Even with a scorecard, it’s gotten all but impossible, on this show, to tell the good guys from the bad guys, especially when there’s talk of the “true S.H.I.E.L.D.” Perhaps tonight’s episode will offer some clarity in its flashback, a tie-in to the most recent Avengers movie which recounts the day the spy agency was attacked from within, as well as without.

2015

Mar

IZOMBIE By David Bianculli

I don’t know if Rose McIver, as Liv, is having as much fun playing her zombie character as I am watching her do it, but so far, it’s been a blast. She has to munch on cadaver brains, attained at her morgue job, to keep from turning into “full-out Romero” zombie mode – but the clever twist here is that as she consumes each dead person’s brains, she also temporarily absorbs some of their memories, abilities and emotions. So already, we’ve seen Liv get more

2015

Mar

CANCER: THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES By David Bianculli

Part 2. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Siddhartha Mukherjee, this three-night, six-hour documentary series, presented by Ken Burns, continues. If you saw yesterday’s Part 1, you’ll most likely be captivated enough to stay tuned to follow the progress of the understanding and treatment of this infuriatingly complex disease. It’s presented and structured here more like a murder mystery, with clues, dead ends, red herrings and inspired leaps of logic – and, in o

2015

Mar

JUSTIFIED By David Bianculli

I keep warning that the final episodes of this great series are likely to serve up surprises and shocks – but even I was unprepared for the sudden turn of events in last week’s show, which found Raylan, Boyd and Ava in the same scene, with Boyd’s ill-gotten gains, Raylan’s determination to arrest him, and Ava’s sudden trump card, which had her becoming the number one fugitive on Raylan’s list, and everyone else’s.

2015

Mar

YOUNGER By David Bianculli

SERIES PREMIERE: TV Land is trying something new here, and it’s worth a peek. It’s a single-camera hour-long filmed comedy from Darren Star of Melrose Place and Sex and the City fame, not a sitcom performed in front of a live audience, and it’s got a premise that should appeal to viewers much younger than, as well as smack in the middle of, the TV Land demographic. Younger stars Tony-winning Broadway musical headliner Sutton Foster (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes) as L

2015

Mar

THE CHINA SYNDROME By David Bianculli

This intense thriller, released in March 1979, presented a story of a TV fluff feature reporter (Jane Fonda) and her more radicalized cameraman (Michael Dougas) doing a piece on state-of-the-art nuclear energy when a power-plant manager in California (Jack Lemmon) shifts from proud proponent to concerned canary in a radioactive coal mine. At the time, the movie went nuclear itself, due to an astounding and frightening coincidence: 12 days after the film’s release, an accident similar to th

2015

Mar

CANCER: THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES By David Bianculli

Part 1 of 3. Ken Burns presents this three-part, six-hour documentary, which is directed by Barak Goodman and based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Siddhartha Mukherjee, who also appears in this PBS study. Edward Herrmann narrates, gently taking viewers on a tour that shows how the world has fought the war against cancer – on several fronts, and across many decades, sometimes with frustrating results. Mukherjee’s point is that we have to know how we’ve treated this diseas

2015

Mar

BETTER CALL SAUL By David Bianculli

This is the penultimate episode of this fabulous first season of Better Call Saul, and an episode that, based on promos, may fracture the fraternal bonds between Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk, soon to take on the persona of Saul) and his older brother Chuck (Michael McKean). And while Jimmy may be fighting the acquisition of new partners, Mike (Jonathan Banks) reluctantly is seeking them out.

2015

Mar

THE COMEDY CENTRAL ROAST OF JUSTIN BIEBER By David Bianculli

This could be the point, and certainly is perceived and promoted by its subject as such, where the 21-year-old misbehaving celebrity owns up to his bad-boy past, demonstrates a sense of humor while watching others joke about it, and moves on to a new, more mature phase of his life. Or, it could just be the latest in a series of stunningly stupid missteps and mistakes. Time will tell. Meanwhile, here’s this newest roast from Comedy Central. Kevin Hart hosts, and Will Ferrell is one of the r

2015

Mar

BROADCAST NEWS By David Bianculli

James L. Brooks, who already had generated one wonderful piece of pop-culture entertainment about TV newsrooms as co-executive producer of CBS’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show, provided another in this very funny, very smart 1987 movie. Albert Brooks (no relation) plays a talented but less than dynamic news correspondent, William Hurt plays the good-looking but vapid anchor rising quickly through the ranks, and Holly Hunter plays the TV news producer who deals with them both. It’s a delig

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