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

 
 
2021
Feb
7
 
 
Another must-record. See above. This is Part 3 of this nonfiction miniseries, and tonight’s installment plays like a full-length courtroom drama. And a very dramatic one, because the defendant does double duty as defense attorney…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2021
Feb
7
 
 
Ibid.  And this is the penultimate episode of this Bryan Cranston miniseries. So don’t forget to set your DVRs for this one, too…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2021
Feb
6
 
 
Comedian Jon Stewart has written and directed two movies to date – one while on hiatus from The Daily Show, the other last year, pre-pandemic, years after leaving that Comedy central hosting job. The first film was 2014’s Rosewater. The second, making its premium cable premiere tonight on HBO, is 2020’s Irresistible, which stars old Daily Show cohort Steve Carell as a political operative who descends upon a small town in Wisconsin to stee
 
 
 
  
 
 
2021
Feb
6
 
 
Mel Brooks directed The Producers movie in 1968, stunning audiences with his audacious musical spoof “Springtime for Hitler.” In 1974, he stunned audiences again, lampooning Westerns by casting African-American actor Cleavon Little as “Black Bart” in Blazing Saddles. TCM presents both films as a deliriously entertaining double feature – and what’s amazing about Mel’s writing and directing here is that both movies are as inventive, and
 
 
 
  
 
 
2021
Feb
6
 
 
Another new episode, and a very significant one. Dan Levy of Schitt’s Creek is the guest host – something his dad, Schitt’s co-star Eugene Levy, never got to do, though he and John Candy did pop up for a cameo in one SNL installment back in 1985. When SNL was in its early glory days in the late 1970s, of course, so were Eugene Levy and Candy — and another Schitt's co-star, Catherine O'Hara — as founding members of a competing
 
 
 
  
 
 
2021
Feb
6
 
 
The Winds of War — which debuted on this day in 1983 — ranks in the Nielsen ratings as the third-highest miniseries in TV history...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2021
Feb
5
 
 
On this day in 1967, CBS introduced The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2021
Feb
5
 
 
MOVIE PREMIERE: This new Amazon movie is a slight variant on a very familiar sci-fi theme, with a protagonist (Owen Wilson, in this case) beginning to question whether his very reality is a construct. He begins to look anew at the matrix, if not The Matrix, and evaluate his life and choices from there. What makes Bliss worthwhile is that his guide through this strange new, yet old and familiar, world is played by Salma Hayek, who brings sparkle and emotion to every role. 
 
 
 
  
 
 
2021
Feb
5
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: The first Charles Schulz TV show based on his beloved Peanuts comic strip was in 1965. It’s still the best holiday television special ever made, and so full of wit and spirit, and an actual message, that it works just as well today. This new series, bringing Snoopy front and center and presenting three brief episodes in each installment, is very light on the moralism, but it does very well recreating the spirit of the rest of the original. Offscreen teachers and
 
 
 
  
 
 
2021
Feb
5
 
 
The weekly episodes of WandaVision that drop each Friday on Disney+ have become, very quickly, one of the TV treats I most look forward to as the weekend approaches. After seeing only the first three episodes, I was excited by this Marvel TV show’s possibilities, and mused that it might be the first television show I can remember that began as a sitcom but had the potential to morph into an all-out drama. Last week, with Episode 4, it flirted with exactly that possibility. The en