In Its Retelling, 'Roots' Is Powerful, Must-See Television
The original Roots miniseries, based on the 1976 Alex Haley novel tracing his own family tree from African tribal life to American slavery and freedom, was a phenomenon. ABC showed it over consecutive...
View ArticleAliens Attack And Congress Goes Extreme In CBS' Political Satire 'BrainDead'
Remember that meteorite that smashed into Russia a few years ago, with enough people filming it as it came to Earth to cause a brief Internet sensation? Robert and Michelle King certainly do. The...
View ArticleCult TV Fans Will Find 'Rocky Horror' And 'Black Mirror' Smart And Provocative
The Rocky Horror Show began as a stage musical in London in the early 1970s, starring Tim Curry as the outrageously dressed outer-space alien Frank N. Furter, self-described as a "sweet transvestite...
View Article'A Lot Going On': Critic David Bianculli Picks The Best TV Of 2016
TV critic David Bianculli says that 2016 wasn't a great year for broadcast TV — but that's OK, because audiences had a lot of streaming, cable and Web options to make up for it. "The things we're...
View Article'Series Of Unfortunate Events' On Netflix Will Charm And Delight
I don't want to oversell this new version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I don't know how not to. Everything that the movie version got wrong, this TV adaptation gets right. And not just right,...
View Article'Legion' Is A Fun, Fast-Paced TV Adaptation Of The Marvel Comic
There are two things viewers should know right from the start about Legion , which premieres Wednesday night on FX. One is that it doesn't look, or feel, like a drama based on a comic book — it's more...
View Article50 Years Later, The Biting Satire Of 'The Smothers Brothers' Still Resonates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYYCiaHhnx4 Tom and Dick Smothers came to CBS in 1967 not really intending to lead or support a revolution. They just got caught up in it — and they happened to have a...
View ArticleNew Dramas 'Good Fight' And 'Big Little Lies' Make A Case For Subscription TV
Big Little Lies, which begins Sunday on HBO, is a miniseries that begins with a murder scene, and investigation, in the close-knit oceanside town of Monterey. It's a seven-episode drama, and HBO made...
View Article'Bette And Joan' Reveals The Electric Personalities Behind 'Baby Jane'
As horror movies go, 1962's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was a B movie, in budget and, if I gave it one, a letter grade. It didn't deserve an A for its scares or its innovation, as Alfred...
View ArticleCold War Spy Series 'The Americans' Taps Into Today's Concerns About Russia
Last week, when news surfaced about various meetings between the Russian ambassador and members of Donald Trump's campaign, Huffington Post editor Howard Fineman appeared on MSNBC and said, "If you...
View ArticleJulie Andrews Teams Up With Henson Puppets In Netflix's 'Greenroom'
On Friday, the streaming service Netflix unveils the entire first season — all 13 episodes — of its newest children's series, called Julie's Greenroom. It stars Julie Andrews, who also is its executive...
View Article'Better Call Saul' Launches Its 3rd Season, Still The Best Drama Series On TV
You don't need to know all about Breaking Bad , and the meth-making, drug-dealing former schoolteacher Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston , to enjoy Better Call Saul. This spinoff series more than...
View Article'Fargo' And Bill Nye Make Promising Returns To The Small Screen
The 1996 Coen Brothers movie Fargo was so good, and so original, that when the FX cable network announced it was making a new version for television, I expected it to be awful — especially since the...
View ArticleHulu's 'Handmaid's Tale' Delivers A Timely And Feminist Message
Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Tonight, the Hulu streaming service premieres a new adaptation of "The Handmaid's Tale," the 1986 novel by...
View ArticleA Salute To Filmmaker Jonathan Demme's Early TV Work
Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air . TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. When filmmaker Jonathan Demme died April 26, our TV critic David Bianculli was reminded of one of Demme's...
View ArticleStreaming Services Put Female Characters At The Center With 'Anne' And 'Dick'
On Friday, two different streaming services present the first seasons of new drama series. Both are based on novels written by women, both have female characters squarely at their center — and both...
View Article13 Years Later, 'Deadwood' Goes Out Just As Brilliantly As It Came In
The three seasons of the series Deadwood, which ran on HBO from 2004 until 2006, were set in a mining town in the territory of the Dakotas — the black mining hills sung about by Paul McCartney in...
View ArticleOriginality And Uncertainty Still Reign As 'Black Mirror' Enters Its 5th Season
When CBS All Access unveiled its new version of The Twilight Zone earlier this year, the general consensus was that the initial episodes in the new series had fallen short of Rod Serling's original...
View Article'Legion' And 'Jessica Jones' Played The Long Game — And It Paid Off
Legion and Jessica Jones come from the more recent generations of Marvel comics, featuring relatively obscure characters. Neither show's protagonist is a superhero in the conventional sense of wearing...
View ArticleLoud But Not Captivating: Drama About Fox News Chief Roger Ailes Falls Flat
On June 30, the Showtime network launches a new TV miniseries called The Loudest Voice. Based on the Gabriel Sherman book The Loudest Voice in the Room , it's a seven-part drama about the television...
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