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

 
 
2020
Jun
20
 
 
This day in 1968 marked the debut of the NBC summer replacement variety series, Dean Martin Presents...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
19
 
 
The long-running game show I've Got a Secret debuted today in 1952...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
19
 
 
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: Bryce Dallas Howard makes her directorial debut here as a movie director – though she’s already directed an episode of a  Disney+ project, The Mandalorian. This nonfiction film, scheduled to arrive just before Father’s Day, looks at “everyday” dads, at celebrity dads – and at the multi-generational dads in the family of famous TV Happy Days son Ron Howard. Who just happens, of course, to be Bryce’s dad.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
19
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: Bette Midler and Judith Light have prominent roles in this second season of what was Ryan Murphy’s first series for Netflix. But then as now, as with his Hollywood series, Murphy’s Achilles heel is exposed by the Netflix pattern of series release. Netflix drops entire seasons at once, and Murphy, from Nip/Tuck to every edition of American Horror Story, is much better at starting a story than finishing it.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
19
 
 
NEWS SPECIAL: Juneteenth, the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States, has been around officially for almost as long as the mid-1860s, and officially became a state holiday in Texas in 1980, when the last slaves were freed there on June 19, 1865. But as just one more measure of how this particular era of racial awareness and reevaluation has blossomed and persisted, this ABC Juneteenth special is, so far as I can recall, the first broadcast
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
19
 
 
Tonight’s socially distanced program features one of the strongest and smartest lineups Bill Maher has ever presented: Susan Rice, Malcolm Nance, George Will, and Andrew Sullivan. And what a week to have them…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
19
 
 
Texas has always had its supersized souls. From Sam Houston to Lyndon Johnson, from Molly Ivins to the Bushes, it seems to savor larger-than-life people. And the late Ann Richards fit in neatly...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
19
 
 
The IFC series Sherman’s Showcase, a time-warp comedy parody of a “vintage” African-American TV variety show from the early 1970s, showed how irreverent, and very funny, it could be in its first season. Season 2 doesn’t arrive with weekly installments for a while – but as a treat, the series presents this special one-shot Black History Month Spectacular program, featuring such wildly imaginative segments as a panel show about bad blood between ba
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
19
 
 
Ivy Meeropol, the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, directs this documentary about Roy Cohn, who, as a young man, was partly responsible for that couple being wrongly convicted of espionage and executed. It starts with them, then shifts to Cohn, who’s shown wielding his influence and venom at first the Rosenbergs, then at Joe McCarthy’s side railing against accused Communists, before becoming an aggressive legal force whose clients included Studio 54, various mob bosses, a
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
18
 
 
The Crackle streaming website today premieres a documentary that’s been more than a decade in the making. It boasts dozens of interviews with those involved in the making of the 1984 comedy classic. Bill Murray stars, alongside Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson. Rick Moranis and Annie Potts turn in wonderful comic supporting roles, and Sigourney Weaver is a scene-stealer as a Ghostbusters client possessed by a demon. Come for the Murray antics. Stay for the Stay Puft Marshmallow M