DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
2017
Aug
30
 
 
Deadheads, take note: Tonight’s new installment of this long-running series looks at the content and evolution of two distinctly different Grateful Dead early LPs: Anthem of the Sun and American Beauty. The latter (pictured) includes, just to drop a few song titles, “Friend of the Devil,” “Sugar Magnolia,” and “Truckin’.”
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
29
 
 
This is the third of three live shows presenting 12 of the remaining contenders. After tonight, the talent pool is winnowed considerably. Not as considerably as if I’d been in charge of the winnowing… but you can’t winnow them all.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
29
 
 
Part 1 of 2. This 2015 biography of Walt Disney is impressive, and instructive, precisely because it doesn’t avoid or whitewash some of the more problematic parts of the great show-biz visionary’s personality and history. Quite the contrary: This American Experience two-part documentary, concluding next week, is fascinating, and worth watching as a rerun, because it addresses those issues, including his fights with the union and his tolerance for certain types of prejudice, directly.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
29
 
 
Alexander Payne directed this nicely modulated 2004 character study, which stars Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church as a pair of pals taking a hedonistic trip through Santa Barbara County, California’s wine country. They’re both excellent – Giamatti in particular – but save special attention and praise for their female co-stars, Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh, who are given unusually complicated characters to play, and take full advantage of the opportunity.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
29
 
 
Part 5. This fact-based miniseries continues to play fast and loose, and increasingly faster and looser, with the facts of the case it’s dramatizing. Because of the performances, though, and some of the details that do indeed match the official record, this Discovery docudrama continues to be worth recommending, and viewing. I do wish, however, that Discovery would have discovered that, in a dramatization based on fact, the closer a TV adaptation can get to those facts is better all around
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
29
 
 
Today is Marion Davies day on TCM. If her name isn’t that familiar as a star in the Hollywood constellation, try this: She was the B-list actress who was the mistress of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, a relationship that was alluded to, and parodied, by Orson Welles in his classic film Citizen Kane. Her films are shown all day and evening, including 1928’s The Patsy at 6:30 p.m. ET, where she does her impressions of other silent-movie stars such as Lillian Gish. But the treasu
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
28
 
 
There’s been so much bleak news blaring across TV since Friday, I feel obliged to reveal that tonight’s P.O.V. documentary, Raising Bertie, is hopeful, and ends with an uplifting conclusion. Normally, that would require some sort of Spoiler Alert – but today, in particular, I suspect that the last thing viewers will be seeking out on TV is bad news or bleak outlooks. The Bertie in the title isn’t a person, but a place. It’s Bertie County in rural North Carolina, whe
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
28
 
 
Mel Brooks told TVWW a few years ago that he was toying with the idea of, and writing songs for, a possible Broadway musical based on Blazing Saddles. Watch this 1974 comedy classic with that in mind, and it makes so much sense – from the opening theme song to the railroad “work song.” Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder are partnered brilliantly here – and Richard Pryor, who would partner with Wilder even more brilliantly in future films, is one of the writers, with Brooks, o
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
28
 
 
We’re getting near the end of the 10-episode first season of this freewheeling dramatization of the early life of William Shakespeare – and right now, to be or not to be renewed, that is the question…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
28
 
 
Today, TVWW welcomes veteran TV critic, to the fold: Roger Catlin, formerly of the Hartford Courant, who now writes for Smithsonian magazine and other publications, including his own website... Meet our very smart, extremely friendly readers...