FRIDAY
MAY 8
2015

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin star in this new Netflix comedy series, co-created by Marta Kauffmann of Friends. The entirety of Season 1 is available today. They play wives of long-standing law partners, played by Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, who surprise their respective spouses at dinner with the joint announcement that a) they're asking for a divorce, b) they're gay, and c) they're in love with one another and intend to get married as a male couple. Both families have grown children, and breaking the news to the kids, as well as the wives, is what propels this series -- much as it did with Amazon's Transparent. Tomlin and Fonda, in the first handful of episodes, are better in scenes with their spouses and kids than with each other, but Sheen and Waterston together are subtle and terrific where the ladies play a bit broadly. And give Sheen credit for career symmetry: In 1972, he starred with Hal Holbrook in a wonderful, groundbreaking dramatic telemovie called That Certain Summer, in which he played a long-married man who surprised his wife by announcing he wanted a divorce because he had come to the realization that he loved someone else. Another man...

 
  
 
 

Encore, 8:00 p.m. ET

From 1969, one of my very favorite movies: Paul Newman and Robert Redford as charming outlaws in the Old West. Written by William Goldman and directed by George Roy Hill, it's basically a perfect motion picture. No matter how many times I've seen it, I'm always happy, and tuned in, whenever it shows up on TV.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

TCM's month-long salute to Orson Welles continues with this re-edited version of Welles' thriller about political and personal corruption in a small Mexican town. Welles co-stars, co-wrote, and directed this film in 1958, and this version was re-edited 40 years later.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET

Tonight's guests: Billy Crystal and Erin Brockovich. Ought to be a good one...

 
  
 
 

TCM, 10:00 p.m. ET

Another entry in TCM's salute to Orson Welles, this 1948 thriller casts him as a man unduly, but understandably, attracted to another man's wife -- played by the sultry Rita Hayworth, who, in a figurative sense, is playing Welles' smitten character as well. She's playing him, all right -- in the best, most evil film noir tradition.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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4025 Comments
 
 
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Jun 17, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Jun 17, 2026   |  Reply
 
Dave Bianculli
Howdy pardner,

Did you pass out on your keyboard after getting drunk, and then just kept bouncing your head over and over and over???

ROTFFLMBFAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously dude, watch more TV, drink less alcohol!!!!

Warmly,

Dave
Jun 20, 2026
 
 
 
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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.