Faves From The Morgue

"The Morgue" is what daily newspapers used to call the place where they stored and filed old clippings, taken from their own publication, as reference tools for subsequent stories. This is back when stories were filed on hard copy, not electronically. It's also back when newspapers cared about history, even their own, and saved things. Here are some of the journalistic bodies that are buried in David Bianculli's personal morgue - presented partly for perspective, but mostly just for the fun of it.

2007

Nov

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE By David Bianculli

A third of a century after I wrote about a brand-new TV show aimed at college kids, Saturday Night Live is still going strong. Must have been my positive review...

1989

Apr

THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF MOLLY DODD By David Bianculli

(New York Post - April 17, 1989) Someday, if there is justice in the world, this brilliant Jay Tarses series will be a) released on DVD, and b) widely recognized as the true classic that it was. Molly Dodd was the missing link between The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Ally McBeal, and was every bit as good. And Blair Brown... in this show, she made me sigh.

1985

Aug

NBC EXECUTIVE GRANT TINKER By David Bianculli

(Philadelphia Inquirer - Aug. 2, 1985) In more than 30 years of covering the TV industry, I've known maybe a handful of TV executives who have left the medium better than they found it, and actively sought programs and talent that were exceptional as well as popular - and also, as a bonus, are nice human beings...If tasteful creative people like Grant Tinker still ran the broadcast networks, we'd have a lot fewer shows like The Biggest Loser and Cavemen...

1982

Oct

ST. ELSEWHERE By David Bianculli

(Akron Beacon Journal - Oct. 26, 1982) One of Grant Tinker's sons, Mark, was a writer-producer-director on this superb NBC series, and gave me and another enthusiastic TV critic at the time, Tom Brinkmoeller of Cincinnati, a valued scoop by slipping us a handful of the show's scripts before it even premiered...

1980

Mar

STAND UP COMEDY ATTEMPT By David Bianculli

(Ft. Lauderdale News, March 30th, 1980) When The Comic Strip opened in Fort Lauderdale, our paper's unfairly features editor, Kris Montee, assigned me to work up a first-person feature on what it was like to perform during the club's amateur night. The piece would have been funnier had I bombed, but I actually did okay...

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