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

 
 
2015
Jun
22
 
 
Jon Stewart’s show after the shootings at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, SC, was no laughing matter. Like David Letterman in his first show after the 9/11 attacks, Stewart admitted he was in no mood to make jokes – and instead, just talked about it from his own understandably bitter point of view. It was a great moment of television, and another impressive career highlight for Stewart, who devoted the bulk of Thursday’s show to an interview with 17-year-old Pakistani
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jun
21
 
 
The final day of the U.S. Open begins just before 11 a.m. ET, but Fox doesn’t begin TV coverage until two hours later, at 1 p.m. ET. From that point on, though, it’s an all-day, all-night affair until approximately 11:30 p.m. ET. The four golfers tied for the lead after three days of play will tee off just before or at 6 p.m. ET. – and Jason Day, the player fighting vertigo who collapsed and barely finished his round on Friday, is scheduled to tee off at 6 p.m. ET with Dustin J
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jun
21
 
 
MINISERIES PREMIERE: The original Poldark miniseries, imported by Masterpiece Theatre on PBS way back in 1975, starred Robin Ellis in the title role. (It’s available to watch, in its two-season entirety, on the Acorn TV streaming site, if you’re interested.) Ellis appears in this new version as well, but not as the lead: he plays Rev. Halse. The titular star this time, playing the British Redcoat who returns to Cornwall after being presumed dead in the Revolutionary War, is Aidan Tur
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jun
21
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: It’s an all-new season of True Detective, with a new setting a new story, and a new cast of characters and actors, led by Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch. And if you watch the first two episodes, as I have already, you ought to see enough to be hooked. It starts out as a bleak story with lots of very damaged characters – but that’s the territory this series traverses. The new season revolves around a murder that pulls in investigat
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jun
21
 
 
This two-hour documentary utilizes a very effective visual gimmick throughout, and positions cameras in such a way as to juxtapose modern images – from Amsterdam, Auschwitz and elsewhere – with period photographs so that present and past fade in and out of one another like ghosts. Anne Frank’s Holocaust spends hardly any time on its young heroine’s confined seclusion or literary output; instead, it traces her life’s journey from location to location, and uses that t
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jun
21
 
 
This prestigious awards ceremony, taped last month, is televised this year, and there’s a reason to seek out the Pivot network to find it. The shows awarded here really are the cream of the crop, and winners this year include Amy Schumer (who accepts her award for Inside Amy Schumer from Tina Fey, in quite memorable fashion), John Oliver (for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver), The Americans, Fargo, and the first Peabody ever given to a podcast (for Serial). Fred Armisen hosts – and
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jun
21
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: A cross between Jerry Maguire, Arli$$ and Entourage, this new comedy series stars Dwayne Johnson as a former Miami Dolphins defensive star who, after retiring, tries to make it as a financial consultant, specializing in representing his wealthy former peers. It’s a funnier show than expected – well, funnier than I expected, anyway, and Johnson does very well here, essentially playing the straight man reacting to insults and insanity all around him. For my review on N
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jun
21
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Tim Robbins stars as a secretary of state who finds himself embroiled in a sudden international crisis, after a coup in Pakistan results in an unstable leader poised and willing to instigate what could well turn into World War III. Some of the American assets on the ground in Pakistan? An unlikely duo played by Aziz Ansari and Jack Black. They’re very good, and Robbins is terrific, in a fast-paced political satire that intentionally echoes Dr. Strangelove – and, asto
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jun
21
 
 

Inspired lunacy on an international scale is a tough nutty to crack. HBO’s The Brink pulls it off despite being in the long shadow of Dr. Strangelove, the 1964 classic on which it’s very much modeled...

 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Jun
20
 
 
The new season of True Detective has some sophomore issues after its smash premiere season but really, how could it not?...