FRIDAY
DECEMBER 22
2017

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET

MOVIE PREMIERE: This big-budget Netflix movie is set in a world where magic is real, and elves and fairies and other mystical creatures co-exist in a largely dystopian, otherwise familiar modern world. TV has explored this area before, most notably by HBO’s Witch Hunt in 1994, starring Dennis Hopper. In this version, Will Smith plays the human cop with a troll-like “Orc” partner (Joel Edgerton), with a human-alien dynamic recalling another TV sci-fi series, Fox’s Alien Nation. This film, for which Netflix already has ordered a sequel, has the pair trying to protect an elf who has stolen a magic wand from an evil elf named Leila (Noomi Rapace). As for the title, a “bright” is a wizard, and only a wizard can wield a magic wand. Director David Ayer and writer Max Landis mount Bright with a special love for videogame-style mayhem (as in Ayers’ recent Suicide Squad, also starring Smith), but the result is only marginally interesting. It’s not as horrible as many early reviews would suggest, but this first effort, at least, doesn’t come close to living up to the potential of the premise, or the budget of the movie.

 
  
 
 

CBS, 8:00 p.m. ET

SPECIAL: For four years now, CBS has shown a pair of colorized episodes of I Love Lucy: one of them always the aptly named “The Christmas Episode,” from the classic sitcom’s final season in 1956, and the other a newly computer-colorized episode from the Lucy canon. Tonight, the new color-enhanced oldie is “The Fashion Show,” from 1955. It’s the one in which Lucy, linking with several other show-biz wives, puts on a fashion show – despite having a painful sunburn on the big day (pictured).

 
  
 
 

ABC, 9:01 p.m. ET

This season, while we’ve been following most of the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in their future-time or alternate-universe post-Earth space prison, Fitz has been somewhere else, in captivity, trying for months to figure out where his colleagues went, and whether they’re still alive. On tonight’s episode, we see things from his perspective, which may lead to some much-desired clarity.

 
  
 
 

CBS, 9:01 p.m. ET

SPECIAL: The Dick Van Dyke Show, too, is a CBS classic given the colorized treatment of late. And while I’m of two minds about this phenomenon – I’m fine with the original black-and-white versions, yet these full-color versions are tinted with taste and care – anything that preserves the legacy of The Dick Van Dyke Show, the smartest and funniest sitcom of the 1960s, is fine with me. Tonight’s special offers two newly colorized classic episodes. In “October Eve” from 1964, Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) poses for a full-body, fully clothed portrait – but the bohemian artist, played by series creator Carl Reiner, takes the artistic license of depicting her in the nude. And in “My Blonde-Haired Brunette,” from the show’s first season in 1961, Laura tries to surprise her somewhat distracted and inattentive husband Rob (Dick Van Dyke) by dyeing her hair blonde (pictured). This was the episode, according to Reiner, that showed everyone what an unexpectedly rich talent Moore had for comedy.

 
  
 
 

PBS, 10:00 p.m. ET

SPECIAL: This one-hour PBS special isn’t easy to describe. Well, it’s an hour – that’s the easy part. And it’s by Eric Idle of Monty Python’s Flying Circus fame, who returns to the realm of absurdist, eccentric and intelligent TV, to explain the universe, through musical numbers, with help from presenter Brian Cox and a small group of singing co-conspirators. These include Warwick Davis, of Life’s Too Short and the Harry Potter movies, as the Big Bang. For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower. Check local listings.
 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.