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

 
 
2019
Jan
9
 
 
Okay, so I watched the premiere of this series last week – and as an American approach to a South Korean singing competition format, it retains enough essential goofiness to keep me interested. The elaborate costumes are part of it (tonight, for example, we’re introduced to Pineapple, who already has won me over with his, or her, Hawaiian shirt) – but the rest will depend on whether there’s at least one genuine singing celebrity in the mix.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Jan
9
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This six-part documentary series devotes each installment to a different dictator, from Benito Mussolini to Saddam Hussein, to examine how they attained, maintained and lost power. Check local listings.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Jan
8
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: The first two installments of Season 2 are shown tonight, featuring such physically rewarding, or punishing, games as “Blindfolded Musical Chairs.” Ellen DeGeneres presides, gleefully, over a gauntlet of supersize versions of the playful games seen on her daytime talk show. And she seems to be having such fun, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ellen’s Game of Games outlasts its long-running parent program.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Jan
8
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This is not a recommendation. In 1954, Walt Disney presented a new TV series on ABC called Disneyland – which began, basically, as a full-length advertisement for his new theme park. The theme park was so new that it wasn’t open yet, and the TV partnership with ABC was the way Disney financed it. Then, in 1992, MTV premiered The Real World, a reality TV series from Bunin/Murray Productions in which “everyday” people were selected by the producers to cohab
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Jan
8
 
 
Last week, the formerly separated mutants reteamed, temporarily, to rescue their common comrade Thunderbird – but in so doing, Lauren saw her brother exhibit some less than noble tendencies during the rescue mission. And in tonight’s new episode, Lauren investigates her family ancestors, and her own powers, and may unleash some dangerous emotions of her own.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Jan
8
 
 
The true story, unknown to almost everyone at the time, was told in riveting fashion by Robert Shaw’s sea captain in 1975’s Jaws: The U.S.S. Indianapolis, days after delivering the components for the top-secret nuclear bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, was torpedoed in the Philippine Sea. It sank quickly, stranding more than 1,000 sailors, hundreds of whom were stranded in the water as sharks slowly feasted on them – with no help coming, or distress signa
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Jan
8
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Even though this is a new production from the History channel, don’t mistake it for unadulterated history. This is a 10-part series, designed as a sort of flying saucer-centric The X-Files, in which Aiden Gillen stars as Dr. J. Allen Hynek, one of the men in charge of the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book. That was the code name for the government’s investigation into unidentified flying objects, or what it termed UFOs. (Hynek was responsible for, among other
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Jan
8
 
 
If you think there’s something or someone Out There, that we can’t be the only sentient beings in the universe, you’re on the same page with Dr. J. Allen Hynek...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Jan
7
 
 
There are different views on how long the Roman Empire lasted, but by any count, it was a very long time...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Jan
7
 
 
Hardly any people anywhere are opposed to progress until one day they see progress up close and notice the price tag...