“The Gift,” a recently repeated episode from the second season of The Waltons (seen in four-hour blocks Monday-Friday on Hallmark Channel) got me to thinking about the depiction of death in scripted television...

2014

Oct

60 MINUTES By David Bianculli

This newsmagazine amazes me with its longevity, its continual quality, and its unflagging ability to present stories that hook you just from the promos. Tonight’s installments, for example, include a report by Morley Safer on the Roman Colosseum – breaking the story that the age-old accepted story of Christians being sacrificed there, forced to stand against lions and such, has absolutely no basis in archaeological fact. (This just in…) It’s a great story, full of amazin

2014

Oct

THE SIMPSONS By David Bianculli

How time crawls. It’s that time of year – the time when Halloween approaches, and The Simpsons presents its annual Treehouse of Horror anthology. And to celebrate its silver anniversary, Treehouse presents one of the best installments ever, including a parody of A Clockwork Orange that is real horrorshow, and a parody of another film that allows The Simpsons to be haunted by their own past selves – the ones from The Tracey Ullman Show, when Homer Simpson sounded like Walter Mat

2014

Oct

THE GOOD WIFE By David Bianculli

After last year’s stunningly strong season, The Good Wife was in danger of falling into a slump. No such bad luck. This season has been another absolute delight, serving up one entertaining and unexpected conflict after another. And tonight, here comes another one: Alicia (Julianna Margulies) heads into court and finds an unexpected adversary as the opposing counsel: the quirky but very effective Elsbeth (played by Carrie Preston). Now that Preston’s run on HBO’s True Blood is

2014

Oct

THE WALKING DEAD By David Bianculli

Last week’s season opener was so intense, I was watching nervously, truly worried about the fate of some of my favorite characters. Well, they made it through last week’s gauntlet – but today is another day, and Rick and company are back where they started in Season 1: wandering the outskirts of the city, exposed and very, very vulnerable.

2014

Oct

THE AFFAIR By David Bianculli

Last week’s series premiere was the only episode Showtime sent to critics for advance review – so I’m as anxious as you are to see what happens next, and whether this show can maintain the high standards, and fascinating subtexts, of the opener. Dominic West stars.

2014

Oct

MANHATTAN By David Bianculli

SEASON FINALE: This series has been renewed for a Season 2, but tonight’s season finale is being described by the network as “explosive.” And since the show is all about the development of the atomic bomb, perhaps we shouldn’t take that description too lightly.

2014

Oct

HER By David Bianculli

Spike Jonze wrote and directed this interesting 2014 film, which got great reviews from most movie critics, even though (or perhaps because) it plays like an expanded episode of The Twilight Zone. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore, a geeky guy who becomes so enamored of his new computer operating system that he literally falls in love with it. Make that falls in love with Her, because the system is voiced by a female – who is voiced, in turn, by the huskily-voiced Scarlett Johannson. Kristen

2014

Oct

DOCTOR WHO By David Bianculli

Jenna Coleman’s Clara is back at center stage tonight, and even more than usual – because she and the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) are separated, requiring her to figure out a way to save the day, and maybe even him, armed with nothing more – but nothing less – than his sonic screwdriver.

2014

Oct

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE By David Bianculli

Tonight’s late-night Saturday Night Live, at 11:30 p.m. ET, is a repeat of this season’s opener – but the prime-time SNL repeat is of a much older vintage. It’s from 2000, and is one of the episodes hosted by Christopher Walken, with Christina Aguilera in her post-Disney, pre-Voice period. Primary reason to watch? Two words, repeated many times by Walken in one instant classic of a skit: “More cowbell!”

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