SERIES PREMIERE: Last Tuesday, broadcast TV premiered the most eagerly anticipated series of the year: Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Tonight, broadcast TV premieres another, which I’m eagerly anticipating, at least. Based on a long-running live British variety series, Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, it’s an anything-goes variety, sketch and stunt series, a format that makes room for both musical numbers and Candid Camera-type pranks. And it’s live – and if

2015

Sep

KERMIT THE FROG: HEARTFELT AND EVERGREEN By Noel Holston

James Arness’s Gunsmoke marshal, Matt Dillon, made his first appearance on television in 1955. So did Hugh O’Brien’s dandified Wyatt Earp...But only one of these iconic TV characters’ chronological contemporaries is still with us and, amazingly, still getting work. That would be Kermit the Frog...

2015

Sep

MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL By David Bianculli

Monday Night Football begins its season – a tradition that, on ABC, began 45 years ago – with an ESPN doubleheader, featuring one East Coast game, then one West Coast. First up: the Philadelphia Eagles vs. the Atlanta Falcons, at Atlanta. Next up, at 10:15 p.m. ET: the Minnesota Vikings vs. the San Francisco 49ers, at San Francisco.

2015

Sep

DANCING WITH THE STARS By David Bianculli

SEASON PREMIERE: This is cycle No. 21 for this unlikely prime-time hit, and the mix of celebrities this time includes Gary Busey, Paula Deen and Chaka Khan. I don’t mean to be critical in advance, but Dick Smothers has expressed his desire, for years now, to be a contestant on this show. He’s not getting any younger, and some of the celebrities booked by ABC aren’t getting any better. I’m just saying…

2015

Sep

DEATHTRAP By David Bianculli

Ira Levin’s mystery thriller of a Broadway play is preserved, with wickedly good performances, in this 1982 movie, directed for the screen by Sidney Lumet and starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve as a once-hot playwright and his gifted student. Dyan Cannon co-stars, in a clever story about a teacher who thinks of killing a student to claim a first-draft script as his own. That reminds me – I have to teach class today…

2015

Sep

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: "WALT DISNEY" By David Bianculli

Part 1 of 2. Walt Disney was born at the turn of the century, in 1901, and died 65 years later, five years before the opening of Florida’s Walt Disney World – but more than a decade after the opening of California’s Disneyland. In between were cartoons, movies and other enterprises, as enumerated and revisited in this four-hour study. For a full review, see Tom Brinkmoeller’s Raised on MTM. Check local listings.

2015

Sep

LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT By David Bianculli

Among Stephen Colbert’s scheduled guests as he begins his second week as Late Show host is a rare booking: a current member of the U.S. Supreme Court. As judges go, Stephen Breyer is squarely in the middle – not necessarily in terms of politics, but in terms of tenure. He joined the Supreme Court in 1994 – after Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, but before Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito Jr., Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

2015

Sep

PBS WALT DISNEY TV SALUTE FOUR TIMES AS LONG AS JIM HENSON'S, BUT NOT FOUR TIMES AS GOOD By Tom Brinkmoeller

Perhaps some day an episode of Nova will explain how the brains of PBS schedulers work...

2015

Sep

HOW THINGS HAVEN’T CHANGED: 40 YEARS AGO 'ADAM-12' ADDRESSED GUN VIOLENCE By Ed Martin

The passing of Martin Milner earlier this month (Sept 6) brings to mind thoughts about his best known work in the role of Officer Pete Malloy on the crime-drama classic Adam-12, which ran on NBC from 1968-1975...

2015

Sep

2015 U.S. OPEN MEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP By David Bianculli

The men’s and women’s championships at this year’s U.S. Open couldn’t be more different. On the women’s side, one high-ranked seed after another fell before the championship match, including top-ranked and calendar-Slam-chasing Serena Williams, leaving the fight for the biggest trophy to a pair of Italian women: No. 26 seed Flavia Pennetta and unseeded Roberta Vinci. Pennetta, 33, won in an elegantly fought match, then stunned the crowd, and everyone else, by announ

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