This 2013 movie premise doesn’t just scream “chick flick.” It howls it like a banshee – a banshee obsessed with Pride and Prejudice and other things Jane Austen. Keri Russell, showing a much softer side than she has in FX’s The Americans, plays a single woman who decides to travel abroad to attend a British holiday resort catering to literary and movie fans who want to wallow in an approximation of the worlds generated by author Austen. But the approach here i

2014

Jul

REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER By David Bianculli

On tonight’s show, the guests include Nate Silver (the statistician who’s said some eye-opening things when he’s visited Maher in the past) and Star Trek veteran George Takei, who once memorably roasted William Shatner by giving him a tip on how to correctly pronounce his former co-star’s last name, after decades of getting it wrong. “It’s Ta-KAY!,” Takei (shown here) told Shatner with measurable irritation in his voice. “You know… like toup

2014

Jul

THE STRAIN By David Bianculli

If you missed the opener of this new FX series last Sunday, here’s a convenient chance to catch up. And you should, because The Strain is a TV ride worth taking – and a story that introduces some innovative variations on the vampire theme. Guillermo del Toro not only directed this pilot, but he and Chuck Hogan, who collaborated on the novels on which The Strain is based, co-wrote this opening script as well. Corey Stoll stars. For a full review, see Bianculli’s Blog.

2014

Jul

TWO NEW FX SHOWS ABOUT LOVE AND HATE By Eric Gould

For the time being, new FX comedies are probably constructed more or less from the Louie template. Married and You're the Worst, premiering Thursday don't have the vignetted, semi-surreal structures of Louis C.K.'s show, but the environments are the same...

2014

Jul

WELCOME TO SWEDEN By David Bianculli

Now that Greg Poehler, creator and star of this new series presented by NBC, has established the autobiographical premise of his show – a man, here named Bruce, moves to Sweden after falling in love with a woman who lives there – it’s time to run with the comic possibilities of the premise. Lena Olin, as the mother of Bruce’s girlfriend, gets more laughs in subtitled Swedish than most NBC comedy stars do in English. Poehler is funny, too, but quietly so, while Josephine B

2014

Jul

THE SIXTIES: "THE SPACE RACE" By David Bianculli

Tom Hanks, whose Playtone company is one of this fine documentary series’ production partners, appears on camera in tonight’s episode – and, since Hanks so memorably proved he had the right stuff by portraying astronaut Jim Lovell in 1995’s Apollo 13, he’s more than earned the right to put the Space Race, which both predated and outlasted the Sixties by a few years each way, in his own entertaining perspective. But he’s far from the only one on tap tonight &nd

2014

Jul

RECTIFY By David Bianculli

Tonight’s episode is called “Act As If,” and continues the story line begun last week as Daniel (Aden Young) emerged from his coma and went to Atlanta. I’m going to Act As If I know what’s going to happen next, though I don’t have a clue. But that’s something I plan to rectify by watching tonight’s Rectify.

2014

Jul

NY MED By David Bianculli

This medical documentary series continues to over-perform in the ratings, based on summer TV fare in general and serious nonfiction TV in particular. But at the same time, ABC seems to under-promote it, out of either a lack of what should be pride or a failure of what should be a celebration of success. But I’ve said from the beginning you should watch NY Med, and, like the cases that come through the trauma doors of the hospitals documented by Terence Wrong’s camera crews, every day

2014

Jul

YOU'RE THE WORST By David Bianculli

SERIES PREMIERE: There’s something fairly unsettling about this new FX comedy – but there’s something unshakably unique about it as well, which makes it very watchable even as watching it may make you occasionally uncomfortable. Aggressively cynical, narcissistic and self-destructive characters are not new to sitcoms – Krysten Ritter’s comically abrasive character in ABC’s Don’t Trust That B---- in Apartment 23 being a prime example. But in this new seri

2014

Jul

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO BACK TO THE TV: IT'S 'SHARKNADO 2' By Ed Bark

BEVERLY HILLS, CA -- Don't think too deeply about Sharknado -- as if that were even a remote possibility...

Posts 81-90 of 185

8 9 10 11 12

New From TVWW

PBS' 'Frontline’ Examines Pension Promises and — Spoiler Alert — Finds the Math Doesn’t Add Up

The Decadence of ‘Versailles’ Comes to Ovation

Prescribing Mamie Gummer in 'Emily Owens, M.D.'

Looking for a Free Ride? HBO Can Deliver

'Pass the Biscuits' Part of the Hatfield-McCoy Pop-Culture Legacy

Dispatches From TVWW

'Extinction: The Facts' is a Sobering Call to Action

How 'Mayans' Has Been Influenced by the Show's Creator Elgin James

For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Take on Ernest Hemingway, the Man and the Myth

In the Final Season, Sutton Foster's Liza is Now the Genuine Version of Her 'Younger' Self

Season 2 of 'City on a Hill' Returns with Kevin Bacon, Aldis Hodge, and Boston Corruption