Embarking on their 15th season of Comedy Central's South Park, have that show's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, lost their edge? Uh. no. Not when Wednesday's season premiere (10 p.m. ET) imagines a new Apple piece of firmware that requires a human three-way -- and not when their hit Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon, includes such indelible lyrics as "I have maggots in my scrotum"...

2011

Apr

SALUTE: 40 YEARS OF ERIKA SLEZAK By Diane Werts

Now here's something you don't get to see in prime time -- an actor playing the same role for 40 years. And we might not be seeing it much longer in daytime, either. So be there Wednesday when ABC's "One Life to Live" celebrates Erika Slezak's four decades (and six Emmys) playing solid citizen/slutty chick Viki Lord Lord Riley Burke Riley Buchanan Buchanan Carpenter Davidson Banks...

2011

Apr

SHADES OF BLACK EXAMINED IN PBS SERIES ABOUT SLAVERY'S EFFECTS IN LATIN AMERICA By Tom Brinkmoeller

I grew up in a segregated community in a segregated America. Like many others, I learned during the late 1950s and into the '60s how wrong this was, and have tried since then to make amends for my ignorance. But as proven by PBS's current nonfiction series about slavery and its impact on Latin America, I remain more ignorant than I imagined...

2011

Apr

PBS 'STONEWALL UPRISING': IT'S A RIOT, BUT IT'S SERIOUS By David Bianculli

Monday's new PBS American Experience offering, Stonewall Uprising, is a 2010 documentary about the landmark clash between police and the patrons of a Greenwich Village gay bar in the summer of 1969 -- but filmmakers Kate Davis and David Heilbroner save that pivotal confrontation for last. The rest of their 90-minute study (9 p.m. ET; check local listings) is an often scary condensed summary of historical local and national attitudes regarding homosexuality...

2011

Apr

'TALKING FUNNY,' 'CINEMA VERITE,' 'TREME': HBO GOES 3 FOR 3 By David Bianculli

In round one of its April assault of fresh TV programming, HBO last weekend presented the premiere of its fantasy epic series, Game of Thrones, and immediately renewed. This weekend, in round two, HBO fires off three more shots, all of them bullseyes...

2011

Apr

'ERNIE KOVACS COLLECTION': A DVD SET THAT BELONGS IN YOURS By David Bianculli

One of my absolute favorite TV heroes and icons, Ernie Kovacs, is celebrated in a lavish new DVD boxed set released today (Tuesday) by Shout! Factory. Like its subject, who was TV's first visual genius (and so much more), it's amazingly entertaining...

2011

Apr

FOR EARTH DAY, PUBLIC TV PROFILES ENVIRONMENTAL PIONEERS - NATURALLY By David Bianculli

Just in time for Thursday's Earth Day 2011, public television presents two new documentaries devoted to pioneers in the field (so to speak) of public parks and environmental preservation...many local public TV stations are presenting a study of New York's Central Park planner Frederick Law Olmsted...

2011

Apr

HBO'S 'GAME OF THRONES': HARD TO FOLLOW, BUT NOT TO WATCH By David Bianculli

HBO's new Game of Thrones series, which premieres Sunday night at 9 ET, is a TV fantasy epic with grand ambitions -- more mature than Syfy's Merlin or Starz's Camelot, less cartoonish and video-game violent than Starz's Spartacus, and telling a more complicated story, with a more sprawling cast of characters, than anything this side of Middle Earth. But even WITH a scorecard, which HBO provided me, it's confusing at times, and only occasionally satisfying...

2011

Apr

ON LOCAL TV WEATHERCASTS, BEWARE THE MIGHTY DOPPLER -- AND DANGEROUS PURPLE ROUND THINGS! By Tom Brinkmoeller

Forget the invention of the printing press, the telephone or even the electric light. This world was nothing until the invention of doppler weather radar. In fact, it's a wonder this world still spins, and wasn't ripped to cosmic shreds before doppler arrived and saved us from complete devastation...

2011

Apr

MORE BRILLIANT TV IDIOCY AHEAD: SCIENCE CHANNEL ORDERS 'AN IDIOT ABROAD 2' By David Bianculli

My favorite TV idiot savant is about to strike again. Karl Pilkington, whose quirky conversations with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant make me howl each Friday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO's The Ricky Gervais Show, and whose An Idiot Abroad reluctant travel series for The Science Channel is, to date, my unexpected TV delight of the year, has just agreed to star in a follow-up series, An Idiot Abroad 2...

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