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

 
 
2012
Apr
26
 
 
Tonight’s new episode of Community takes on the Law & Order franchise – complete with sound effects – in a story about crime on campus. Why? Same reason anything happens on this show: the writers think it’s funny. And if enough viewers agree, they’ll be able to keep playing around.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Apr
26
 
 
LIVE: Reprising an ambitious stunt from 2010, this series presents tonight’s episode live – with different versions for the East and West Coast, so you Lefties don’t have to feel left out. The plot has the show-within-a-show, TGS, being ordered by budget constraints to stop doing live shows – making the premise as meta as this prime-time gimmick is unusual. Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin are comfortable in the arena of live TV, of course – but the lack of a safety net
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Apr
26
 
 
This 2011 film is by writer and director Tom Shadyac, who directed Ace Ventura, Pet Detective and looks a little like “Weird Al” Yankovic. It sounds like a remake of Sullivan’s Travels: a filmmaker who makes hit comedy movies has an epiphany and hits the road in search of greater truth. Except this is a documentary, and Shadyac isn’t kidding. Instead, he took some of his Hollywood profits and underwrote this very personal movie, in which he travels the world and poses t
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Apr
26
 
 
In 1954, director Akira Kurosawa made this magnificent action movie, about a desolate village hiring out-of-work samurai to protect them from marauding bandits. Six years later, Hollywood presented this Americanized remake, setting the action in the Old West and making it work just as entertainingly. Stars include Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughan, James Coburn and, in the iconic role he reprised in robot form in Michael Crichton’s Westworld, Yul Brynner.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Apr
26
 
 
NBC’s 30 Rock is performing and presenting this week’s episode live, a trick it pulled off successfully two years ago. But these days, is watching TV in “real time” a treat – or an annoyance?...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Apr
26
 
 
Lifetime's new nighttime talker, The Conversation with Amanda de Cadenet, features celebrity interviews that speak "the universal language of women."
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Apr
26
 
 
In 1988, ABC debuted China Beach, a Vietnam-era medical drama set on a U.S. base in the South China Sea. The show didn't shy away from the realities of war, yet managed to fit in a fair share of romance and '60s rock music. Headlined by current Body of Proof star Dana Delany, China Beach also starred CSI's Marg Helgenberger, Robert Picardo, Michael Boatman and Concetta Tomei.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Apr
25
 
 
Today in 2000 marked the last broadcast of UPN's police drama, The Beat. Produced by Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson - the team behind the critically-acclaimed Homicide: Life on the Street - the short-lived series followed the lives of two NYPD cops played by Mark Ruffalo and Derek Cecil. Heather Burns and Poppy Montgomery (of Without a Trace and Unforgettable) co-starred as their respective love interests. The show employed hand-held cameras and quirky angles for a more unconventional look.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Apr
25
 
 
In honor of today's pick in THIS DAY IN TV HISTORY, here are the opening credits to China Beach, the wonderful 1988-91 ABC series that made a star of Dana Delany, playing a combat nurse in Vietnam who thrives on the friendships and meaning, and even chaos, she finds there. And Delany, now the star of the same network's Body of Proof, isn't the only now-familiar face here...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Apr
25
 
 
The biggest music battle on TV this season isn’t among contestants, but between shows, as Fox’s American Idol and NBC’s The Voice jockey for attention and ratings supremacy. Tonight, as its contestants descend from the glowing staircase, Idol has them singing the vocally challenging music of Freddie Mercury and Queen. The question is: Will they, will they rock us?