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
Feb
8
 
 
PASADENA, CA – Peak TV took a pause last year. Instead of steady, explosive growth of the number of scripted TV series with original episodes, there was just a 2 percent increase from 2017...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
8
 
 
Professor Jonah Mulray’s story in White Dragon begins with your basic unspeakable tragedy. He’s pulled out of his classroom in London to hear that his wife has been killed in a car crash in Hong Kong...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
8
 
 
The tragic turn in the life of the late Teddy Pendergrass has, for some reason, rarely had the resonance of tragedies that befell other popular singers...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
8
 
 
Hulu’s new series Pen15 calls to mind the old line about how comedy is when someone else slips on a banana peel and tragedy is when you slip on a banana peel...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
8
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle are two of the three co-creators of this comedy series, which looks at life from the perspective of 13-year-old girls just embarking on seventh grade in the year 2000. It’s the same basic framework, with the genders reversed, of when Kevin Arnold and his friend Paul attended the first day of a new school on ABC’s The Wonder Years. Except that series was set in 1968, and the adult Kevin looked back on his life as the unseen narrator of his
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
8
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: This updated remake of the Norman Lear 1070s sitcom returns for its third season, with Justina Machado starring as Penelope. Rita Moreno, whose character of Lydia had a stroke last season, is back – and her character is recovering, for now.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
8
 
 
Quite a lineup: In addition to the week’s three panelists, tonight’s Real Time has Chris Christie scheduled to open the show, and Eric Idle to join it midway through.  
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
8
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson are back with four new shows. Fun costumes, fun wigs and hair, for sure, but the most fun is their attitude.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
8
 
 
Last Friday, I thought TCM had outdone itself by presenting two of my absolute favorite films of the 1970s, The French Connection and Taxi Driver, as a midnight Friday double feature. Tonight, TCM is freaking me out again, by doing a late-night double bill of two more of my favorite dramas from that generation – 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde at 12:45 a.m. ET, followed at 2:45 a.m. ET by 1975’s Dog Day Afternoon. Brilliant direction, and brilliant performances, in both films, led by W
 
 
 
  
 
 
2019
Feb
7
 
 
Tonight’s episode is called “The Donation Oscillation.” If you remember, Leonard has offered to donate his sperm to impregnate the wife of Penny’s ex-boyfriend. As that plan comes closer to fruition, so to speak, Penny becomes unexpectedly jealous – and decides to seduce Leonard just before he leaves for his mission of mercy, to weaken the potency of his donation. That’s all the network episode description says, so I don’t know how Penny plans to entice