FRIDAY
NOVEMBER 1
2019

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Apple TV+, 3:00 a.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: The entire Apple TV+ streaming service launches today. All the programming is brand new, but much of it, at the outset, is decidedly average. Of the initial offerings, the best is this new series from Battlestar Galactica reimaginer Ronald D. Moore. Once again, he’s reimagining things. This time, in a drama starring Joel Kinnaman as a 1960s U.S. astronaut, For All Mankind presents an alternate world history in which the Soviets won the space race by landing on the moon a month before the U.S. planned mission of Apollo 11. How does that one difference in our historical timeline affect the future? That’s what For All Mankind is all about… and so far, it’s the best that Apple TV+ has to offer.
 
  
 
 

Apple TV+, 3:00 a.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: This is the big Apple TV+ flagship program. Steve Carell, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon play rising and falling stars in the highly competitive world of morning television. I don’t fault the acting, but the writing is so predictable, and the characters so caricatured and emptily preachy, that this is not a Morning Show I’d bother to watch. Yet Apple TV+ has given it a two-year, 20-episode commitment already, and thrown more money at it than, perhaps, any other TV series ever made. For my full review on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, which includes clips from several of the streaming service’s new offerings, listen to today’s show, or stop by later at the Fresh Air website. And for reviews here at TV Worth Watching, see Ed Bark's Uncle Barky's Bytes and David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower
 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

Fridays in prime time this month are devoted to “Dennis Miller and Friends.” The good news is that Miller invites a different friend each week, to show and discuss favorite films. (The better news: none of them is showing Miller’s Bordello of Blood.) Tonight, Miller’s guest is Martin Short – and that star’s cinematic Short list is an impressively intelligent roster. The Marx Brothers’ 1933 anti-war romp, Duck Soup, starts things off at 8 p.m. ET. And that’s followed by Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 anti-war masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (pictured)at 9:30 p.m. ET. After that, at 11:15 p.m. ET? The 1948 monster-comedy mash, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
 
  
 
 

HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET

Among tonight’s scheduled guests: Author and journalist Ronan Farrow.
 
  
 
 
 
 
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3698 Comments
 
 
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Mar 29, 2026   |  Reply
 
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Mar 21, 2026   |  Reply
 
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Mar 21, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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David Bianculli

Founder / Editor

David Bianculli has been a TV critic since 1975, including a 14-year stint at the New York Daily News, and sees no reason to stop now. Currently, he's TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and is an occasional substitute host for that show. He's also an author and teaches TV and film history at New Jersey's Rowan University. His 2009 Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour', has been purchased for film rights. His latest, The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific, is an effusive guidebook that plots the path from the 1950s’ Golden Age to today’s era of quality TV.