When PBS hits its mid-season stride, it will have lots of strong women.
Some are real (Bella Abzug, Barbara Jordan, Vivien Hargrove), some are fictional (Eliza Scarlet, shown here), some are yet-to-be-determined (female gladiators).
All will share the channel with Henry David Thoreau, Adam Sandler, animal parents, ambitious European dramas and an age-old question: Do dogs really understand words? Read more…
Some supersized shows are on the way.
They range from woolly mammoths in the ice to Tom Cruise leaping between planes. They also include the simple world of Henry David Thoreau and the complicated one of the “Far Cry” videogame. Chronologically, that includes: Read more…
When life was logical, the Christmas season started on Thanksgiving morning. We watched the parade, then looked for movies and music.
Then the logic faded. Some networks talked Christmas in October.
Still, we’ll stick to the basics for this list: TV’s Christmas season begins with Santa and friends rolling through New York on Thanksgiving morning. It ends with Mickey and friends rolling through Disney parks on Christmas morning … followed by a few final shows (including the Grinch) that night.
So here’s a round-up. (Shown here is Aloe Blacc at the ABC special that airs Dec. 1.) There’s more if you have streaming channels, but this (subject to late changes) is what’s new on the networks and basic-cable: Read more…
After re-fighting some wars, PBS will retreat to a cheery holiday mood.
It will have new editions of two holiday mainstays — the Tabernacle Choir and the “Nutcracker” ballet. It will also have some fun on the 100th birthday of Dick Van Dyke (shown here in “Mary Poppins”) and some Christmas warmth with “Call the Midwife.”
Lately, the network has focused on Ken Burns’ epic “American Revolution” (concluding Friday, Nov. 21), a Burns follow-up discussion (9 p.m. Nov. 24) and a quietly moving film with Michael Caine as a D-Day veteran (9 p.m. Nov. 23). After that, things get lighter with: Read more…
After a long pause — and a lot of “Survivor” events — CBS will get busy in late February.
It will debut two dramas (one a “Yellowstone” spin-off, shown here) plus a cooking competition. It will also move “Watson” back to Sundays, so it can double up on Dick Wolf dramas on Mondays. Read more…
When the second half of the TV season starts in January, Fox will rediscover the notion of scripted shows.
This fall, it only had two of them (animation excluded). Soon it will have five (incliuding a “Doc Martin” reboot, shown here) … plus a three-Sunday mini-series … plus restocking its cartoons.
The two scripted non-cartoons this fall are “Murder in a Small Town” (with only a 10-episode season) and “Doc,” which will rest for a month, then return Jan. 6. It will be joined by: Read more…
Most of us have learned the grand stories of the American revolution — Valley Forge and Bunker Hill and crossing the Delaware and more.
Many of them were epic; most were true. “What I learned in school was not wrong,” David Schmidt said. “It was just incomplete.”
Now the story gets filled out, in depth. PBS’ “The American Revolution” — a sprawling saga, produced by Ken Burns (see previous story),, Sara Botstein and Schmidt — is at 8 p.m. (repeating at 10) for six nights, starting Sunday, Nov. 16. Read more…
Back in 1990, Ken Burns showed TV critics an extraordinary film.
He was 37 then, but looked much younger. He was a cherubic-looking guy with the enthusiasm of a kid and the vocabulary of an ancient scholar.
Burns (shown here, nowadays) had already made seven films on subjects — from Huey Long to the Statue of Liberty — that could be grasped in one night. But this was something else — the Civil War, spread over nine nights and 18 hours.
Members of the Television Critics Association praised it; still, he recalls, many wanted to “warn me that no one was gonna watch it, because there are these things called MTV videos that (have) eroded people’s attention span.”
The result? The film, he said, “remains the highest-rated program in the history of public programming.” Read more…
Some New Yorkers, we’re told, hate moving to Los Angeles.
There’s all that annoying warmth and sunshine and open space. They can’t wait to get back to real life.
They might go west, Rachel Sennott said, with their “guard up, being, ‘I hate it here. I’m going back to New York; I miss how cold I was …. I want to carry my laundry up the stairs.’ Then you slowly relax into it.”
At least, she did. Now she writes, produces, stars in and sometimes directs the comedy “I Love LA” (shown here), at 10:30 p.m. Sundays on HBO and Max. Read more…
When the holiday season ends, ABC’s schedule will see some sharp changes:
— “American Idol” will be back … but only on Mondays. And this season’s “Hollywood Week” will be in Nashville, 2,004 miles from Hollywood.
— The long-delayed “Bachelorette” season will finally arrive in March … taking the Sunday spot that used to belong to “Idol.”
— There will finally be a full night of dramas on Tuesdays, with “Will Trent” (shown here) and “The Rookie” starting their seasons. Read more…
