Stories

PBS summer: “Grantchester” plus lots of documentaries, old and new

PBS will spend chunks of this summer the way other networks do –with reruns.
They’ll be good reruns, at least. “Downton Abbey” will be there; so will a best-of “American Experience,” ranging from Woodstock to the moon, from John Kennedy to George H.W. Bush.
And there will be some new shows mixed in. They include the final season of “Grantchester” mysteries (shown here), plus documentaries about a poet, a publisher, a Holocaust hero, outer space and the American Southwest. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 24, 2026

Stories

May, we’re told, is murder mystery month

To some of us, May might suggest blue skies, baseball and flowers.
In the streaming world, however, it also brings murder.
The second “Murder Mystery May” is coming to Acorn. It assembles TV shows and films from England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada (“Hurdoch Mysteries, shown here), New Zealand, Norway, Tasmania and beyond. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 21, 2026

Stories

It’s been a four-year plunge into family fantasy

Surveying the twisty history of “The Way Home,” Andie MacDowell offered an understatement.
“This was a reach for Hallmark,” she said.
And then some. The show — starting its fourth and final season on the Hallmark Channel — has time-travel and a magic pond. Hallmark doesn’t even have a card for that.
But here “Way Home” (shown here) is, at 9 p.m. Sundays, starting April 19.This season, it even has Del (MacDowell) jump back a century, to the 1920s. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 17, 2026

Stories

CBS’ fall line-up: Some familiar shows must wait

Some familiar CBS shows will be on the shelf this fall.
When the new season starts, don’t look for “Matlock” … or “Ghosts” (shown here) … or “NCIS: Sydney.” All will be waiting for mid-season spots.
For that matter, don’t expect “DMV” or “Watson”; they’ve been canceled.
Replacing them, for now, will be shows from familiar sources: A comedy from the “Ghosts” producers, a lawyer show from the “Elsbeth” producers, another “NCIS” show and the return of “Harlan Coben’s Final Twist,” which had a brief run this winter. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 15, 2026

Stories

TV is ready for a big, busy Earth Day

Each year, a few TV networks remind us that Earth Day is still important.
There is, after all, still an Earth; there is a day (April 22) to celebrate it. And there are gifted filmmakers, with high-tech equipment.
So nature shows will abound that day on broadcast (PBS), cable (National Geographic, Nat Geo Wild, Animal Planet) and streaming (everyone).
Here are details. We’ll start with one advance marathon (April 18) and end with a few post-Earth Day shows, plus streamers that are available any time. Other than that, however, everything is on Wednesday, April 22: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 15, 2026

Stories

Schemes — odd or ominous — lurk amid old secrets

David Duchovny’s career had been littered with oddities.
He’s met monsters and mutants, ghosts and cryptids and schemes to create alien-human hybrids. Also, poison labs and poison guns and mind control and a plan to have bats carry incendiary devices.
We expected that from his “X-Files” series. But bizarrely, some of that is non-fiction: Everything that was listed above after “also” involves real-life schemes, detailed on “Secrets Declassified” (shown here), which he hosts at 10 p.m. Tuesdays on the History Channel.
“Some of it is laughable,” Duchovny said, in a Television Critics Association session. “But then you step back and you go, ‘Well, this could have really impacted a lot of people in a negative way.'” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 12, 2026

Stories

A wild ride with the master of micro-budget movies

Right now, Roger Corman’s legacy is filling our Fridays with micro-budget movies.
Corman died in 2024, at 96, but his films persist. They were huge in quantity, mixed in quality, tiny in cost. And they launched great careers.
On April 10, for instance, two films — “The Wild Angels” (shown here) at 8 p.m. ET and “The Trip” at 11:30 — will show us Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, before “Easy Rider.”
On April 17, we see early work of Peter Bogdanovich (Targets,” 8 p.m.) and Francis Coppola (“Dementia 13,” 1 a.m.). A week later, it’s Martin Scorsese’s “Boxcar Bertha,” at 8. Those three men have gone on to get 15 best-director Oscar nominations, winning three times. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 8, 2026

Stories

It’s changeover time at NBC and Fox

For half of the big-four networks, this is changeover time.
NBC is shedding its Mondays, so it can go on a basketball binge; Fox is wrapping lots of shows, as it prepares a (mostly) scriptless spring.
Some of this is bad news long-range, but good for a while. We get an early flurry of finales, (including “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins,” shown here), when shows are usually at their best. Details include: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 6, 2026

Stories

For TV, it’s Earth Month-plus

In the TV world, Earth Day has become Earth Month.
Or, actually, Earth Month-plus-a-day-or-two.
That will be clear when James Cameron’s “Secrets of” series (shown here in a previous year) — usually the centerpiece of Earth Day — debuts Tuesday (March 31) on National Geographic. This time, it’s a fascinating look at bees … and it coincides with the conclusion of Ken Burns’ compelling portrait of Henry David Thoreau.
The next day, “Earth Month” begins. Highlights from the month-plus are: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / March 27, 2026

Stories

A gentle pace: three seasons in 21 years

In TV’s olden days, situation comedies kept cranking out episodes — 39 a year, year after year.
And a modern-day contrast? Consider Lisa Kudrow’s “The Comeback” (shown here), which has just returned to HBO.
It had 13 episodes in 2005 … rested nine years, before doing eight episodes in 2014 … then rested a dozen years, before this eight-episode final season.
It needed a compelling reason to return, co-creator Michael Patrick King said at a press conference. That came with the rise of artificial intelligence. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / March 22, 2026