SERIES PREMIERE: This is not a recommendation. Chuck Lorre and David Javerbaum are behind this new Netflix sitcom, which stubbornly – and in this case, not at all effectively – continues the multi-camera, live-audience approach to situation comedy. Kathy Bates plays the owner of a legal California marijuana dispensary, but though the setting is new for a sitcom, the characters, and jokes, are anything but. Even with some animation thrown in, this new sitcom deserves to be thrown out.

2017

Aug

WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME? By David Bianculli

Showtime’s latest music documentary looks at the life, the music, and the unfortunate early death of Whitney Houston – who, this documentary shows, masked a lot of sadness in her life, onstage as well as off. For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.

2017

Aug

REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER By David Bianculli

Today’s scheduled guests include Jesse Jackson, Frank Bruni, and Paul Begala.

2017

Aug

JAY THOMAS 1948-2017 By David Hinckley

Jay Thomas played the in-your-face wise guy so well, on morning radio and national television, it almost seemed like a misprint that he was born in Texas and not New York...

2017

Aug

WEEKEND UPDATE SUMMER EDITION LIVE! By David Bianculli

Every week on this half-hour Saturday Night Live summer spinoff, one bit has leapt out as the one most discussed, and remembered, the next day. Two weeks ago, on opening night, it was Alex Moffat and Mikey Day as, respectively, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. Last week, it was Tina Fey, suggesting an unusual “sheet cake” method (pictured) -- "sheetcaking" -- of coping with the upsetting news from Charlottesville. And tonight, who knows? All I know is, I’ll be watching. Colin Jost and

2017

Aug

FLASH GORDON By David Bianculli

This 1980 big-budget, comic-book sci-fi movie isn’t very good, but it’s fun – and oddly, it seems to improve with age, at least in terms of its campy soundtrack by Queen. This film arrived in cinemas a few years after the first Star Wars movie, and when TV already was littered with such garishly colored sci-fi ripoffs and retro offerings as Battlestar Galactica (the original, terrible one) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century – which, like Flash Gordon, was a remake of a c

2017

Aug

THE GUEST BOOK By David Bianculli

Tonight’s installment of this clever Greg Garcia comedy anthology series stars Jenna Fischer, who was so endearing as the receptionist Pam on NBC’s version of The Office. She plays a scientist who attempts an innovative form of therapy for an Alzheimer’s patient, played by the great Orson Bean. She takes him to one of the few places he remembers – an old vacation cabin from decades ago – and redecorates and repopulates it so that she and everyone else who visits app

2017

Aug

AMAZON'S 'THE TICK' REPRISES ODDBALL COMIC BOOK ANTIHERO By David Hinckley

Earlier this month Amazon rolled out Comrade Detective, a comic “re-discovery” of a non-existent TV cop show, but it may have outdone itself with The Tick...

2017

Aug

JAY THOMAS, MASTER STORYTELLER, 1948-2017 By David Bianculli

Jay Thomas, the comedian and radio host whose TV appearances included familiar regular roles on NBC’s Cheers and CBS’s Murphy Brown, died of cancer Thursday, Aug. 24, at age 69...

2017

Aug

MR. MERCEDES By David Bianculli

The first episode of Mr. Mercedes, two weeks ago, opened with a car used as a weapon, driving into a helpless crowd – a scene televised days before a similar horror played out for real in Charlottesville. Last week, episode two ended with another chilling scene, but this time it was shocking, and memorable, because of its deliberate and well-aimed profane bluntness. For two episodes, the vehicular villain played by Harry Treadaway had badgered, by computer emails and other means, the now-r

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