Month: December 2020

Bialik detoured into stardom (again)

In the new comedy “Call Me Kat,” life has taken a detour.
Kat didn’t expect to be the owner of a cat cafe. No one does.
But Mayim Bialik, who stars, understands the neat randomness of life. She is, after all, a neuroscientist who returned to acting, almost by accident.
“I was running out of health insurance,” Bialik (shown here with co-star Cheyenne Jackson) told the Television Critics Association. “I went back to acting so I could literally just get enough for insurance to cover my toddler and my infant.” Then she overachieved: She did nine seasons on “The Big Bang Theory,” which became TV’s most-watched comedy. Now she stars in “Kat,” produced by her “Big Bang” husband, Jim Parsons. Read more…

Best-bets for Jan. 2: big bowls, big movies

1) Orange Bowl, 8 p.m. ET, ESPN. The Texas A&M (shown here) players fumed when they were passed over for the four national-championship slots; ranked No. 5, they face North Carolina (No. 24). That ends an ESPN triple-header, with the Gator Bowl (North Carolina State and Kentucky) at noon and the Fiesta Bowl (Oregon and Iowa State) at 4 p.m. Also, ABC has the Outback Bowl (Mississippi and Indiana) at 12:30. Read more…

Week’s top-10 for Jan. 4: New shows, new bachelor, old games

1) “Mr. Mayor” debut, 8 and 8:30 p.m. Thursday, NBC. Neil (Ted Danson, shown here) looks like a mayor; he’s tall and silver-haired. But when it comes to government, he has no experience or goals; he ran to impress his teen daughter, who remains unimpressed. This is a slickly written comedy from Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, the “30 Rock” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” duo. The first episode is good, the second is big, broad and very funny; both get strong support from Holly Hunter and Bobby Moynihan. Read more…

Best-bets for Jan. 1: past parades and current bowls

1) Rose Parade, morning. Three traditions have crumbled: The parade (shown here from a previous year) has been around since 1890, the Rose Bowl game has been in Pasadena since 1916 (plus a 1902 experiment) and the Rose Bowl stadium has held it since 1923. Not this time. The parade was canceled; the game was moved to Texas. Three networks, however, will show past parades, plus new music. Revised plans have that from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on ABC, NBC and Hallmark; on the West Coast, however, ABC will be 8-10 a.m. Read more…

It was a hard-rocking (yet peaceful) presidency

For Jimmy Carter – the sweet-faced, soft-voiced peanut farmer – many images come to mind.
Few of them involve long-haired rockers with wailing guitars – until now.
“It was the Allman Brothers who put us in the White House,” Carter, 96, says in “Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President” (shown here) a fascinating documentary movie that airs Sunday (Jan. 3) on CNN. The Allmans, he says, “were raising money when I didn’t have any.” Read more…

Best-bets for Dec. 31: Lots of stay-home fun

1) “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” 8-11 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. to 2:13 a.m., ABC. The plan has persisted since 1973 – live coverage from New York, plus music taped in advance in California. This year,,the Times Square crowd will be gone, but Ryan Seacrest will be there; so will Lucy Hale and Billy Porter (shown here in “Pose”) – who duets with Cyndi Lauper. Also performing there will be Jennifer Lopez (just before midnight) and Jimmie Allen. Ciara hosts in Califorina, with Miley Cyrus, Nelly, Megan Thee Stallion and more. Read more…

Songs soar from PBS on New Year’s Eve

For good and bad, PBS keeps surprising us.
We don’t expect it to be involved with New Year’s Eve, a holiday that includes confetti, inebriation and silly hats. Arbor Day is more its style.
And we do expect it to be consistent. But now comes a surprise: A music special Thursday (New Year’s Eve) is beautifully crafted … in many of the same ways that a recent PBS one was badly botched.
The new special (8 p.m. Thursday, rerunning at 9:30, checks local listings) has such potent talents as Josh Groban (shown here in a previous concert) and bears the lofty title, “United in Song: Celebrating the Resilience of America.” And somehow, it lives up to that billing. Read more…

A stay-at-home New Year’s Eve? TV is ready

Each year, your better angels might make the same suggestion:
Skip any New Year’s Eve gathering. Your body, brain and bankbook would appreciate it.
And this year, that idea is also being pushed by Dr. Anthony Fauci and other wise souls.Even New York’s mega-event in Times Square (shown here) will be crowd-free. You might actually end up spending Eve in front of the TV set; fortunately, there are plenty of choices: Read more…

Best-bets for Dec. 30: Time to catch up on “Conners,” “Dancer”

1) “The Conners,” 9-11 p.m., ABC. When many shows were in limbo this fall, “Conners” (shown here in a previous episode) managed to have six episodes. They’ve been good ones, mostly, mixing humor with moments of deep desperation. Here are four of them, starting with Dan on the verge of losing the house. The break comes in the re-opening of the plant where Roseanne worked. Both daughters land jobs there, leading to new plots. Read more…

Best-bets for Dec. 29: young heroines, Laura and Anne

1) “American Masters: Laura Ingalls Wilder,” 8-9:30 p.m., PBS. People already sort of know Wilder; her eight novels (and the “Little House” TV series, shown here) fictionalized her frontier childhood. But the real story is even more interesting. She had 14 or 15 girlhood homes; her family left one in the middle of the night, to escape debts. She began writing for farm magazines in her 40s and started her novels at 63 – with her daughter doing major rewrites. This warm portrait also views the biases that she reflected. Read more…