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

 
 
2014
Sep
18
 
 
In tonight’s new episode, Riki and Kate have drastically different reactions after attending a baby shower. One of them immediately becomes obsessed about becoming pregnant – the other one, not so much.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
18
 
 
MINISERIES FINALE: If you’ve watched this gripping, very topical miniseries from the start, its ending is likely to really, really get you. Nothing about it – not its structure, its content, and certainly its performances – is routine, or easy, or easily forgotten. Maggie Gyllenhaal stars.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
18
 
 
This could just as easily be the first Bianculli’s Best Bets entry for tomorrow, rather than the last one for tonight. But I want to give readers enough time, and warning, to set their DVRs for 6 a.m. Friday ET, when BBC World News provides coverage of what is sure to be tomorrow’s lead story: The results of the vote whether or not Scotland should declare its independence from the United Kingdom.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
18
 
 
Fox is taking a big, bold swing with Gotham. And it packs a solid first punch with this hardly comic prequel to the Batman playlist. Premiering Monday night, Gotham has a cinematic big-screen look, a vivid, well-cast ensemble of characters and some violence that’s anything but cartoonish...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
17
 
 
Part 4. This is my favorite episode of The Roosevelts – a shining installment that rises above even the rest of this documentary series’ glorious standards. In this two-hour segment, Franklin Roosevelt, at age 39 and with a growing family and the most promising of political careers, suddenly is stricken with infantile paralysis from polio, and finds himself, overnight, unable to walk. Edward Herrmann, in giving voice to Franklin’s memories of that period, is hauntingly evocativ
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
17
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This new series has been widely, and accurately, described as The Breakfast Club in the children’s wing of a hospital. Octavia Spencer stars as an autocratic nurse who seems frightening but has a warm heart underneath, the character who guides viewers through the show’s story (Griffin Gluck) is narrating from a coma, and the various young patients, with their various illnesses, include such identifiable stereotypes as the haughty cheerleader, the brooding loner and t
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
17
 
 
SEASON FINALE: For this final entry in this season’s continuing story line on Extant, astronaut Molly (Halle Berry) dons her space suit once again, and heads into space, this time on a different and more dangerous type of mission. But will her mission ever end? To date, CBS hasn’t confirmed a second-season order for this series – so after tonight, there’s a good chance that Extant will become Extinct.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
17
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This is a warning, not a recommendation. Debra Messing is a very likable actress. The Mysteries of Laura, however, is a very unlikable show. She plays a detective juggling an intense and dangerous life at work with a hectic and harried life at home,  thanks to two wild young boys who won’t behave and a husband from whom she’s separated, and on the verge of divorcing. One immediate problem with this opening episode: The boys are such terrors, and their misbehavio
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
17
 
 
Hey, look who the guest judges are on tonight’s installment: Cast members from Brooklyn Nine-Nine!
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
17
 
 
The 12-year-old narrator remains in a coma, which alone makes Fox’s new Red Band Society a unique departure from the mushrooming narrative norm. Then there’s the welcome casting of Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer (The Help) in the lead role of Nurse Jackson...