SATURDAY
FEBRUARY 23
2019

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET

MOVIE PREMIERE: This film, starring Jeffrey Wright of HBO’s Westworld, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, after which the network happily snapped it up for TV distribution, giving one of its prominent stars another firmament in which to shine. In this drama, Wright plays Louis, a maximum-security inmate about to be released after 24 years in prison, who spends his last days in prison befriending a new inmate named Beecher (Theothus Carter). The last time HBO presented a prison drama featuring a new maximum-security inmate named Beecher was in Oz, the Tom Fontana drama series that led the way for The Sopranos and the entire Platinum Age of Television. But this is a different Beecher, a different story, and – as approached by director Madeleine Sackler, a different approach to filmmaking entirely. At the same time she was filming O.G. on location at Indiana’s Pendelton Correctional Facility, she also filmed a companion documentary, It’s a Hard Truth Ain’t It, in which she co-directed 13 prisoners in participating in filming and telling their own stories. That documentary premieres on HBO Monday; tonight, we have the original O.G.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

Tonight, in a way, TCM presents Stars Are Born, because it’s mounting a double feature of versions of the movie that, in its latest incarnation, is up for some Oscars tomorrow night. The original, 1937 version of A Star Is Born, starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March (and with a screenplay co-written by Dorothy Parker!), is televised at 8 p.m. ET, followed at 10 p.m. ET by the 1954 Judy Garland/James Mason version (pictured).

 
  
 
 

BBC America, 9:00 p.m. ET

SERIES FINALE: Tonight on Dynasties, it’s my favorite part of these Planet Earth nature documentaries: an entire episode devoted to “The Making Of.” Every week so far, I’ve marveled at the photography and wondered, “How the hell did the filmmakers get that?” Tonight, they tell me… For a full review of tonight's episode, see Alec Strachan's TV That Matters.
 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.