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

 
 
2019
Feb
24
 
 
Last week, we learned all about Samantha Morton’s character of Alpha, though it took a few flashbacks, from a few different perspectives, to get at the scary truth. Obviously, Alpha is arriving to become this season’s Big Bad, now that Negan is loose and ostensibly neutered – and Alpha, leading a band of survivors who walk among the undead and wear their skinned faces as masks, is very very bad indeed.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
24
 
 
SEASON FINALE: Now that we’ve learned of the dark secret shared by the former detectives, will tonight’s final episode of Season 3 provide closure? Or even a fittingly acceptable conclusion? For this series, the record so far is 1 out of 2, so the odds are even, either way…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
24
 
 
Last week, John Oliver explained Brexit, and what options are available to the British in the coming month, more clearly and incisively than any legitimate news program. That’s one reason to watch Last Week Tonight loyally and closely. Another reason? John Oliver remains, week in and week out, one of the funniest comics on television – and last week, he came back refreshed for a new season of current events deconstruction.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
24
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: It’s common, or used to be, for the networks to launch a new TV series by taking advantage of the giant audience gathered to watch the Super Bowl.  ABC’s The Wonder Years started that way, and so did NBC’s The A-Team. But after the Oscars? That’s a new one. Yet tonight, after ABC’s coverage of the Academy Awards is over, the network provides this late-night sneak preview of its newest TV series. Whiskey Cavalier stars Scott Foley in the title r
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
23
 
 
MOVIE PREMIERE: This film, starring Jeffrey Wright of HBO’s Westworld, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, after which the network happily snapped it up for TV distribution, giving one of its prominent stars another firmament in which to shine. In this drama, Wright plays Louis, a maximum-security inmate about to be released after 24 years in prison, who spends his last days in prison befriending a new inmate named Beecher (Theothus Carter). The last time HBO presented a prison drama f
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
23
 
 
Tonight, in a way, TCM presents Stars Are Born, because it’s mounting a double feature of versions of the movie that, in its latest incarnation, is up for some Oscars tomorrow night. The original, 1937 version of A Star Is Born, starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March (and with a screenplay co-written by Dorothy Parker!), is televised at 8 p.m. ET, followed at 10 p.m. ET by the 1954 Judy Garland/James Mason version (pictured).
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
23
 
 
SERIES FINALE: Tonight on Dynasties, it’s my favorite part of these Planet Earth nature documentaries: an entire episode devoted to “The Making Of.” Every week so far, I’ve marveled at the photography and wondered, “How the hell did the filmmakers get that?” Tonight, they tell me… For a full review of tonight's episode, see Alec Strachan's TV That Matters.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
22
 
 
DOCUMENTARY SERIES PREMIERE: This new eight-part documentary series, hosted by former House star and Obama White House employee Kal Penn, is the latest project from Adam McKay, who’s up for several Oscar awards this weekend for his Dick Cheney movie Vice. (He’s already won for Best Adapted Screenplay for his 2015 film The Big Short, which used humor to explain the origins and intricacies of the subprime crisis.) In The Great Beast, he comes to TV and uses each of eight episodes to ex
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
22
 
 
MOVIE PREMIERE: Ever since Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray Romano has been on a stealth mission, and a very successful one, to prove his talents extend beyond the standard sitcom. In the last 10 years, he’s played midlife-crisis sufferer Joe Tranelli on TNT’s Men of a Certain Age, on-the-spectrum photographer Hank Rizzoli on NBC’s Parenthood, out-of-his-element music bigwig Zak Yankovich on HBO’s Vinyl and, most recently, Hollywood player Rick Moreweather on Epix’s Get
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
22
 
 
What a week, and, for Maher, what a lineup: Scheduled guests for tonight’s live show include House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (pictured), who just metaphorically called President Donald Trump an “arsonist” in yesterday’s open letter to Republican congresspeople published in The Washington Post. Also scheduled to appear: Donna Brazile, Claire McCaskill, and Rick Wilson. If those names aren’t familiar, you need to get more familiar with current events