FRIDAY
NOVEMBER 22
2013

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

cbsnews.com, 1:40 p.m. ET

Here’s an astoundingly resonant use of a network’s flagship news website. Beginning this afternoon, and lasting for four days, the CBS News website will devote itself to a minute-by-minute replay of its coverage of the John F. Kennedy assassination and aftermath 50 years ago. My only complaint is that the replay doesn’t begin with the network’s very first bulletin, but that’s a mere completist’s quibble, given the rare opportunity to see so much of this in the raw, and in real time. CBS is accompanying the footage with an hour-by-hour timeline of key events,so web visitors know when to expect what. The half-century-later coverage retransmission can be found here.  For a full story on this coverage, see P.J. Bednarski’s I Like to Watch.
 
  
 
 

NBC, 9:00 p.m. ET

The title of this NBC News special is a tipoff that, for once, a news network organization isn’t pandering for younger viewers at the expense of older ones. This doesn’t mean, that if you weren’t alive 50 years ago, you shouldn’t be watching – quite the contrary. But it also means that those of us who were old enough to remember may have been stunned, the last few days, to realize how little we’ve forgotten about those truly tragic, life-changing events. Here, Tom Brokaw, long ago anointed as one of the 20th century’s premier TV news historians, gives his take, and listens to others. For my own column about my remembrances of the JFK coverage, and a link to my NPR radio report on today’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, see Bianculli’s Blog.
 
  
 
 

BBC America, 9:00 p.m. ET

Fifty years ago, the day after the JFK assassination, British television transmitted the premiere episode of a little science fiction show called Doctor Who. Tomorrow, in a telecast shown at the same time globally, Doctor Who celebrates its golden anniversary with a long-awaited brand new episode. Meanwhile, tonight, BBC America presents a new telemovie which dramatizes the creation of the Doctor Who TV franchise. David Bradley stars as William Hartnell, who played the first in a long series of Doctor Who characters – on a long series called Doctor Who, which, except for one brief breather a few decades ago, is still running.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET

For a TV critic with decades of viewing behind him, the JFK assassination coverage brings with it additional memories of previous specials keyed to previous JFK anniversaries. This documentary, for example, premiered in 1988, on the 25th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. It remains, in my estimation, one of the best, because it captures the public (and sometimes private) speaker unfiltered, quoting him as a candidate, and as President, to let his words speak for themselves. Here’s one that fits well here, even though JFK said it to commemorate poet Robert Frost: “A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.” Exactly.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET

A good, talkative bunch is scheduled to show up tonight, including Paul Begala, Dan Savage and, from Treme, Wendell Pierce.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.