Monday's new PBS American Experience offering, Stonewall Uprising, is a 2010 documentary about the landmark clash between police and the patrons of a Greenwich Village gay bar in the summer of 1969 -- but filmmakers Kate Davis and David Heilbroner save that pivotal confrontation for last. The rest of their 90-minute study (9 p.m. ET; check local listings) is an often scary condensed summary of historical local and national attitudes regarding homosexuality...

2011

Apr

'TALKING FUNNY,' 'CINEMA VERITE,' 'TREME': HBO GOES 3 FOR 3 By David Bianculli

In round one of its April assault of fresh TV programming, HBO last weekend presented the premiere of its fantasy epic series, Game of Thrones, and immediately renewed. This weekend, in round two, HBO fires off three more shots, all of them bullseyes...

2011

Apr

'ERNIE KOVACS COLLECTION': A DVD SET THAT BELONGS IN YOURS By David Bianculli

One of my absolute favorite TV heroes and icons, Ernie Kovacs, is celebrated in a lavish new DVD boxed set released today (Tuesday) by Shout! Factory. Like its subject, who was TV's first visual genius (and so much more), it's amazingly entertaining...

2011

Apr

FOR EARTH DAY, PUBLIC TV PROFILES ENVIRONMENTAL PIONEERS - NATURALLY By David Bianculli

Just in time for Thursday's Earth Day 2011, public television presents two new documentaries devoted to pioneers in the field (so to speak) of public parks and environmental preservation...many local public TV stations are presenting a study of New York's Central Park planner Frederick Law Olmsted...

2011

Apr

HBO'S 'GAME OF THRONES': HARD TO FOLLOW, BUT NOT TO WATCH By David Bianculli

HBO's new Game of Thrones series, which premieres Sunday night at 9 ET, is a TV fantasy epic with grand ambitions -- more mature than Syfy's Merlin or Starz's Camelot, less cartoonish and video-game violent than Starz's Spartacus, and telling a more complicated story, with a more sprawling cast of characters, than anything this side of Middle Earth. But even WITH a scorecard, which HBO provided me, it's confusing at times, and only occasionally satisfying...

2011

Apr

ON LOCAL TV WEATHERCASTS, BEWARE THE MIGHTY DOPPLER -- AND DANGEROUS PURPLE ROUND THINGS! By Tom Brinkmoeller

Forget the invention of the printing press, the telephone or even the electric light. This world was nothing until the invention of doppler weather radar. In fact, it's a wonder this world still spins, and wasn't ripped to cosmic shreds before doppler arrived and saved us from complete devastation...

2011

Apr

MORE BRILLIANT TV IDIOCY AHEAD: SCIENCE CHANNEL ORDERS 'AN IDIOT ABROAD 2' By David Bianculli

My favorite TV idiot savant is about to strike again. Karl Pilkington, whose quirky conversations with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant make me howl each Friday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO's The Ricky Gervais Show, and whose An Idiot Abroad reluctant travel series for The Science Channel is, to date, my unexpected TV delight of the year, has just agreed to star in a follow-up series, An Idiot Abroad 2...

2011

Apr

AT THE PALEY MUSEUM: HEARING, RATHER THAN LECTURING, ABOUT ERNIE KOVACS By David Bianculli

kovacs-tub-2-top.jpg Tuesday night, instead of teaching a college TV History class about Ernie Kovacs, I went to New York to attend a Paley Museum presentation ABOUT Ernie Kovacs -- moderated by Keith Olbermann, who, even before opening his mouth, honored the spirit of Ernie Kovacs by delivering a memorable, visual ad lib...

2011

Apr

ABC'S 'HAPPY ENDINGS' FINDS ITS FOOTING By Ed Bark

It begins pretty clumsily with a wedding stoppage scene straight out of The Graduate. Friends also quickly comes to mind. Still, this is an otherwise new ABC comedy called Happy Endings. And after viewing three available episodes, let's dust off another old saw: All's well that ends well...

2011

Apr

REPORTS OF THE DEATH OF BROADCAST TV DRAMAS ARE PREMATURE: JUST WATCH THESE THREE OUTSTANDING SERIES By David Bianculli

Cable TV dramas may outshine their broadcast counterparts, but major-network broadcast dramas aren't dead yet -- not so long as CBS's The Good Wife and NBC's Parenthood are battling it out on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET, and not when Friday Night Lights begins its final-season NBC run this Friday at 8 p.m. ET...

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