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DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

Bianculli's Blog

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

The Cold Light Reader

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Dateline Donovan
Contributors

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All Along the Watchtower

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Uncle Barky's Bytes

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TV That Matters

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Open Mike

ED MARTIN

Ed Martin's TV Mix

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Aerial View

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MNtv

BILL BRIOUX

TV Feeds My Family

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TV Eye

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Must-Click TV

TOM BRINKMOELLER

Raised On MTM

GERALD JORDAN

Crossing Jordan

NOEL HOLSTON

The Grassy Noel

TVWW ARCHIVE

Contributors Archive
 
 
2017
May
21
2017 BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS By David Bianculli
 
 
SPECIAL: Ludacris and Vanessa Hudgens are the co-hosts this year, which suggests the Billboard Awards this year are leaning heavily towards the younger audience members. But then how do you explain that one of tonight’s showcased artists, receiving a Billboard Icon award, is a musical act who could have headlined the bill 40 or 50 years ago? That would be the one and only Cher, slated to take the stage live from Las Vegas, which could almost, by now, be considered her native habitat. Also
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
May
21
THE SIMPSONS By David Bianculli
 
 
SEASON FINALE: Friday, I hosted a special Fresh Air salute to The Simpsons, honoring the 30th anniversary of Matt Groening’s animated characters as interstitial cartoon shorts on Fox’s The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987. Tonight, more officially, the weekly series known as The Simpsons, which was spun off from those Ullman Show bumpers, concludes Season 28 – an amazing run all by itself. And it does so with an episode that really goes to the dogs. After a legal ruling involving a H
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
May
21
12 MONKEYS By David Bianculli
 
 
SERIES FINALE: This show’s entire current season has been unspooling this weekend, in nightly chunks of multiple episodes that, taken together, amount to a weekend binge-fest of all of Season 3. It builds tonight to a climax asking a variant on the old time-travel conundrum: If you could go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler as a child, should you? The evil seed here isn’t Hitler… but in this sci-fi story, he’s the next worst thing. And tonight, with the protagonists and
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
May
21
DARK ANGEL ON MASTERPIECE By David Bianculli
 
 
Since Downton Abbey concluded, many of the actresses on that period series have gone defiantly against type, embodying roles that are more modern, or less proper, or both. Tonight’s fact-based period drama, Dark Angel, definitely does the latter, but goes back even further in time than the former. Set in the 1860s and 1870s, just after the American Civil War, Dark Angel stars Joanne Froggatt – who played sweet, long-suffering Anna Bates in the downstairs part of Downton Abbey –
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
May
21
THE LEFTOVERS By David Bianculli
 
 
In tonight’s new episode, as we get closer to this series’ finale, Laurie (Amy Brenneman) heads to Australia to help Kevin (Justin Theroux) and Nora (Carrie Coon). Death is on the horizon – but death, in this story, may not be the end of things.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
May
21
TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN By David Bianculli
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This revival of Twin Peaks, presented by original series creators David Lynch and Mark Frost, picks up more than 25 years after the original series, and story line, ended. What happens next is a mystery in more ways than one, because Lynch and Showtime have refused to preview this new version to critics – except at a Friday night party in L.A. where attendees were sworn to secrecy until after tonight’s two-hour premiere. (Given those restrictions, I politely declined
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
May
21
AMERICAN GODS By David Bianculli
 
 
Emily Browning, star of Sucker Punch, appeared in the first episode of American Gods, playing Laura Moon, the wife of series protagonist Shadow Moon. Laura was killed almost immediately, making it a very brief role indeed – until last week, when Shadow returned to his motel room to find his dead wife waiting on his bed, seemingly very much alive. Tonight’s episode four is all about her – and how she got that way.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
May
21
VEEP By David Bianculli
 
 
Just as President Donald Trump takes his first overseas trip as chief executive and gets a royal welcome in Saudi Arabia, fleeting former President Selina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) almost visits the Middle East, by touching down in Qatar.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
May
21
LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER By David Bianculli
 
 
How quickly, and how cleverly, can John Oliver and company make sense of what’s happening almost as I write this, and you read this, overseas with the President Trump trip? We’ll see… and we must watch.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
May
20
2017 PREAKNESS HORSE RACE By David Bianculli
 
 
Almost Dreaming, winner of the Kentucky Derby, is the horse to watch in this year’s Preakness. This race is the second leg of the Triple Crown, and Almost Dreaming therefore is the only competitor who can hope for a Triple Crown win this year. But that’s before this race is run – and the other horses and jockeys in the race have ideas, and almost dreams, of their own.
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
New From TVWW

PBS' 'Frontline’ Examines Pension Promises and — Spoiler Alert — Finds the Math Doesn’t Add Up
By Alex Strachan
 
 
 
 
The Decadence of ‘Versailles’ Comes to Ovation
By David Hinckley
 
 
 
 
Prescribing Mamie Gummer in 'Emily Owens, M.D.'
By Ed Bark
 
 
 
 
Looking for a Free Ride? HBO Can Deliver
By Christy Slewinski
 
 
 
 
'Pass the Biscuits' Part of the Hatfield-McCoy Pop-Culture Legacy
By Noel Holston
 
 
 
 

Dispatches From TVWW

'Extinction: The Facts' is a Sobering Call to Action
By David Hinckley
 
 
 
 
How 'Mayans' Has Been Influenced by the Show's Creator Elgin James
By Mike Hughes
 
 
 
 
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Take on Ernest Hemingway, the Man and the Myth
By Alex Strachan
 
 
 
 
In the Final Season, Sutton Foster's Liza is Now the Genuine Version of Her 'Younger' Self
By Monique Nazareth
 
 
 
 
Season 2 of 'City on a Hill' Returns with Kevin Bacon, Aldis Hodge, and Boston Corruption
By David Hinckley