Last week, both Samantha Bee and Bill Maher, on their respective satirical current-events series, got to present interviews with President Barack Obama. But Bee isn’t through yet. This week she presents two installments of Full Frontal: this one, which is televised before the election, and a post-mortem wrap-up on Wednesday night.

2016

Nov

THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT By David Bianculli

Stephen Colbert, like Samantha Bee, is working extra hard this week. Tonight and Wednesday, his editions of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will be broadcast live, so his monologues, conversations, sketches and reactions can be as timely as possible. And on Election night itself, he moves to corporate sibling cable network Showtime to present a late-night show that’s not only live, but entirely uncensored. More on that tomorrow… but set your recorders now.

2016

Nov

M*A*S*H MARATHON By David Bianculli

Beginning today, Sundance is devoting part of its schedule to a truly welcome TV retrospective: in-sequence giant helpings of some of the best TV comedies ever made. Sunday from 6 a.m. ET through Tuesday at the same time, Sundance works its way through a marathon showing of the first four seasons of M*A*S*H, the brilliant anti-war war comedy developed for television by Larry Gelbert in 1972. That’s followed, on Tuesday, by heaping helpings of another 1970s TV classic, All in the Family. Co

2016

Nov

THE CIRCUS: INSIDE THE GREATEST POLITICAL SHOW ON EARTH By David Bianculli

This is the final pre-election edition for any weekend show dealing with politics, and tonight that refers to at least two noteworthy ones. The first is this team effort by Showtime and Bloomberg Politics to cover the presidential election campaign in weekly documentary bursts, and show it, from the inside as well as the outside, for the exhausting marathon it is. Mark Halperin, John Heilemann and Mark McKinnon – veteran political reporters or strategists – divide and conquer, coveri

2016

Nov

THE WALKING DEAD By David Bianculli

The first week of this season’s Walking Dead shows was unremittingly, even controversially, grim and violent. Last week’s episode was, by comparison, almost whimsical, introducing both an ersatz messiah and his uncaged pet tiger. And tonight’s episode changes tone again, focusing on another potentially deadly caged mammal: Daryl (Norman Reedus), captured and carted away by Negan and the Saviors.

2016

Nov

WESTWORLD By David Bianculli

Westworld continues to reveal itself slowly and present its intention and direction in unexpected twists, turns and dead ends – just like a maze, which has become not only this show’s central metaphor, but a plot device of its own, with the Man in Black (Ed Harris) searching with fierce determination to find “the maze” and understand its secrets.

2016

Nov

MASTERS OF SEX By David Bianculli

This season’s shows have been alternately emotional and amusing, and I’m guessing tonight’s new outing leans towards the latter. Libby (Caitlin FitzGerald), the sexually emboldened estranged wife of Michael Sheen’s Dr. Masters, heads on a weekend road trip with Bram (David Walton), her husband’s attorney – and her current paramour. It’s the summer of 1969, and they take a drive to upstate New York, to check out a little music and arts fair being held in

2016

Nov

LAST TANGO IN PARIS By David Bianculli

In 1972, Marlon Brando made two movies, both of which achieved an unusual degree of notoriety. One was Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. The other was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, in which he plays an American in Paris, but one who’s a far cry from the type portrayed on screen by Gene Kelly. In Last Tango, he plays a grieving widower, so overcome by the suicide of his wife that he embarks on a carnal, physical, no-names-please affair with a young woman (played

2016

Nov

LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER By David Bianculli

This is the other show, often dealing with politics, presenting its final edition before the arrival of Election Day 2016. Oliver has spent more and more time discussing the election campaign, always to his own dismay, and it’s impossible to imagine he won’t address the most recent events, and dramatic turns of events, in tonight’s installment, taped a few hours before it’s shown on HBO. Last Week Tonight has been the most consistently excellent satirical comedy show cove

2016

Nov

BIANCULLI’S DAILY BEST BETS RETURNS! By David Bianculli

Well, I’m going to give it a try, anyway: Returning to the daily grind of presenting daily, rather than weekly, editions of Bianculli’s Best Bets. I’ll try it for a while, and see if I can keep up the pace – the whole point is, in this post-operative phase of my TVWW experience, is that it’s not supposed to be a grind, but fun. So I reserve the right to revert to weekly recaps if this proves too taxing. But for now, let’s give it a go. And thanks, again, to al

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