MONDAY
JANUARY 28
2019

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

TCM, 6:15 p.m. ET

Game of Thrones, HBO’s biggest flagship series, is returning in a few months – and once it ends its cycle, another franchise, Westworld, will become the shiniest current jewel in HBO’s crown. So here’s a chance to look back at the original 1973 movie adaptation of Michael Crichton’s “amusement park gone crazy” fantasy novel. Richard Benjamin and James Brolin star, but the reason for the film’s iconic status – and the eventual reboot for television – is the robotically riveting performance by Yul Brynner as the clockwork gunslinger. A decade before the original Terminator movie way back in 1984, writer-director Crichton’s Westworld film  showed how to make an artificially created antagonist the most charismatic and crucial element of a fantasy drama.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET

DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: Breslin is Jimmy Breslin, Hamill is Pete Hamill, and both of them are journalistic icons, specializing as no-nonsense, street-level, man-of-the-people chroniclers. Hamill eventually went from columnist to editor, helping to save The New York Post with what looked like imminent and unavoidable collapse in 1993. That was the last year I worked there as TV critic before shifting to The New York Daily News, and I remember a brief out-of-the-office meeting with Hamill at a local diner, as he was holding court planning to take over and save the paper, which he did. So I’ll recommend this documentary on that basis alone: These two guys exemplify what the best of tabloid journalism used to be, and still is, all about. For full reviews, visit All Along the Watchtower from David Hinckley, another tabloid veteran, as well as Ed Bark's Uncle Barky's Bytes.  
 
  
 
 

Fox, 9:00 p.m. ET

This is episode three, and the psychic bloodsuckers, or whatever they are, continue to amass explore their paranormal strengths. But so does the young girl at the center of this story, who has been protected by a rogue government agent (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) – until she turned around, last week, and protected him. Tonight, keep your eyes on the imprisoned vamps, who find ways to roam freely without leaving their cells.

 
  
 
 

TNT, 10:00 p.m. ET

MINISERIES PREMIERE: This new six-part miniseries was previewed by TNT last night after the same network’s live coverage of the Screen Actors Guild awards. Tonight the same premiere episode is repeated, but in the show’s regular Monday time slot. It stars Chris Pine as a washed-up newspaper reporter in 1965, who ends up reheating a cold case that winds its way all the way back to infamous Black Dahlia murder, and beyond. India Eisley co-stars as a teenager whose bloodline is crucial to the drama’s central story line – a dynamic not that far from The Passage, now that I think about it. For full reviews, see David Hinckley’s All Along the Watchtower, and Ed Bark's Uncle Barky's Bytes. And for my review on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, visit the Fresh Air website.
 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.