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

 
 
2011
Oct
15
 
 
Long after the surprise success of AMC's zombie apocalypse series, The Walking Dead, last year, but well before Sunday's 10 p.m. ET launch of Season 2, executive producer Frank Darabont and AMC parted ways, for reasons still unexplained. The question is: Does the new season of Walking Dead still pack the dramatic intensity and ability to shock it did last year, when it racked up an audience more than that of the network's Mad Men and Breaking Bad?...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
12
 
 
Already in this new season, three new fall shows have been canceled: NBC's The Playboy Club and Free Agents, and CW's H8R. One of them, Free Agents, may have fallen victim to TV's Kickoff Curse -- but all of them share another common denominator that makes their demise something to celebrate here at TV WORTH WATCHING. All of them were terrible...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
9
 
 
The second episode of Season 6 of Showtime's Dexter was televised Sunday night at 9 ET. An hour later, on AMC, Breaking Bad concluded Season 4. And so far as I'm concerned, the two outstanding, unusual drama series share more than an evening's proximity. When they do finally wrap up their daringly dark story lines, I predict they'll end the same way. They'll end, I suspect, with loving relatives learning about their misdeeds, and squaring off against them in a raw, potentially fatal confrontation, fueled by disbelief, anger and betrayal...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
6
 
 
Thursday's new episode of NBC's Parks and Recreation (8:30 p.m. ET) came as a preview DVD in the mail -- and its contents came as a total surprise. The pre-credits open, the best lampoon of public radio since Alec Baldwin promoted his "Schweddy balls" on Saturday Night Live, may be my favorite TV moment of the year. But for very personal reasons...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
5
 
 
I've road-tested my advance copies of FX's American Horror Story, the aggressively twisted new series premiering Wednesday night at 10 ET, to peg it as TV's most polarizing series since Twin Peaks. I love it, and see all sorts of potential in it. Others dismiss it immediately and harshly: "The Shining called," sneered one person whose opinion I respect. "It wants its crappy first draft back"...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
4
 
 
One of the very first images in director Martin Scorsese's fab four-hour HBO documentary biography, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, shows the former Beatle playing hide-and-seek with the camera, partly obscured by a bunch of colorful tulips. By the next time we see that same image, near the end of the two-part program, it's saturated not only with color, but with meaning...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2011
Oct
2
 
 
Two months ago, while on the Television Critics Association press tour, I wrote about the then-upcoming documentary series Prohibition, co-directed for PBS by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick...However, I saved a fuller review of the show, and excerpts from a private chat with Burns and Novick before their TCA press conference, until now...