THURSDAY

JANUARY 15

2015

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

Amazon Prime Video, 12:00 a.m. ET

PILOT PREVIEW: Today’s the day Amazon unveils its newest batch of pilots, letting website visitors watch them, react to them and therefore have some sort of say, however marginal, in which shows are picked up for series. Here’s the best new drama of this 2015 crop, and a show well worth supporting. It’s from Frank Spotnitz, one of the veteran X-Files writer-producers, and is an excitingly intriguing adaptation of the novel by Philip K. Dick, whose other stories inspired, among other great speculative movies, Blade Runner. This alternate-reality series, set in 1962, imagines a world in which the Allies lost WWII, with the U.S. split up into Japanese and German territories. To see the show, visit Amazon’s Pilot Season web page. For a full review, see Bianculli’s Blog.

SALEM ROGERS: MODEL OF THE YEAR 1998

Amazon Prime Video, 12:00 a.m. ET

Among the comedy pilots on view today from Amazon, in its first batch of proposed new series for 2015, the one most worthy of getting a series order is this one, which stars Leslie Bibb as a former supermodel emerging, with bad attitude and behaviors intact, after 15 years in rehab. Rachel Dratch plays her former assistant, and the two make an instantly hilarious female odd couple. To see the show, visit Amazon’s Pilot Season web page. For a full review, see Bianculli’s Blog.

THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

The first movie made with this title was in 1903, from the Edison company, directed by Edwin S. Porter, with its famous final shot of a bad guy pointing his gun directly at the audience. (My Rowan University film students know it well – at least after taking my Introduction to Film course.) But this particular movie is a comedy thriller, made 75 years later, and written and directed by Michael Crichton, whose prolific and fertile imagination has given us Westworld, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and even TV’s ER. Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland play the dashing men who scheme to rob a shipment of gold from a moving train in Victorian England – and Lesley-Anne Down, from Upstairs, Downstairs, steals the show as their very vital female accomplice. Lots of fun – and, like everything Crichton writes, very, very smart.

PARENTHOOD

NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET

There are only three episodes left until the finale, so expect each of these final hours to be even more packed with sentiment, and surprises, than usual – and that’s really saying something. Tonight, in one of several subplots, Sarah (Lauren Graham) ponders how to react to the marriage proposal by Hank (Ray Romano).

PORTLANDIA

IFC, 10:00 p.m. ET

Two more of the many characters populating Portlandia come to the fore tonight. This week, it’s Lance and Nina, whose relationship is disrupted by a visit from Lance’s mom and her new boyfriend.

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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.

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BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

Amazon Prime Video, 12:00 a.m. ET

Amazon Prime Video, 12:00 a.m. ET

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET

IFC, 10:00 p.m. ET

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