump-forward to 2017 that ended last season, and resumes for these final 13 episodes. Give these last shows some attention, and some love: Poehler, Chris Pratt, Aziz Ansari, Aubrey Plaza and Nick Offerman all have drawn more career heat in the years since Parks and Rec premiered. And personally, I was both stunned and delighted by the show’s unex

2015

Jan

MARVEL'S AGENT CARTER By David Bianculli

Just as The Flash premiered on the CW as an instantly more balanced and entertaining companion to its more somber parent series, Arrow, so did Marvel’s Agent Carter burst out of the starting blocks last week with a tone both lighter and more playful than that of its companion ABC series, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Hayley Atwell stars.

2015

Jan

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: "KLANSVILLE, U.S.A." By David Bianculli

In the United States, the Ku Klux Klan managed to re-emerge to spread its hateful, hooded racism after two periods of relative dormancy. The first time the KKK rose again, like locusts, was after being portrayed as heroes in D.W. Griffith’s epic 1915 silent film, Birth of a Nation. The second time was in 1954, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of integration in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. That was why the KKK gathered momentum again, but this new documentary examine

2015

Jan

FRONTLINE: "PUTIN'S WAY" By David Bianculli

This new Frontline provides both a biography and political assessment of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, including segments from a 1992 documentary about Putin commissioned by Putin. Not unexpectedly, but quite tellingly, it’s a more flattering portrayal of the Russian leader than provided by tonight’s Frontline – and that’s Putin it mildly. Check local listings.

2015

Jan

BAREFOOT IN THE PARK By David Bianculli

Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon are about to star in a new TV series based on Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, premiering soon on CBS. Meanwhile, tonight, as part of TCM’s month-long tribute to Robert Redford on Tuesdays, the cable network presents a movie version of another of Simon’s early Broadway comedy hits. This one, from 1967, stars young Redford, and an even younger (by one year) ingénue named Jane Fonda, as newlyweds who move into a fifth-floor New York walkup apart

2015

Jan

ROMAN HOLIDAY By David Bianculli

Made in 1953, this romantic comedy, directed by William Wyler, stars Audrey Hepburn as a princess who slips away from her handlers while on a visit to Rome. She ends up in the care, and the apartment, of an American newspaper reporter played by Gregory Peck, who’s initially unaware of her true identity. The Roman scenery is beautiful, and so is Hepburn.

2015

Jan

COLLEGE FOOTBALL NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP: OREGON DUCKS VS. OHIO STATE BUCKEYES By David Bianculli

For college football, this first-ever championship contest is The Big Game in more ways than one. The semifinal games these teams won to get here (beating Florida State and Alabama, respectively) drew enough viewers – more than 28 million each – to rank as the two top-rated shows in the history of cable TV. Ever. So how big will tonight’s championship get? Expect it to be cable’s all-time biggest draw, period. And it’s especially impressive because, had this year&rs

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