For four years, from 2013 to 2017, A&E presented the series Bates Motel, which was called a “contemporary prequel” to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 movie classic, Psycho. It starred Freddie Highmore, now starring on ABC’s The Good Doctor, as a young Norman Bates, a boy tiptoeing tentatively into both adulthood and serial-killer tendencies while being both protected and tormented by his clingy mother, Norma (played to unhinged perfection by Vera Farmiga). It was a prequel be

2018

Feb

PLANET EARTH: BLUE PLANET II By David Bianculli

I’m continually astounded by this new Blue Planet II series: Quite often, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. And afterward, with the little how-they-filmed-it bonuses at the end of each episode, I can’t believe how they captured what I can’t believe I’m seeing. Tonight, for example, in the vibrantly colored installment called “Coral Reefs,” you can watch an octopus that’s so ingenious that he hides himself from a predatory shark by curling into

2018

Feb

48 HOURS: "DEATH IN DEEP WATER" By David Bianculli

Tonight’s new 48 Hours, “Death in Deep Water,” revisits a cold case involving a long-deceased movie star. Actress Natalie Wood, a familiar and memorable film presence since befriending a department store Santa in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street, died suddenly, and somewhat mysteriously, in 1981, in what was called a boating accident in Catalina. The last people to see her alive were the boat’s captain, her then-husband Robert Wagner, and good friend Christopher Walken

2018

Feb

BOUND FOR GLORY By David Bianculli

TCM’s annual “31 Days of Oscar” lead-up to the Academy Awards is underway again, and tonight the network is showcasing several of the winners in the Best Cinematography category. One of the most notable of these, 1976’s Bound for Glory, is an evocative biography of folk music icon Woody Guthrie, played by David Carradine. And I associate it, all these years later, as the first film in which I saw the Steadicam camera used, gliding in and above and around scenes like a bir

2018

Feb

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE By David Bianculli

Natalie Portman returns to host Saturday Night Live, after doing such a tremendous job way, way back in 2006. That’s more than a dozen years ago now, but she killed it, specifically in an early Lonely Island musical digital short, “Natalie Raps,” in which she pretends to be her badass, unchecked alter ego during a celebrity interview. What she’ll do this time around, as host, is anyone’s guess, but I’m guessing it’ll be funny, and fully committed. The mu

2018

Feb

OVATION PREMIERES THE COMPELLING ADAPTATION OF 'MARJORIE PRIME' By Eric Gould

Untethered from his milestone Mad Men role as antihero Don Draper, Jon Hamm continues his impressive film and TV presence, now as a holographic projection of a deceased husband visiting his wife, afflicted with dementia in her old age...

2018

Feb

EXAMINING THE MANY EDGES OF THE OPIOID CRISIS WITH SHOWTIME'S 'THE TRADE' By David Hinckley

Numerous documentaries, on television and elsewhere, have tackled elements of the drug epidemic. Showtime’s new The Trade attempts to connect all the dots...

2018

Feb

THE CASE OF THE MISSING FBI AGENT ON 'ABSENTIA' By David Hinckley

Stana Katic, whose Detective Kate Beckett was both hunter and hunted through eight seasons in the good-natured Castle, now finds herself back in that same situation on a much darker show called Absentia...

2018

Feb

THE RETURN OF 'STRIKE BACK' TO CINEMAX By David Hinckley

One of television’s most successful gender diversity initiatives has entailed letting women in on the fun of noisy violence, so it’s only fitting that Cinemax’s revived Strike Back no longer looks like a boys club...

2018

Feb

ABSENTIA By David Bianculli

SERIES PREMIERE: Stana Katic from ABC’s Castle stars as an FBI agent who is captured and held captive by a serial killer – for six years, long after her husband and young son, along with her colleagues at the bureau, have presumed her dead. Then she suddenly resurfaces, but with no memory of her captivity. And the word “resurfacing” is literal, because she emerges from a large glass tank filled with water, used intermittently to almost drown her. It’s the same tortu

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