Continue reading "Christian Serial Killer TV Episode Surprisingly Fair to Christianity" »
Fleeing from the beatification of Michael Jackson, I stumbled onto the TV show pilot, Virtuality, on Fox last night. Written by Ronald Moore and Michael Taylor, the show takes numerous Star Trek: The Next Generation staples and turns them on their head. It's certainly not perfect, but if I could be so bold, it's definitely television with more than one brain cell.
Continue reading "The Next Next Generation" »
Continue reading "Letterman Apologies Fail to Satisfy Protesters, MSM Battered Again" »
Continue reading "Why the Letterman-Palin Saga Is Important" »
Continue reading "Letterman Sex 'Joke' Exemplifies Socialist Stranglehold on Public Discourse" »
Continue reading "O'Brien Plays It Safe, Smart in 'Tonight Show' Debut" »
This week brought another fine example of how U.S. network TV series often send laudable moral messages even when the context is one of seeming immorality. In "Burn, Bougainvillea, Burn!," the most recent episode of Surviving Suburbia, a new sitcom starring Bob Saget, there was the usual complement of sexual innuendo and leering, bawdy humor.
Yet the overall thrust of the episode was that the central character, Steve Patterson, a married suburbanite played by Saget, was trying hard to avoid putting himself in a situation where sexual temptation was likely to occur, while his wife and others were certain that he was indulging in lascivious thoughts and actions.
Continue reading "'Surviving Suburbia' Morality" »
![Image from 'The Goode Family]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WK-AP813_COVER__G_20090521161253.jpg "Image from 'The Goode Family]")
TV writer-producer-actor and filmmaker Mike Judge has a new TV series premiering tonight on ABC. It sounds like another winner for the politically incorrect satirist, writes S. T. Karnick.
Continue reading "Another 'Goode' Work by Mike Judge?" »
Continue reading "Fox's 'Prison Break' Concludes" »
Continue reading "CW's 'Supernatural' Presents Christian Ideas in Dark Melodrama" »
Continue reading "ABC's 'Castle' Is Exemplary TV Series" »
Yes, vampires are still a hot media commodity, but zombies are vying to knock them off the cultural pedestal.
S. T. Karnick considers the terrifying facts.
Continue reading "Zombie Culture and the March of Socialism" »
As is sadly the case for all good things, the video Web site Hulu.com is likely about to come under attack by the government, specifically in the form of antitrust action by the Obama administration.
Socialism's great horde of media apologists has begun a strong drumbeat calling for the U.S. government to go after Hulu, the immensely and increasingly successful source of online streaming media content.
Continue reading "Hulu.com May Be Upcoming Target of Antitrust Attack" »
Good news for those who enjoy intelligent TV mysteries: the Jonathan Creek Newsletter reports that a new ninety-minute TV movie special from the British TV mystery series Jonathan Creek will go into production this fall and will be broadcast around Easter time next year.
Producer-writer David Renwick announced that the episode will be called "The Judas Tree" and will again feature actress Sheridan Smith as Joey Ross, Jonathan's investigating partner introduced in the 2009 telefilm The Grinning Man. Renwick will direct, as he did with The Grinning Man.
Regarding the latter . . .
Continue reading "New 'Jonathan Creek' Movie Announced" »
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the FCC's authority to impose fines on broadcasters for allowing obscene language on the air. S. T. Karnick analyzes the implications.
Continue reading "Court Upholds FCC Authority over Broadcast Indecency" »
'CNN Sucks,' says an excellent article by Paul Chesser of The Heartland Institute in The American Spectator. The Mainstream Media have dug their own grave, S. T. Karnick writes.
Continue reading "'Mainstream Media' Mainstream No More" »
Continue reading "Stewart's Democrat Water-Carrying Blasted" »
Turner Classic Movies presents a diverse variety pack of thrillers this week, Mike Gray writes.
Continue reading "Black Bird, Blonde Bombshells Featured in Upcoming Classic Thrillers" »
Last night's episode of the Fox Network medical-mystery series House included a Big Event meant to shock the show's viewers and send the story line in an interesting new direction, as one of the main characters of the series was killed.
This almost instantaneous accumulation and processing of information makes the web something of a superbrain. Yes, figuring out the plot twists of television shows may not be the most productive use of people's time and brainpower, but this somewhat frivolous achievement does indicate the impressive potential of the internet as a mass information processing tool.
This capability makes the internet simultaneously a potential source of astonishing public benefits and the most powerful generator of nonsense ever created.
An interesting side note (plot spoiler follows): Entertainment Weekly revealed this morning that Kal Penn, who played the character who died in last night's episode, will be leaving the show to join the Obama administration as associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison.
I have no idea what that particular agency is, but I'm quite sure it's a good deal less useful than a good TV mystery series.
—S. T. Karnick
Continue reading "CBS Series 'Eleventh Hour' Ends Season on High Note" »
An episode of CBS-TV's mystery series Eleventh Hour entered the debate over stem cells to make a strong and valid scientific point with important moral and political implications. It did more to educate viewers about the issue than the network's news programs have ever done.
Continue reading ""Eleventh Hour' Outdoes TV News on Stem Cell Debate" »
The latest PBS Masterpiece Classics adaptation of Charles Dickens's classic novel Oliver Twist demonstrates the urgent need for reform of the taxpayer-supported broadcasting service, S. T. Karnick notes.
Continue reading "PBS Dickens Adaptation Politicizes and Vulgarizes Classic Novel" »
No concluding episode could live up to the overall accomplishment of Battlestar Galactica, but last night's finale was an honorable try, and the series is one of the best ever.
Joshua Trevino assesses the finale and commends the series.
Continue reading "'Battlestar Galactica' Crosses the Red Line—Honorably" »
I didn't even know comedian D.L. Hughley had a show on CNN until the controversy over Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's interview on his show blew up. And just days after D.L. Hughley Breaks the News gets its biggest publicity, CNN pulls the plug.
Don't know how smart that is, but I do know how dumb Michael Steele was on that show. It wasn't just Steele's idiotic comments about Rush Limbaugh's show being "incendiary" and "ugly." It was the way he just sat there and nodded in agreement when Hughley compared the Republican National Convention to a Nazi rally and said Republican's don't even care what "we [black people] think":
MORE . . .
Continue reading "CNN Cancels Hughley Show" »
Continue reading "Whose 'House'?" »
Tonight Hollywood tells us once again what we should like—and they might just get it right, S. T. Karnick observes.
Continue reading "'Slumdog Millionaire' Too Good for Oscars?" »
Among the luxuries taking a beating from the recession is a service until recently thought by most people to be close to a necessity: cable television. Subscriber growth among big cable systems fell significantly in the last quarter of 2008.
The three biggest systems—Time Warner, Comcast, and Charter Communications—were hit particularly hard.
In fact, Charter filed for bankruptcy protection after losing more than 75,000 subscribers in one quarter. The Dish Network satellite system lost 10,000 subscribers in the third quarter.
Verizon's fiber optic cable service is doing well, however, as consumers switch from a cable mentality to a Web viewpoint. Advertising Age quotes Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt as observing, "people, typically young people, are saying, 'All I need is broadband. I don't need video.' And obviously they are already saying they don't need wireline phone."
—S. T. Karnick
Are you ready to drop cable TV and move exclusively to Web viewing? Have you done so already? Comment here.
Continue reading "'Last Templar' Shows Value of Cultural Freedom" »
The decline of the mainstream media—a very good thing—is the real story behind an interesting L. A. Times article about Ben Lyons, a film critic on the syndicated TV show At the Movies. Critics and movie buffs alike both have nothing but contempt for the 27-year-old Lyons, son of former host and newspaper film critic Jeffrey Lyons.
Jeffrey Lyons was never any great thinker, or even a good one, but Ben Lyons makes him look like Samuel Johnson by comparison. The younger Lyons strikes the viewer as an ignoramus and a jackass, and the producers of At the Movies clearly made a horrendous mistake in hiring him.
Apparently they hoped to get frat boys and other Sports Center fans to watch the show, which only further confirms major stupidity on the producers of At the Movies.
Continue reading "Internet Blamed for Idiocy of 'At the Movies' Host" »
USA Network resumes original episodes of its top two shows—and two of the best programs on television—later this week as the mystery-comedies Monk and Psych return for new half-seasons of about eight episodes each.
Continue reading "'Monk', 'Psych' Return This Friday, Other Classic Mysteries Not So Easy to Find" »
Season 2 of the interesting and suspenseful FX Channel series Damages begins tomorrow at 10 p.m. EST. Here's a link to my article on the Season 1 premiere episode, and a brief excerpt:
Damages, in short, is no Erin Brockovich, no simple left-wing morality tale in which one side is basically selfless and goodhearted and the other is entirely greedy and irresponsible. Damages is a much more balanced look at its characters' choices, and hence a great deal better in artistic terms.
Read the full article here.
—S. T. Karnick
Continuing the trickle of live 3D events in U.S. movie theaters, Turner Network Television's broadcast of the National Basketball Association's All-Star Saturday Night event on February 14 will be shown live in 3D in up to 160 screens in 80 digitally equipped theaters around the United States.
The NBA All-Star Saturday Night is not the actual all-star game but instead comprises the slam dunk contest, three-point shooting competition, and other such skills exhibitions. This is the first NBA event to be shown in theaters in 3D.—S. T. Karnick
You can criticize anything except global warming shibboleths, the producers of the excellent BBC TV automobile show Top Gear have found out. They did some of their usual editing with a piece on the Tesla electric car to make the item spicier and more fun, the Guardian reports, and naturally the enviros went nuts, saying the program misled viewers.
It's a comedy show, people, not a documentary.
Oh, that's right, envirocommunists have no sense of humor.—S. T. Karnick
An enthusiastic preview of the new season of Fox's action-drama series 24, which begins a week from this Sunday, is available on E! Online. It appears that the year off due to the writers' strike did the series a world of good, reinvigorating the writing and production team.—S. T. Karnick
Frosty Theology
S. T. Karnick's article on the surprising theological content in the song and TV cartoon "Frosty the Snowman" has been published on Culture11.
Continue reading "Cleveland Meterorologists Speak Out Against Global Warming Hysteria" »
Continue reading "TNT's 'Leverage' Shows Promise" »
Continue reading "TNT's Latest 'Librarian' Movie Premieres Tonight" »
Blogger calls unexpectedly sincere song "a remarkable event in modern popular culture," but conservative writer blasts the TV special and questions sincerity of Colbert's religious beliefs.
Continue reading "Another Perspective on 'A Colbert Christmas' . . . and Yet Another" »
Continue reading "NFL, Fox Try Out 3-D TV" »
Continue reading "Latest 'Monk', 'Psych' Christmas Specials a Success" »
TV comedian Steve Colbert's Christmas special is pleasingly nonpolitical, though not particularly funny. It has its moments, however, including a brief but surprisingly sincere reflection on the meaning of the season.
Continue reading "'Colbert Christmas' TV Special Includes Surprisingly Sincere Moment" »
After a year off because of the writers' strike and a need for the series' producers to recharge their batteries, the Fox espionage-adventure-political-thriller series 24 will return with a four-hour, two-night premiere block on Sunday, January 11, and Monday, January 12.
Continue reading "Fox Announces '24' Premiere Date" »
Continue reading "McCain Gives Likeable Performance on SNL" »
The hit series 24, which did not run on TV last season because of the writers' strike, looks poised to make a strong run this year with a new jolt of energy.
The Fox Network will begin running new episodes of season 7 this coming January, and in the meantime it will set things going with a TV movie, 24: Redemption, on Nov. 23 at 8 p.m. EST.
Continue reading "'24' Trailer Released" »
The show's final block of episodes will probably run in the 2009-10 season, according to reports.
Produced by Mike Judge, creator of Beavis and Butthead, the Fox series always took a sympathetic but satirical look at American life and had sound values at its core. Its picture of blue-collar life in the United States was done with sometimes achingly comic realism and without either rancor or rose-colored glasses. We'll miss it.
Continue reading "McCain, Palin Grab Big Ratings" »
Continue reading "McCain and Palin Hit the Comedy Trail" »
Continue reading "U.S. Version of 'Life on Mars' Starts Well" »
Continue reading "New NBC Sitcom Is a Likeable Timewaster" »
Continue reading "'Fringe' Updates 'X-Files' with '60s-Style Optimism" »
Continue reading "New CBS Show 'The Ex List' Makes Moral Points Behind Vulgar Surface." »
TAC correspondent Mike Gray likes the characters and sense of adventure in the new BBC series Primeval, but wonders why it propagandizes for a radical notion of Darwinism that evolutionary biologists have rejected.
Continue reading "Evolve This!—BBC's 'Primeval' Series Pushes Radical Darwinism" »
TV talk host David Letterman has gone off on Sen. John McCain again. The aging, unfunny comedian's arrogance clearly knows no bounds.
Continue reading "No Letterman Let-Up on McCain Beefs" »
Saturday Night Live's political humor has become more evenhanded, but right-wingers are still complaining.
Continue reading "SNL Piece Slamming Democrats, Leftists Sparks Controversy" »
The Jonas Brothers band members showed the tediously vulgar English comedian Russell Brand how to behave, after his embarrassing performance at the MTV Video Music Awards ceremony.
This story from the BBC appeared last month, but I think it's worth bringing to your attention. It describes how the Jonas Brothers rock band reacted to comedian Russell Brand's ignorant attack on them during last month's MTV Video Music Awards program. In short, the preternaturally wholesome rock and rollers responded in a generous and gentlemanly manner:
Continue reading "Jonas Brothers React to Brand Attack" »
The excellent TV drama series Friday Night Lights returns to the air tonight at 9 EDT—but not on the network where it began.
The season premiere of Friday Night Lights on the DirecTV channel The 101 represents a new step in the satellite company's efforts to bring first-run programming to its subscribers, and is another step in NBC's attempts to find cheaper programming options.
Continue reading "'Friday Night Lights' Returns—But on DirecTV Only" »
CBS talk host David Letterman ripped U.S. Senator John McCain on-air Friday night for canceling an appearance on Letterman's show in order to attend to the nationwide financial crisis.
Having devolved from a cheeky observer of human foibles into a crotchety, self-absorbed bore a full two decades ago, it's time for David Letterman to be put out to pasture. His belief that his lame, autopilot, late-night TV talk show is more important than the U.S. economy proves how self-important and out of touch he really is.
Letterman, who has openly supported Barack Obama on his program, opened his diatribe by complimenting McCain for his war record, but then launched into a cranky denunciation of the Republican candidate for daring to cancel a scheduled appearance on Letterman's show. Letterman then launched into the standard Democrat critique of McCain and Palin while claiming McCain is falling behind Letterman's preferred candidate, Obama.
Letterman's weak attempts at humor in his criticisms of McCain merely demonstrated the talk host's invincible arrogance:
Fox's situation comedy Do Not Disturb is the first new network TV series to be canceled this season.
There was good reason for the cancellation of the show after only three episodes.
One, the ratings were spectacularly bad, with the show averaging a 1.6 rating and 4 share (percent of all TVs being watched at the time). A total of only 4 million people watched the three episodes.
Continue reading "Oversexed, Underinteresting TV Sitcom 'Do Not Disturb' Canceled" »
To the surprise of no thinking person, the honorees at this year's Emmy Awards ceremony, broadcast nationally Sunday night, used the occasion as an opportunity to foist their elitist, collectivist, coercive political opinions on a nationwide audience interested in looking at celebrities' clothes, not in hearing lectures.
The current Bush administration and the Republican candidates for president and vice president were the main targets, predictably. The Chicago Sun-Times report provides an informative post-mortem:
Continue reading "Emmy Winners, Presenters Slam Bush, Palin, Republicans in General" »
The first episodes of season three of the NBC series Heroes premiered last night.
I'll analyze these episodes as soon as I get a chance to watch and ponder them, but until that happy day, I'll refer you to the interesting recap from E! Online:
"So now...everything has changed."
The article is packed to the gills with plot spoilers, so be forewarned. For those not satiated after reading the E! piece, here's one from NJ.com.
Last season the show was marred by difficulties created by the writers' strike, and the producers struggled to establish a new story line with a different threat of catastrophe. The show was still watchable, but nowhere near as interesting and evocative as before. Ratings suffered as a result. It will be interesting to see whether the prooducers have managed to get the franchise back on its feet.
Saturday Night Live's season-opening episode was marred by blatant political partisanship and was surprisingly uninspired overall.
Continue reading "SNL Season Premiere Lays Egg" »
Embarrassing performance by MTV Video Music Awards host exemplifies intolerance of smug sexual radicals and moral relativists.
Continue reading "Brand Flops Before MTV Audience, Rebuked by Jordin Sparks" »
Continue reading "'Prison Break' Shows What's Really Important in TV Dramas" »
Homosexual activists are applauding the rapidly increasing numbers of "transgender" characters and people on television, but they say there's much more work to be done.
Continue reading "Transgender TV" »
This Saturday brings a full day of Laurel and Hardy films on Turner Classic Movies. Rest assured: they are not to be missed.
Continue reading "Another Nice Mess: Laurel and Hardy on TCM" »
ABC's new fall series based on the BBC time-traveling police drama Life on Mars debuts October 9. If it can stand comparison with the original, it will be an extraordinary accomplishment indeed.
Continue reading "ABC Tries Hand at 'Life on Mars'" »
Two episodes of TV drama series on the same night showed a mature, thoughtful understanding of romantic relationships.
Continue reading "A Tale of Two Romances in Primetime TV" »
New episodes of USA Network's excellent mystery-comedy series Monk and Psych start tomorrow.
Continue reading "New Episodes of Monk, Psych Start Tomorrow" »
The new series The Cleaner represents the A&E network's long-overdue return to fiction series television.
Continue reading "A&E Returns to Drama After Long Absence" »
The best nonfiction comedy program now on television is back with new episodes tonight.
Continue reading "New Episodes of 'Top Gear' Coming to United States" »
Recent improvements to the USA Network TV series In Plain Sight show the value of character depth and likeability, both commercially and aesthetically.
Continue reading "Better Characters Welcome at USA Network" »
USA Network's In Plain Sight is a formula show that's intended to be more than a formula show.
Continue reading "USA Network Series 'In Plain Sight' Works Best When Not 'Transcending Genre'" »
The Screen Actors Guild is preparing to go on strike after its current contract with Hollywood studios expires at the end of this month. Expect their coworkers to suffer the most.
Continue reading "Possible Hollywood Performers Strike Could Hurt Industry, Coworkers" »
Continue reading "Lifetime Network Pursues Homosexual Audience" »
The embarrassing Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair photo shows the value of public relations people—and why investing real money makes people more careful about what they do.
Continue reading "Miley Cyrus, Unprotected Celebrity" »
Saturday Night Live alum Jimmy Fallon reportedly will take over Conan O'Brien's spot as host of NBC's Late Night next year.
Continue reading "Fallon to Host NBC's 'Late Night'" »
The media industry publication Advertising Age reports that viewers are not returning in hoped-for numbers to the TV shows they watched before the writers' strike interrupted the television season, even though new episodes are airing.
The Advertising Age article suggests that the convergence between broadcast and cable TV audience levels may be even greater than in recent years. This bodes well for audiences, as it further undermines the power of the big networks and portends a possible increase of consumer choice as competition makes the networks more resonsive to their audiences' preferences.
This won't necessarily bring on a Golden Age of Television, as long as the most popular cable and broadcast networks are owned by a small cartel of media conglomerates, as they are today. Nonetheless, anything that further breaks up the networks' oligopoly is good for the public at large. Something good may thus come from the writers' and producers' mutual greed.
Two new network TV situation comedies show a more optimistic and positive approach to their subject matter. This reflects an increasingly strong trend in TV fiction programming.
Continue reading "New Series 'Jezebel James,' 'Miss Guided' Inclined Toward Traditional Values" »
Hollywood actor Richard Widmark dies at age 93, represented Hollywood's heyday.
Richard Widmark, best known for his Academy Award-nominated performance as a giggling, grinning gangster in the 1947 film noir classic Kiss of Death and as an NYPD policeman in the 1970s TV program Madigan, represents a Hollywood long gone and greatly missed, where on-camera performers and others involved in making films saw themselves as professionals, not artists—and succeeded in creating real art much more often than today's more overtly ambitious and politically active generation.
Madigan was based on a very good film directed by Donald Siegel, which is well worth seeing.
For more on Widmark and his career, see the AP story.
A new TV network, Planet Green, is about to provide a forum for allegedly "eco-friendly" lifestyle choices. In reality, this entire movement will make money for opportunists and phonies and hurt everybody else.
Continue reading "Discovery Goes Green" »
TAC correspondent Michael D'Virgilio analyzes the cultural implications of the political journey of David Mamet, another modern liberal mugged by reality.Continue reading "David Mamet Swings to the Right" »
Could this be the start of a new trend toward greater optimism and positivity in the culture? HBO, for two decades the home of dark, unhappy, "edgy" TV series, is debuting a new show with a light touch.
Continue reading "HBO Lightens Up With New Detective Series" »
Fox TV comes up with two new drama series featuring troubled geniuses.
Continue reading "Fox Clones 'House' - Rather Successfully" »
Fox TV network debuts a sitcom that imitates Seinfeld—and actually works.
Given that the new Fox comedy series Unhitched is executive produced by the Farrelly Brothers—makers of lunatic and politically incorrect comedy films such as Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary, Stuck on You, and The Heartbreak Kid—one would be forgiven for expecting the show to be "edgy," slapsticky, frequently obscene, and rife with somewhat disturbing ideas and images.
The show does have its share of Farrelly moments, but overall it tends to reflect the filmmakers' sweeter, goofier side. In fact, more than anything it's reminiscent of Seinfeld.
Continue reading "'Unhitched' Sitcom Reminiscent of 'Seinfeld'" »
Continue reading "The Light in "Dark" Fiction" »
'Big Four' network brings original programming to Saturday nights, chasing MMA's upscale, young audience.
Continue reading "CBS Brings Mixed Martial Arts to Major Network TV" »
In addition to the low box office numbers for most of the films nominated for Academy Awards and those that won, perhaps the strongest evidence that Hollywood—like the U.S. cultural elite in general—has become very distant from its audience is the fact that the TV ratings for Sunday's Academy Awards show were the lowest ever.
Continue reading "Oscars Draw Record-Low TV Audience" »
This past Sunday NBC premiered a new movie, an updating of the 1980s series Knight Rider, about a young crimefighter aided by a supercar with artificial intelligence. The remake takes up the story of some of the characters' children, now young adults, as they move into roles analogous to those of their parents in the original show.
It is, of course, a romance with an entirely fanciful premise with possible positive meanings at heart, and must be accepted as such if one is to appreciate it at all.
Too bad the film's producers failed to do that. An early scene establishing the important character of a female FBI agent shows her concluding an interracial, lesbian one-night stand.
Now that's realism!
Now we'll believe in an artificially intelligent, nanotech supercar piloted by a touseled-haired mesomorph, now that they've acknowledged that there is such a thing as lesbianism.
Yes, that is precisely what a nitwit might think.
Continue reading "Monk and God" »
Here's a preview of an article coming soon on another site. I've been working with the editor for a week to get this published, and an updated version will run eventually, but in the meantime here's a version that is timely because the season-ending of Prison Break will run on Fox tonight at 8 EST.Continue reading "A Defense of Pop Fiction" »
This Sunday night at 10 p.m EST, CBS attempts to bolster its writers-strike-depleted primetime lineup by bringing over a program from pay cable, Showtime's Dexter.
For those not familiar with the show, Dexter is a limited series based on the first in a series of novels about a Miami police forensic consultant whose expertise happens to be based in great part on the fact that he is a serial killer.
Continue reading "'Dexter' Comes to CBS" »
As former Major League Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens testifies before a congressional committee investigating allegations of the use of performance enhancing drugs in the sport, the observations in my Tech Central Station article during the last big government investigation into the matter apply as strongly as ever:
Continue reading "Clemens and the Constitution" »
For those wondering when new episodes of network primetime TV series will begin appearing if the writers strike ends Tuesday as expected, there's a good AP article on the subject here.
Short answer: the rest of the season will be a mess. New episodes of popular fiction series will be scarce, and new episodes of most fiction shows that began this season are unlikely.
The worst news is for fans of the popular Fox series 24. The show will probably not return until early next year, according to reports.
Thus the writers union has accomplished what the worst supervillains in the world could not. Now that's power.
This Friday at noon EST the USA Network will rerun the comedy-espionage-mystery movie Underfunded, which premiered last fall. Co-written and co-produced by David Breckman, a writer for USA's Monk, the film depicts the travails of a Canadian spy who must endure numerous problems created by the organization's pathetically low budget.
It seemed originally that the film was the pilot for a forthcoming series, but the hoped-for show has not come forth yet. Nonetheless, Underfunded is good fun and worth a look. For more information, see my original review here.
The new ABC tv series Eli Stone deals with some serious issues—most importantly the question of whether our time is a congenial one for religious truths. Central to the story is the premise that the title character may actually be a religious prophet.
Continue reading "'Eli Stone' Tackles Heavy Issues with Light Touch" »
ESPN2 morning co-anchor Dana Jacobson is back at work after a week's suspension for her drunken, foul-mouthed tirade at a public dinner.
At the beginning of the Jan. 28 program, the first since her suspension, Jacobson offered a rather cryptic apology:
I want to once again say how truly sorry I am for my poor choices and bad judgment that night. I've taken responsibility for what I did say and do that night.
What's cryptic about it, of course, is the phrase "what I did say and do". Certainly no one should expect her to apologize for anything she did not do, so the use of the word 'did' is redundant and indeed confusing.
Evidently her intent was to imply that she did not say the most offensive thing attributed to her: "F— Jesus!"
Yet neither Jacobson nor her ESPN bosses has denied that she said it. Hence the use of the word 'did' is obviously intentional dissembling.
Continue reading "Jacobson's Back, Protesters Unsatisfied" »
The scene depicts polymorphously perverse series protagonist Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) with guest star James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
I was not impressed by the first season of Torchwood, as it is rather too cute and the special effects too cheap to make up for the snarkiness of the whole affair. The short-lived U.S. series Firefly was far superior. Not recommended.
For additional information about the series, visit the BBC America Torchwood page.
Update: In the original version of this article I used the words 'sex scene' to describe the sequence, which may have been technically accurate but certainly had the unfortunate effect of suggesting that the scene includes pornographic effects. That is an inaccurate impression, according to reports. Hence I have changed the term to avoid any potential confusion. As it happens, it took me rather a long time to figure out a phrase that wouldn't sound too creepy or would too weakly describe the scene, and I'm not altogether sure that I have succeeded.
Providing further proof that America's elites are delighted when people of low mental ability use Christians and Christianity as punching bags, ESPN has suspended sports-show anchor Dana Jacobson for one week after she indulged in a drunken, foul-mouthed public tirade that included an astonishingly vulgar curse directed at Jesus Christ.
The one-week suspension is very revealing of the mentality of the management team at the Disney-owned sports network, given that the same behavior would have gotten anyone not in the media fired, and it would have gotten a media person fired had it been delivered against an accredited victim group—cf. the termination of radio host Don Imus and basketball commentator Tim Hardaway last year.
Continue reading "Christ-Hater Skates,Thanks to Elite Prejudice Against Christians" »
Turner Classic Movies is presenting a documentary on filmmaker Val Lewton, produced and narrated by Martin Scorsese, tonight at 8 EST with a repeat presentation at midnight.
Lewton (b. Vladimir Ivan Leventon in Yalta, Russia) was a highly talented writer and producer whose atmospheric suspense and horror films of the 1940s for Hollywood's RKO studio are much admired by film critics and scholars and the more tasteful and well-informed of today's filmmakers.
Continue reading "Salute to Val Lewton" »
The title of Fox's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles definitely captures show's real emphasis. The Terminator character, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film series, is the hook to get people to tune in, but the real focus of the show is the character of Sarah Connor (Lena Headey), mother of the man who will one day save the world.
Continue reading "Sarah Connor, Woman As Protector" »
Starting this evening at 9 EST and over the next four months, PBS will broadcast The Complete Jane Austen. The series runs through April 6, and will include adaptations of all of Austen's novels, plus Miss Austen Regrets (Feb. 6), a film biography detailing the never-married author's "lost loves."
The Complete Jane Austen will consist of new adaptations of Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility, plus previously produced versions of Emma (featuring Kate Beckinsale) and Pride and Prejudice (starring Colin Firth).
Continue reading "Masterpiece Theater Does Austen" »
Last night's mid-season premiere episodes of Monk and Psych, both on the USA Network, were very entertaining and inspire optimism that both series are going to have a good year.
The Monk episode had a strong story, a relatively uninspired but workable mystery, some very funny scenes, a good subject area (a religious cult), and several superb character points.
Monk's assistant, Natalie (Traylor Howard), was not used very promenently, as Monk spends much of the episode separated from her, and Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) does not get to do much, either, but Jason Gray-Stanford has a couple of very funny moments as Lt. Randall Disher, and the guest actors, particularly Howie Mandel as the cult leader, were very good. And Tony Shaloub was in top form as Adrian Monk.
Continue reading "'Monk,' 'Psych' Mid-Season Premieres Strong" »
After the success of several tie-in novels featuring characters from the USA Network detective-comedy series Monk, written by TV mystery veteran Lee Goldberg, two more USA Network series will get the same treatment, according to an item on The Blog of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers.
TV writer William Rabkin has agreed to write three original novels based on Psych, with the first going into print in January 2009, and Tod Goldberg will produce three books based on Burn Notice, with the first installment due out in July 2008, when the series' second season will begin on USA Network.
Continue reading "Tie-In Novels for 'Psych,' 'Burn Notice'" »
USA Network's superb comedy-mystery series Monk and Psych return to action with new original episodes tomorrow night, at 9 and 10 EST, respectively.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has announced that the FX legal drama Damages will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray disc on January 29. The three disc set, nearly ten hours in length, will include all thirteen episodes of the first season of the suspenseful drama series starring Glenn Close and Ted Danson.
As noted earlier on this site, the main innovation of the show is its willingness to take a realistic look at the character of the crusading lawyer:
Continue reading "Fox's "Damages" on DVD" »
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has announced that the FX legal drama Damages will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray disc on January 29. The three disc set, nearly ten hours in length, will include all thirteen episodes of the first season of the suspenseful drama series starring Glenn Close and Ted Danson.
As noted earlier on this site, the main innovation of the show is its willingness to take a realistic look at the character of the crusading lawyer:
Continue reading "Fox's "Damages" on DVD" »
My favorite BBC programming has always been its mystery series, and the best of those are not the ones that mimic American programs but those that have the most British feel to them.
Unfortunately, the BBC has almost fully assimilated former Prime Minister Tony Blair's "Cool Britannia" notion, turning the government media service into a bastion of vulgar flash and nonsense designed to appeal to sex-addled teenagers of all ages.
Hence it's a happy day any time the BBC accidentally puts out one of its increasingly rare programs of intelligent and sensible entertainment. Life on Mars is just such a one and is not to be missed.
Continue reading "BBC's Excellent "Life on Mars"" »
Comedian-actor Sacha Baron Cohen is retiring two characters that made him famous—and notorious.
He has announced that he will no longer portray the characters of Borat Sagdiyev, a fictional Kazakh journalist notable for his amazing ignorance, anti-semitism, lack of respect for women, and overall vulgarity, and Ali G, a young English yobbo version of the same character.
"I am never going to play them again," he told the London Daily Telegraph.
Continue reading "Cohen Retires Famous Characters" »
Senator's thinly veiled threat of congressional action to ensure fans see New England football game is emblematic of what's wrong with America's government today.
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) has decided to step forward to handle one of the great crises of our time.
No, not the War on Terror, concerns about global warming, or increasing access to good health care.
Continue reading "Thanks but No Bloody Thanks, Sen. Kerry" »
Tonight USA Network presents two mystery-comedy Christmas specials.
At 9 EST (repeated at 12 a.m.), is the annual Monk Christmas special. The comedy-mystery program is a limted series appearing in two sets of episodes per year, in summer and midwinter, so USA Network wisely presents a Christmas episode each year to help sustain viewers' interest during the long layoff.
The USA Network describes tonight's episode, "The Man Who Shot Santa," as follows: "Monk becomes a social pariah when he shoots a man dressed as Santa Claus. Can he clear his name and foil a larger criminal plot in time for Christmas?"
After Monk, at 10 EST (repeated at 1 a.m.), is the first-ever Psych Christmas episode. USA Network describes it thus: "The scoop: Christmas with the Gusters is ruined when evidence in a murder case leads the police right to Gus' dad. Phylicia Rashad and Ernie Hudson guest star as the Gusters in the premiere of 'Gus' Dad May Have Killed an Old Guy'!"
Those who enjoy mysteries, comedy, and Advent, will definitely want to watch these.
Program's mistakes show the importance of narrative coherence.
The NBC TV show Heroes, a widely acclaimed program just a year ago in its first season, slid badly in audience numbers during the first half of this year's TV season, and has lost much support among the show's fans.
In fact, in response to the criticisms and decreasing ratings, a couple of week's ago the show's creator and driving force, Tim Kring, apologized to the fans, saying that his team had underestimated the viewers' willingness to sit through long expository sequences as opposed to wanting the action to move forward.
Continue reading "Heroes Audience Shrinks Due to Producers' Missteps" »
I haven't got around to seeing Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project yet, but I certainly will. The documentary on the veteran stand-up comedian, who is now 81 years old, premiered last Sunday night on the HBO cable network and was shown at the New York Film Festival a couple of months ago.
According to reports, the movie was directed with evident affection by comedy filmmaker John Landis. (To see the Variety review click here.)
Rickles has that effect on people, and he has always been highly respected by other comedians.
Rickles is well-known for his tart-tongued improvisations in which he picks on members of the audience and celebrity guests and upbraids them for presumed character flaws and stereotyped ethnic characteristics.
Continue reading "The Splendid Mr. Rickles" »
Saving Grace is truly one of the best programs on television today—serious, intelligent, creative, and with a strong set of positive values shining through its gritty subject matter. The series' producers are as willing to confront the dark side of American life today as anyone, yet they never give in to fashionable bleakness or despair.
On the contrary, the program delivers a realistic sense of hope while never papering over the difficulties involved in living right in a greatly imperfect world. The combination of police drama and frank, explicit spirtuality is fresh and successful, and the lead character's reluctance to give herself over fully to what is good and true is something with which most viewers can sympathize.
Continue reading "Interview with "Saving Grace" Creator Nancy Miller" »
There's good news and bad news for the TV networks in recent figures released by Starcom, a leading media buying agency.
The good news is that the TV networks are making a substantial amount of money off of ads shown during online, streaming video releases of their programs. The bad news is that the writers want a slice of that rapidly growing pie.
Continue reading "TV Networks Are Making Big Money Online: Report" »
A very good movie series that has been unjustly overlooked since the cultural cataclysm that began after World War II is MGM's late-1930s/early '40s series of films starring Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare. It's a pity, as the series has much to offer even today.
Ayres, then a very young contract player at what was the top Hollywood studio at the time, portrays the title character with the right blend of earnestness and humor, and Lionel Barrymore is excellent as his crusty but ultimately sympathetic mentor, Dr. Gillespie. Laraine Day is likewise solid as hardworking Nurse Mary Lamont, who becomes Kildare's love interest.
Nearly all the entries in the series were helmed by the undistinguished MGM contract director Harold S. Bucquet, but they are quite competently produced, written, and directed.
Continue reading "The Dr. Kildare Films" »
There's an excellent mystery film on Turner Classsic Movies tonight at 7:00 EST: Green for Danger, directed by ace British filmmaker Sidney Gilliat from a novel by Christianna Brand, one of the great Golden Age mystery writers.
Set in an English hospital during World War II, the film features Brand's great detective, Inspector Cockrill, and is an excellent adaptation to celluloid.
Cockrill is an interesting, eccentric detective, and Alistair Sim brings his great humor and class to the role. This is an essential detective film.
Continue reading "An Essential Mystery Film" »
Critics of the past half-century have never had much use for MGM's Andy Hardy movie series of the late 1930s and '40s, but the films really do merit watching. The series of theatrical films starred Mickey Rooney as the title character, a teenaged boy who wants to get things the easy way and always finds out that doing the right thing always works out the best .
Guided by his wise and strong father, Judge Hardy, and his affectionate and hardworking mother, Andy manages to muddle his way through girl trouble, money problems, car repairs, and the like, and learns something in each film.
Yes, the characters are solidly middle class—upper middle class, really—and the films don't wallow in an effort to plumb the depths of human evil, which make them entirely uninteresting to most critics.
Continue reading "The Andy Hardy Films" »
One of my favorite movie detectives is Gay Lawrence, aka the Falcon, a gentleman-sleuth and adventurer who was featured in a series of RKO films during the 1940s. The character was first played by George Sanders, who brought his usual urbanity to the role.
The Falcon typically intervened on behalf of some attractive young damsel in distress, and an amusing aspect of the series is that at the end of each episode, just after the Falcon solves the crime, the female lead of the next installment of the series comes on the scene and asks him for his help.
The films have that fizzy, cheerful attitude we often find in classical Hollywood mystery films, but they range widely in locations and story elements, with the high-society sleuth traveling around the country to help attractive females get out of trouble, usually with the police providing much more of a hindrance than a help
Continue reading "The Falcon" »
Two very entertaining detective-film series are on display tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies. The day starts with the best Sherlock Holmes of the cinema (in my view), Basil Rathbone, starring in four Universal Sherlock Holmes films broadcast on TCM tomorrow morning from 6:00 EST until 11:00.
Co-starring Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, most of the Universal Sherlock Holmes films were set during then-contemporary times—during and just after World War II—and often included aspects of the war in their plots, as in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon,which TCM will show at 6 a.m. tomorrow. The films also had about the same amount of melodramatic action as the original Conan Doyle stories typically provided.
The puzzles aren't exactly scintillating and perfectly fair-play, but the movies go along at a nice, snappy pace, and the actors give the central characters and their adversaries strong and even charismatic performances.
Continue reading "Two Entertaining Detective Film Series" »
The trend of films to have multiple sequels and become theatrical series is nothing new, as Turner Classic Movies makes clear this month. The cable network is showing entire film series every day this month, ranging from the "Thin Man" detective movies to Andy Hardy films and the "Mexican Spitfire" series that starred Lupe Velez.
Today brings an enjoyable slate of films featuring the gentleman-sleuth the Saint, created by Leslie Charteris and brought to film in several appealing movies during the late 1930s and early '40s. (You may also be familiar with the diverting British ITV series The Saint, which starred Roger Moore in 1962-1969, and probably won't want to remember The Saint film starring Val Kilmer that was released a few years ago.)
Continue reading "The Saint on Film on TV" »
Daytime syndicated talk show hostess Ellen DeGeneres has decide to return to work, defying the Writers Guild in its strike against TV and movie producers, studios, and networks. She decided to break the strike after only one day.
DeGeneres said she "loves and supports her writers,' according to a statement by the Writers Guild of America-East, which vowed to picket her show and urged her to stop appearing for work.
Representatives for the show said DeGeneres' program is not like the late-night network talk shows that have decided to close down production during the strike, such as The Tonight Show and Late Night with David Letterman. Instead, DeGeneres' representatives said, her program is more like unscripted daytime talk programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show and Live with Regis and Kelly.
Continue reading "DeGeneres Breaks Writers' Strike" »
As the movie studios and TV channels and production companies contemplate the writers union's demands, they might want to take a serious look at the lackluster performance of this year's film releases and the horrible ratings for the current season's new TV shows.
The latter are simply disastrous and aptly reflect the lackluster quality of most of the new series. Although the new season has brought a continuation of the gradual increase in moral seriousness of new shows evident during the past few years, the tone of the new programs has been exceptionally downbeat, and viewerships have dropped rapidly after the first couple of weeks when viewers sampled the new shows.
Continue reading "New TV Series Continue Precipitous Decline" »
Everything's Gone Green, as the New Order song has it. As you may know, NBC TV has gone green this week, stacking its lineup with allegedly eco-friendly messages, plotlines, and other empty gestures.
This is just part of a general cultural trend toward accepting the premise of the global warming alarmists and their preferred policy of vastly increasing government control over our lives and forcibly returning wealthy modern societies to the supposedly ideal conditions of the 1830s—a society on which they poured undisguised contempt untiil the eco-bug hit.
Continue reading "NBC Goes Green" »
Following in the grand tradition of animal-rights activist Bob Barker, comedian and The Price Is Right game-show host Drew Carey has joined the public policy fray. Carey, however, has taken up the libertarian banner, producing and hosting a series of videos for the Reason Foundation.
Carey's first video for The Drew Carey Project—Gridlock, about traffic problems—didn't get much attention. But his second, Drew Carey Defends Medical Marijuana, is making up for it
Carey is quoted on the teaser page for the video as saying,
I think it’s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana. People who need it should be able to get it – safely and easily,” says The Price Is Right and Power of 10 host Drew Carey in a new Reason.tv video examining medical marijuana and the war on drugs.
Continue reading "Legalize Dope, "Price Is Right" Host Says" »
Big-name and -money advertisers have hitherto been reluctant to put much money into web advertising, but that trend is reversing fast, according to eMarketer, a leading advertisement tracker.
In 2006 the top 100 advertisers cut their spending on TV, radio, and print by $230 million and raised their online ad spending by $558 million—an increase of approximately 17 percent.
Continue reading "Advertisers Moving to Internet—and Fast" »
The Hollywood writers went on strike as planned at 12:01 a.m. EST today. Writers Guild of America union leaders have told members that picketing is compulsory and that the writers must turn over all unfinished manuscripts to the union so that they will not work on them in secret.
Evidently the union has yet to hear of computer files, xerox machines, or carbon paper.
The first programs to halt production will be the late-night talk shows, which will go into reruns tonight, because writers will be unavailable to write the fabulous topical jokes that are so important to these programs' appeal. Sitcoms will be the next to fall, as writers will not be available on set to punch up the scripts with additional sex humor.
David Chase, producer of The Sopranos, says that the widely debated ending of the series' final episode is no mystery at all. The series simply ends without any resolution at all, the producer said, referring to the cut to a blank screen that occurs in the middle of a family gathering at a diner, as USA Today reports:
Chase insists that what you saw (and didn't see) is what you get.
"There are no esoteric clues in there. No Da Vinci Code," he declares.
So that appears to be that: the series ending, which bewildered and disappointed most viewers, was chosen deliberately.
It's another vivid case proving the stupidity and dramatic wrongness of fashionable ambiguity.
The ratings for the new season's TV shows are starting to solidify, and the results are clarifying successes and failures. Fox has renewed the Kelsey-Grammer-Patricia Heaton sitcom has been picked up for the fulll season, as the network has asked for an additional eleven episodes for a total of twenty-four.
The most highly rated new sitcom, however, is ABC's Samantha Who?, starring Christina Applegate as an amnesia victim who discovers that she was a terrible person in her previous life and decides to try to reform. ABC has asked for six additional episodes and is reportedly leaning toward committing to a full season.
The same network's Cavemen, by contrast, has continued its ratings free-fall, and ABC has not asked for additional episodes. ABC has picked up the well-reviewed Pushing Daisies for the full season, which finished second in its time slot last night despite suffering a 15 percent audience dropoff compared with the previous week.
CBS has cancelled Viva Laughlin after just two episodes, in response to very low audience numbers. The series, as noted earlier on this site, was a strange and thoroughly awkward combination of drama, mystery, and musical sequences.
It's a pity that the producers decided to retain the musical sequence gimmick from the British show on which the series was based, Viva Blackpool, because the story material was decent and certainly workable, and the positive portrayal of an entrepreneur at the center of the show was a very good development.
According to AOL Television, Viva Laughlin, which premiered tonight on CBS, is the worst new show of the season. What the reviewer found most appalling about the show, which is based on the popular British TV series Viva Blackpool, was the scenes in which the characters sing along with old rock music hits such as "Viva Las Vegas" and "Sympathy for the Devil."
Those music sequences really are about as awful as can be. They constitute a huge distraction from the narrative, and unlike the analogous scenes in classic Hollywood musicals, in Viva Laughlin they don't advance the story any more than a couple of lines of dialogue would have done.
Continue reading "Viva Laughlin an Avoidable Disaster" »
It's rather startling how much of the culture is exploring moral issues in increasingly traditional terms. As is perhaps most evident in ABC's Dirty Sexy Money, an ever-more common approach among producers of TV fiction series is to take flamboyant story material and apply it to intensely moral ends. An important aspect of this trend, also highly evident in DSM, is the notion that the rich are a good deal more morally suspect than the middle classes.
Hence it should hardly surprise us that not one but two new shows on the CW this year are based on the premise that life among the wealthy in Manhattan is so bad that even self-imposed exile is better.
Interestingly, the point of both shows is that the moral weakness and decadence of the New York wealthy is what makes life there really rather miserable.
Continue reading "New TV Dramas Are Taking Moral Issues Seriously" »
The new ABC situation comedy Samantha Who?, starring Christina Applegate (Married with Children, Anchorman), initially seems likely to collapse under the weight of one of those most cliched sitcom situations: amnesia.
The program, however, has a nice twist, and even more appealing is the fact that it has some interesting moral siginificance.
Applegate plays the title character, who wakes up in hospital after nine days in a coma as a result of an automobile crash, and finds that she doesn't recognize anyone or remember anything from her life prior to the accident.
That's the cliched part, of course.
Soon, however, as she meets her family, live-in boyfriend, and only female friend, it becomes increasingly clear to both her and the audience that she was a really terrible person throughout her life before her accident. She was cheating on her boyfriend, was an alcoholic, lied habitually, snubbed people who needed her help and friendship, was blase toward her family, and in general was an all-around bitch, as she puts it herself.
Continue reading "Surprise! You're a Bitch!—New ABC Comedy" »
The unintelligent and unpleasant new TV series Cavemen (ABC), Carpoolers (ABC), and Cane (CBS) all lost ground in the ratings this week, with Cavemen down by about 25 percent below the previous week and Carpoolers falling 20 percent. The CBS drama Cane lost another 8 percent over the previous week, for a total drop of 23 percent from its premiere three weeks ago.
Also falling was the already low-rated CW series Reaper. Despite its producers' attempt to put a cheerful, somewhat comic demeanor on the drama series, Reaper has been unable to overcome the disturbing premise of the central character's soul having been sold to the devil.
All told, the week's ratings provide further evidence that audiences are not looking for dark, disturbing programs and are in fact actively avoiding them.
Life, a new drama series on NBC, Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EDT, is a mystery series with a difference. (Journeyman, analyzed yesterday on this site, is another example of this type of show.)
In this case, the difference is that the detective, Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) is a police officer who doesn't have to work for a living and hence can do things the way he thinks is right, rather than the way department procdures tell him to.
The protagonist was imprisoned for twelve years for a murder he did not commit. While in prison he was brutalized by the other inmates, and thus learned how important it is to make sure the right person is convicted. He was exonerated and received a huge money settlement from the government and has rejoined the force, this time out of desire rather than for need of a job.
Continue reading "Another Eccentric TV Detective" »
The new NBC program Journeyman, Mondays at 10 p.m. EDT, is an attempt at a mystery series with a difference: the protagonist is involuntarily thrown back through time at unpredictable intervals.
It's an interesting concept, basically a simpler, more direct variation on the idea behind the 1989-1993 series Quantum Leap, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell.
In Journeyman, Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd) suddenly and quite unexpectedly finds himself twenty years in the past. Neither he nor the audience understands precisely why or how he has been thrust back into time. Just as unpredictably and mysteriously, he returns to his normal time a few hours later—with a good deal of explaining to do, to his wife and others, and which he does quite inadequately because he has no idea what is really happening to him and why.
Continue reading "TV Mystery Series with a Twist—NBC's Journeyman" »
Tonight at 8:00 EDT Turner Network Television is showing a very underrated movie from 1957, Curse of the Demon (also released as Night of the Demon), directed by Jacques Tourneur. It's based on a very fine horror story by M. R. James, "Casting the Runes."
James's metier was in creating horror stories that depended on strong characterization, a solid story with sensible motivation, great skill at conveying atmosphere and suspense, and some real intellectual power. He stayed away from sensational effects, and his stories were much more effective for it.
Continue reading "A Very Good Film Dealing with Devil Worship" »
Like Pushing Daisies (analyzed earlier on this site), the new CBS drama series Moonlight explores fairly heady ideas about what makes us human, specifically the relationship between flesh and spirit. Unlike the cheerful Daisies, Moonlight, created by movie producer Joel Silver, is another of the many dark dramas so common on TV today.
Mick St. John (Alex O'Loughlin) is a moralistic vampire who doesn't prey on "innocents" but instead kills only evil people whom he thinks deserve to die (so he says). Mick despises vampires who kill humans indiscriminately, and he helps people by working as a private investigator, using his heightened senses to solve the crimes.
The possibility of redemption is a strong impulse throughout the pilot episode, as Mick is torn between his will to live and his desire to live right.
That's a good and interesting theme to consider. Unfortunately, the scriptwriting, performances, and visual presentation are at a low level of sophistication, sticking to the modern comic-book/graphic-novel approach and never striking much contact with the real world. That makes it difficult for the viewer to experience the show as much more than an intellectual exercise—and comic books are hardly the best way to exercise the intellect.
The award for most creative new show so far this year certainly must go to Pushing Daisies, which premiered last night on ABC. Created by Bryan Fuller (Heroes) and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family, Men in Black) the show has been very obviously influenced not only by Sonnenfeld himself but also by the works of filmmker Tim Burton. Its whimsical, imaginative visual and storytelling style is certainly appropriate to the adult fairy tale that it is clearly intended to be.
Continue reading "ABC's "Daisies" Starts Strong" »
As we noted yesterday, the high ratings for the premiere episode of the new NBC series Bionic Woman were undoubtedly a result of people being greatly interested in sampling the program, as it sounded like it could be great fun. Given our disappointment in the program's first two installments, we openly wondered whether those who had seen the first episode would return the next week.
The answer is in: No.
The program's audience declined 30 percent between weeks 1 and 2, according to the overnight Nielsen ratings.
It's another piece of evidence that Hollywood's current habit of turning out the darkest and most depressing products possible is not what audiences really want.
If you were going to make a show about a "bionic woman," it would be all about how great it would be to have superpowerful hearing and eyesight and be able to run at a speed of 60 mph and punch holes in brick walls. C'mon, that's be a blast, wouldn't it? And you'd want the character to go around helping people, because life would be really boring when she could easily steal anything she wanted. So instead she'd be a sort of one-woman A-Team, like the Jaime Sommers in the 1975-78 series starring Lindsay Wagner.
And that's the kind of show you'd want to watch, right?
Continue reading "Bionic Gloombot" »
The new ABC sitcom Carpoolers which debuted last night, tells the stories of four men in professional fields who drive to and from work together. One is a dentist, one a mediator, and it was not made clear in the pilot episode what the other two do for a living. What was made clear was that the men all have problems at home.
One lives in abject terror of his slothlike wife, one has been entirely impoverished by divorce, another is deep in debt, and another is depressed because he has heard that both his wife and son make more money than he does.
In short, it is more of the Men as Whiny Schlubs trend that's so common this TV season.
Continue reading "ABC's "Carpoolers"" »
The new ABC comedy Cavemen premiered last night. As you probably know, it's based on the amusing commercials for GEICO insurance, which feature cavemen living in the contemporary United States, with one frequently taking offense at being considered unintelligent.
The series, by contrast, centers on the cavemen's fish-out-of-water condition as they navigate the contemporary dating world. Much of the narrative centers on the cavemen's concerns that other people may be prejudiced toward them.
I suppose it could be funny or meaningful, but it isn't.
Continue reading "ABC's Senseless "Cavemen"" »
ABC's new series Big Shots (Thursdays at 10 pm EDT), which premiered last night, is clearly intended to be a male version of Desperate Housewives. Think of it as Desperate CEOs.
The central characters of the program are the heads of four corporations, and the hook is that although their businesses are doing well, their personal lives are a mess.
One is enormously henpecked, another is divorced and being set up for a gross public humilation and has a young-adult daughter who openly hates him (or seems to), another is cheating on his wife, and the other's wife has been cheating on him with his boss.
Get the irony? At work they're Masters of the Universe, but at home they're ineffectual schlubs.
Yes, the show is that plausible and meaningful.
As noted earlier, Big Shots is part of the current TV season's trend toward the feminization of adult males. As one of the Big Shots says in the pilot episode, "Men—we're the new women."
Continue reading "ABC's "Big Shots" Misses Big" »
Filmmaker Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma) is a common type of modern American: vulgar but religious. His movies include large doses of vulgarity and profanity accompanied by an evidently sincere search for the sacred. His new CW series Reaper, which premiered this past Tuesday in its regular timeslot of 9 p.m. EDT), is both raucous and religious, and is one of the best things he's done.
The reason they did so is the bad news: Sam's parents sold his soul to the devil long before he was born, and the Evil One gets to collect when Sam turns twenty-one.
Continue reading "A Charming "Reaper"" »
