SERIES PREMIERE: This new ABC series is an obvious variant on the How to Get Away with Murder model – start with a serious crime (in this case, a terrorist attack blowing up New York’s Grand Central Terminal), and spend a year swimming with the fishes. Or, at least, the red herrings. The premiere episode isn’t that engaging, but its leading lady, as a Quantico trainee who both survives and is suspected of planning the blast, is a potential breakout star. In the States, that is:

2015

Sep

MALALA THE MAGNIFICENT...THE TRULY MAGNIFICENT By Linda Donovan

Nobel prize winner Malala Yousafzai is a courageous, profound, charming, and intelligent young woman. And apparently quite the magician with a great sense of humor...

2015

Sep

ABC'S 'BLOOD & OIL' LETS DON JOHNSON SHOW OFF AGAIN By Ed Bark

Back during Don Johnson’s burst into stardom on NBC’s Miami Vice, ABC’s Dynasty also roamed the earth as the 1984-’85 TV season’s No. 1 prime-time series. Now they’re both back in ABC’s Dynasty-like Blood & Oil...

2015

Sep

ABC'S 'QUANTICO' PUTS NYC ON THE RECEIVING END OF MORE TERRORIST DEVASTATION By Ed Bark

What the real-life world really doesn’t need right now is another devastating terrorist attack on New York City or grossly incompetent screening of would-be FBI agents at the Quantico Academy. You’ll get both in ABC’s Quantico...

2015

Sep

A MAN CALLED SHENANDOAH MINI-MARATHON By David Bianculli

If you just watched the premiere of NBC’s new Blindspot, a drama series about a woman who emerges from a giant duffel bag in Times Square with no memory of her identity or past, and thought: “Wow, that’s new!” – well, not really. In the 1965 Western series A Man Called Shenandoah, Robert Horton (from Wagon Train) played a man, shot and left for dead in the Wild West, who gives himself the name of Shenandoah and roams the territory searching for clues to his identity

2015

Sep

UNBROKEN By David Bianculli

The Laura Hillenbrand biography upon which this 2014 movie is based was a wonderful, well-researched read. The movie version, directed by Angelina Jolie and with a screenplay whose collaborators include Joel and Ethan Coen and Richard LaGravenese, is dramatic and earnest – though not, in some sections, as vividly wrenching as the original author’s powerful prose about Louis Zamperini, whose stories as a competitive runner, a WWII fighter plane crewman and a prisoner of war are indivi

2015

Sep

DOCTOR WHO By David Bianculli

SEASON PREMIERE: This is part two of the opening episode of Season 9 in this show’s modern era. Last week’s episode started with a typically imaginative and creepy image: a “hand mine” field of human-like hands that emerge from the ground, grab the ankles of people walking in the field, and pull them below ground. What was even more unsettling, though, came later: the deaths of two familiar female characters at the hands of the Daleks. (Well, not the hands. Daleks have no

2015

Sep

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST By David Bianculli

What a great movie: Jack Nicholson starred in this Milos Forman film version of the Ken Kesey novel, and his performance solidified his “Jack Nicholson” screen persona and charisma in the process. Louise Fletcher is fabulous as well, and there’s a particular joy in watching the then-unknown players who portray members of the mental institution in which Nicholson’s Randall McMurphy finds himself. Look! There’s Christopher Lloyd! And Danny DeVito! And Brad Dourif! And

2015

Sep

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW By David Bianculli

Speaking of movie anniversaries, another movie that came out 40 years ago, getting a special television telecast tonight, is the 1975 cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show – shown by HBO, quite appropriately, as a midnight movie. That’s how, in theaters, this musical movie comedy went from initial obscurity to major cult status, as young audiences gathered to sing along, dress along, and do the time warp again. Tim Curry stars, with support from such future stars as Susan Sarandon

2015

Sep

THE AMAZING RACE By David Bianculli

SEASON PREMIERE: This is cycle No. 27 for this globetrotting show, which this time pushes off from Venice Beach in California. The host, as always, is Phil Keoghan – and wouldn’t you like to have his frequent-flier miles?

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