Wednesday night, the PBS "Great Performances" series presents a two-hour concert that lives up to that series' title from start to finish. Taped March 15-16 at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, "Sondheim! The Birthday Concert" celebrates Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim's 80th birthday, and it's an absolute, start-to-finish delight...

2010

Nov

ALL I AM SAYING, IS GIVE "LENNONYC" A CHANCE... By David Bianculli

Tonight at 9 ET, the invaluable PBS arts documentary series American Masters presents its latest offering: "LennoNYC", an examination of John Lennon's final, New York City years. It's not comprehensive, but it does contain some rarities and solid insights -- and whether or not you're a diehard Beatles fan, it's well worth watching. And hearing. Especially hearing, because the outtakes and acoustic versions of Lennon songs are treasures in themselves...

2010

Nov

UPDATE: STILL NO FERGUSON "DOCTOR WHO" MUSICAL NUMBER POSTED ON THE NET -- BUT AT LEAST THERE'S THIS... By David Bianculli

Several days after the last-second scrubbing of Craig Ferguson's much-rehearsed, much-anticipated musical opening to his Doctor Who special edition of CBS's "The Late Late Show", it still hasn't shown up on the Internet....TV WORTH WATCHING would be HAPPY to post the original number, by the way, if there's any way we could obtain it...

2010

Nov

LATE-NIGHT SURPRISES: SPRINGSTEEN SINGS, FERGUSON DOESN'T By David Bianculli

Tuesday night on late-night television, Craig Ferguson didn't sing, as he had promised to, on CBS -- but over on NBC, as Jimmy Fallon's guest, Bruce Springsteen did. Both the singing and the non-singing, as it turned out, involved a surprise...

2010

Nov

WHEN IS A TV REVIEW OF A MOVIE WORSE THAN THE MOVIE COULD POSSIBLY BE? WHEN IT'S ON ABC "WORLD NEWS NOW" By David Bianculli

One of the bad things about being a television critic is having to work odd hours -- so little time, so much TV. Another of the bad things, an occupational hazard, is stumbling upon late-night horrors few people are awake to endure. I dealt with one this morning, on a super-late, or super-early, film review on ABC's World News Now...

2010

Nov

STUDENT BLOG #6: THE APPEAL OF ZOMBIES, PRE-"WALKING DEAD" By David Bianculli

AMC has cancelled "Rubicon", its intellectual thriller about global conspiracies, but ordered a second season of "The Walking Dead", its other freshman series, which continues Sunday night at 10 ET. Why are spies executed, but zombies allowed to, uh, live? Our Rowan University student correspondent, Rich Greenhalgh, looks at "zombie appeal"...

2010

Nov

SEEING TV DIFFERENTLY, THROUGH THE EYES OF COLLEGE STUDENTS By David Bianculli

Most of the time, when I teach TV History and Appreciation to my students at New Jersey's Rowan University, one goal is to get them to imagine watching old television when it was new. But every once in a while, comparisons to TV old and new have me looking at today's television through THEIR eyes. It's a very different experience -- and recently, NBC's 30 Rockgave me that chance...

2010

Nov

"CONAN," NIGHT 2: A MARKED, NECESSARY IMPROVEMENT By David Bianculli

Just a quick follow-up to the new Conan O'Brien TBS talk show status. Had the show he delivered Tuesday night run instead as the Monday back-to-TV premiere, my review would have been substantially more positive...

2010

Nov

FOR "CONAN," THIRD TIME'S NOT THE CHARM -- NOT ON OPENING NIGHT, ANYWAY By David Bianculli

I expected more, and less, out of Conan O'Brien's new Conan TBS talk show than he delivered in Monday's premiere. More, because with months to prepare, the opening and prepared bits should have been sharper. And less, because I hoped, without the constraints of trying to please most of the people most of the time on NBC's The Tonight Show, he'd be freer to be himself...

2010

Nov

READY FOR SOME LATE-NIGHT COCO? FOR CONAN O'BRIEN, THIRD TIME'S THE REAL TEST By David Bianculli

Monday night at 11 ET, with the premiere of Conan, Conan O'Brien steps into the spotlight of a TV talk show for the third time. And whether or not this time's the charm, it is, for the first time, the one where we'll see him at his most undiluted... It's not that O'Brien, in his previous incarnations, lacked conviction or wit. I was at the NBC press conference where Conan O'Brien first met the press in 1993, introduced as David Letterman's successor on Late Night. The first volley from reporter

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