FRIDAY
APRIL 27
2018

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Hulu, 3:00 a.m. ET

DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: What a doll! Barbie has been around since the 1950s, and the Mattel icon has undergone endless redesigns, as well as fashion designs, in an effort to make Barbie more relevant, more liberated – and, of course, to make Mattel more money. In 2016, Mattel launched “Curvy Barbie,” the plastic doll equivalent of a plus-size fashion model, and this documentary traces its development and release, while sidestepping most of the backlash criticism. But from Barbie to Apu, what once entertained people innocently is cause for reevaluation by a new generation’s set of eyes.
 
  
 
 

Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET

DOCUMENTARY SERIES PREMIERE: On March 16, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for President of the United States, throwing his hat into the ring quite late, in an election year, in order to provide policy alternatives to incumbent Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson. It’s not precisely 50 years later (Netflix missed that opportunity by more than a month), but today, Netflix premieres a four-part documentary that’s about much more than Bobby Kennedy’s presidential aspirations. This nonfiction series begins with his brother, President John F. Kennedy, and traces Bobby’s personal and political life as he weaved in and out of the orbits of McCarthyism, the White House (as his brother’s Attorney General), civil rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and anti-poverty and anti-war campaigns.

 
  
 
 

Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET

MOVIE PREMIERE: Adam Sander’s comic persona may not have matured much in his years as a movie star, with some very notable exceptions, but his characters themselves are starting to. A generation ago, Sandler would have starred, in a comedy movie about marriage, as the prospective groom, or at least the wedding singer. Today, in this new movie that’s a part of Sandler’s development deal with Netflix, he’s the father of the bride (take that, Steve Martin!), with such loyal Sandler comedy cohorts as Chris Rock (as the father of the groom), Steve Buscemi and Rachel Dratch along for the ride. Mostly for Adam Sandler fans only – but Netflix has an eight-movie deal with him precisely because there are an awful lot of those.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

This 1960 Western classic, in which a septet of individually formidable mercenaries is hired by a small village to defend them from attack by outside adversaries, is based on the brilliant Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa, Seven Samurai. This broad Americanized (and Mexicanized) Western is very good, but the original film really was magnificent. For The Magnificent 7, the unorthodox heroes are played by such charismatic actors as Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach – and Yul Brynner, whose black-garbed gunslinger was so arrestingly memorable here, he was used by writer-director Michael Crichton 13 years later (!) to reprise the role, in robot form, as the out-of-control killing machine in Crichton’s original 1973 version of Westworld.

 
  
 
 

PBS, 9:00 p.m. ET

Leslie Odom Jr. won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, winning for his performance as Aaron Burr in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. (Miranda was nominated in the same category, making it the second time in history Hamilton lost to Burr in a high-profile duel.)  This intimate concert was filmed for PBS last December, with Odom running through a set list of songs you might expect – and a few you probably don’t. Check local listings.

 
  
 
 

ABC, 9:01 p.m. ET

This series, since its inception, has carried the burden of including lots of tie-ins and references to the large-screen Marvel movies – a necessary component, arguably, since this show’s hero, Coulson (played by Clark Gregg), was killed in one of those movies, and brought back to life to star on this TV spinoff. Last week, the seemingly big threat to the universe – Ruby, having evolved into the unstable Destroyer of Worlds – was killed, rather brutally, by S.H.I.E.L.D. agent YoYo. So things are good, right? Wrong. Because the time loop our heroes are in still has the world in peril – and with a new Avengers movie released in theaters this very day, the crossover plot points are bound to be hard to follow, if not hard to swallow.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET

Tonight’s scheduled opening guest is one of the most influential people of 2018, according to the just-published issue of Time magazine: journalist Ronan Farrow.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.