DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
2017
Jul
5
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This newest FX series looks at the genesis in America of the crack epidemic, by focusing on a handful of characters who prove central to the drug’s importation and spread in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Damson Idris, as the ambitious young kid who finds himself a major player, is at the center, and is an impressive find as a series lead. You care about him, as he navigates the streets, makes the deals, and suffers the setbacks related to the initial exponential spread o
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Jul
4
 
 
John Oliver's put his new acquisition, a was figure of lessor-known president Warren G. Harding, to work – starring in a new biopic about the ex-commander in chief along with some Hollywood heavyweights...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Jul
4
 
 

Tommy Dewey is likely the only graduate from his class at Princeton who is currently starring in a sometimes-raunchy hit television comedy. “I kind of fell backwards into it,” says Dewey, who plays the good-hearted if often irresponsible Alex on Hulu’s Casual...

 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Jul
4
 
 
The recurring Syfy marathons of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone are more than just easy programming filler for occasional holidays. They’re also, these days, the torch that most keeps the memory and reputation of that classic TV series alive, at least for a new generation of viewers. So, today, revel in the Zone. Watch some of the iconic episodes, like “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (3:30 p.m. ET), which we still show in class when teaching early TV history at Row
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Jul
4
 
 
Episodes 5 through 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return are shown tonight in a mini-marathon, bringing viewers up to speed on the Twin Peaks sequel. But the speed, to this point, has been about as deliberately and maddeningly slow as watching someone sweep a barroom floor in real time to the music of “Green Onions.” Which, I swear, was one scene in this new David Lynch-Mark Frost revival. But nothing was stranger, or more memorable and inscrutable, than Episode 8, which features a grizzled, t
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Jul
4
 
 
Next weekend, CNN premieres The Nineties, the latest in its documentary series on various recent decades. Tonight, it repeats the most recently televised installment, The Eighties, which includes an expanded two-hour segment on television – which includes Hill Street Blues, and also includes me.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Jul
4
 
 
Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Nancy Pelosi, is behind this documentary, which sought to unite rather than divide politicians, by having them recite something on which they could all agree: our founding documents. Actors are part of the mix, too, but it’s the politicians who matter the most – including all the living Presidents, taking turns reading parts of the U.S. Constitution and other writings that shaped and defined our country.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Jul
4
 
 
The annual concert is presented and televised live, with music and fireworks straight from Washington, D.C. Check local listings.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Jul
4
 
 
For Independence Day, TCM is presenting some of the most patriotic movies in its entire archive. The evening begins with this 1942 movie musical, in which James Cagney, famous for portraying the toughest of gangsters during the cinema’s early days of sound films, portrays song-and-dance man George M. Cohan, and does a “Dandy” job. In a movie made during wartime, yet. Even in black and white, this movie is pure red, white and blue.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Jul
4
 
 
When Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the smash hip-hop Broadway musical Hamilton, he included a nod to this earlier musical about the founding fathers, by referencing the lyric “Sit down, John” – a salute to this 1972 musical movie’s opening song. The movie stars Williams Daniels as John Adams, with Howard Da Silva as Benjamin Franklin and Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, and is all about the summer of 1776, when politicians sat through a sweltering summer and argued the merits,