Robert Lloyd
February 11, 2012
Television review: 'MLK: The Assassination Tapes' takes you there
There are only two things even remotely amiss with "MLK: The Assassination Tapes," a highly unsettling trip back in time that premieres Sunday on the Smithsonian Channel, 43 years and a day after the beginning of the sanitation workers strike that brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, Tenn., and his death. And they are small things at that.
February 6, 2012
Television review: 'Lilyhammer'
In "Lilyhammer," whose eight parts debut Monday as an exclusive Netflix stream, Steven Van Zandt retries his Silvio wig from the "Sopranos" costume box to play Frank "The Fixer" Tagliano, a New York mobster who retreats into witness protection in Lillehammer, Norway. He remembers the town from broadcasts of the 1994 Winter Olympics as a place of "clean air, fresh white snow, gorgeous broads" and figures it will be the last place anyone would think to look for him. You know how that will go.
February 7, 2012
ABC's 'The River' familiarly spooky, with an Amazon bite: Review
"The River," which premieres Tuesday on ABC, is a nifty supernatural adventure tale set in mysterious river-riven regions of the uncharted Amazon. Topographically speaking, it is "Lost" inside-out.
February 4, 2012
Television review: 'How to Rock'
Kids' television, which has the license to be fanciful and strange in ways that grown-up TV does not, is a place where anything can happen. But it often seems a place where the same few things happen again and again.
January 31, 2012
Television review: 'Key & Peele'
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, veterans of Fox's sketch comedy "MADtv," have a new series of their own, the self-titled "Key & Peele." Premiering Tuesday on Comedy Central, it is a genial, at times almost genteel half-hour in which the pair's obvious niceness shines through even their more pugnacious characters. (Key's version of road rage is to shout, "Selfish!") In a roundabout way, that's the point.
January 25, 2012
Television review: 'Touch'
"Touch," which brings Kiefer Sutherland back to television and Fox after not so very long a time, is a well-dressed work of solemn, sentimental nonsense whose undeniably appealing theme is that there is an order to the universe, a mystical, mathematical intention that is working to heal our wounds, protect our children and fulfill our dreams. The aggressive claims its more than myriad coincidences and remote yet trickily interdependent story lines make on one's suspended disbelief will in itself be taken by some as a sign that it is on the side of the angels. But I am going to have to stand with the apes here.
January 14, 2012
'The Fades' review: Young people meet the dead
In "The Fades," which premieres Saturday on BBC America, Paul (Iain De Caestecker) and Mac (Daniel Kaluuya) are best friends; they would have to be, having no other ones. Seventeen going on 14, they share a world in which all useful metaphors, if little practical knowledge, are available in the works of Spielberg, Lucas and Tolkien. We've met them before, in many places: Mac is the Virgin Who Can't Stop Talking About Sex; Paul is the Guy Who Would Be Hunky If He'd Only Stand Up Straight.
2:11 PM PST, January 11, 2012
Television review: 'Have You Heard From Johannesburg?' on PBS
"Have You Heard From Johannesburg?," a 2010 multipart documentary film by Connie Field ("The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter") making its way to PBS on Thursday, tells the story of the fight to end South African apartheid as carried on within the country and without it. It is not the story of the system itself but of the struggle against it, as it waxed and waned and waxed again across generations; of hopes and disappointments and hopes reborn; and of mountains not so much moved as ground slowly to dust.
January 7, 2012
Television review: 'House of Lies' on Showtime
"House of Lies," which premieres Sunday, is a new series from Showtime about management consultants. The job is described as impossible to describe, but the general idea is that they're con artists who make troubled corporations dependent on their own company's advice. As legend-in-his-field Marty Kaan (Don Cheadle) puts it, the goal is to "make them think they can't live without us .... while we infect the host and bleed them dry."
January 11, 2012
Review: 'Are You There, Chelsea?' is best with Chelsea Handler
Whenever Chelsea Handler is on screen in the new NBC comedy "Are You There, Chelsea?," in which she plays not the title character but her sister Sloan, we see the hint of the better sitcom it wants to become.
January 6, 2012
'Portlandia': Straight outta Portland
Fred Armisen, who is on "Saturday Night Live," and Carrie Brownstein, who was in the band Sleater-Kinney and now leads the band Wild Flag, are the creators and stars of "Portlandia," a strange and beautiful sketch show filmed in Portland, Ore., where Brownstein lives. Its second, longer season begins Friday on IFC, even as the stars have taken their show on the road. (The Los Angeles stop, Jan. 17 at the Echoplex, is sold out.) Like the city in which it's set, the series' tone is both clouded and lovely. There is a sense of celebration that informs even its most cutting pieces, as the pair portray a range of hipsters, hippies and solid citizens grappling — sometimes aggressively, often passive-aggressively — with life in a city that has been often described as one of the nation's most livable, and knows it. But it does rain there a lot.
January 6, 2012
'Downton Abbey's' intrigue continues
The many-chambered, highly peopled country house known as "Downton Abbey" opens again Sunday for visitors — that's you, I'm being metaphorical — returning for a second season under the umbrella of PBS series "Masterpiece Classic." It is classic not for being based on some famous old book — it is an original work for television, created by Julian Fellowes ("Gosford Park") — but because it is a period piece set in a world we associate with famous old books and, in a secondary way, with "Masterpiece Theater" itself, home of the similar, chronologically overlapping "Upstairs, Downstairs" and the primary domestic expression of the Anglo-American "special relationship," television branch, since 1971.
January 3, 2012
Television reviews: 'Work It,' 'Jane By Design'
The economy — sluggish, recession-y, depressed — while slow to recover has also been slow to inspire television series about the slow-to-recover economy. As if in recompense, not one but two shows with premises rooted in high unemployment premiere Tuesday.
December 24, 2011
Television review: 'Doctor Who' Christmas special
Every year at this time, a terribly old yet terrifically youthful supernatural being drops in from out of the sky. I speak of course of the Doctor, as in "Doctor Who," whose annual Christmas special premieres Sunday — Christmas itself! — on BBC America.
December 22, 2011
Peter Sagal discusses 'Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me's' arrival on TV
"I got a phone call from a friend," Peter Sagal told me recently, remembering a day in 1997, "who said, 'I know these people who are putting together a new show on public radio. They're looking for funny people who read a lot of newspapers, and I thought of you.'"
December 10, 2011
Television review: 'Appropriate Adult'
The serial killer is the great human monster of the popular imagination. The odds of your actually meeting one are only slightly better than those of your being bitten by a vampire, but you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise. For a while it seemed that every new police procedural began with a naked dead woman found in a marsh. It's the third one, someone will say. We're dealing with a serial killer. But all cop shows get around to them eventually.
November 24, 2011
'Ice Age' Christmas special review: high jinks with the old gang
Christmas loves a franchise — any already beloved thing that it can dress in tinsel and holly or wrap itself around like mistletoe. This year, as every year, it will be especially (and extra-specially) Christmas on television, where most every sitcom and cartoon — and even the odd drama or two — will nod in sincerity or in irony toward the season and its rites and sentiments.
November 12, 2011
TV review: 'The Song of Lunch' is a poetic pleasure
"The Song of Lunch," which airs Sunday as part of PBS' "Masterpiece Contemporary" series, is something you don't see every day, not even in bardic old England, whence it comes, and where a 47-minute TV drama using a narrative poem for a screenplay would seem somewhat more likely than it would here.
November 12, 2011
'All-American Muslim' review: Varied lives shine through on TLC
The letters TLC, regarding the cable network of that name, originally stood for the Learning Channel but now seem to represent, or seem to want to be seen to represent, something closer to the old Tender Loving Care. The network has made something of a specialty of series that focus on unusual families — that is to say, different from the families of most of the people who watch TLC. Maybe there are more wives than usual; often there are many more children. Little people, big people: The message is that we're all the same, but different, but the same. But different. (But mostly the same.)
November 5, 2011
TV review: 'Page Eight' on 'Masterpiece Contemporary'
For some, the presence of Bill Nighy will be reason enough to tune into "Page Eight," a luxuriously low-boil thriller that premieres Sunday under the umbrella of PBS' "Masterpiece Contemporary." It is a piece that brings Nighy's best qualities to the fore — his humor in the service of the serious, his power-in-repose, the sexy intelligence he only half reveals — and it has, notably, been written and directed by the playwright David Hare, his first original drama for television in two decades, and his first film as a director since the 1989 "Strapless."
October 5, 2011
TV review: 'George Harrison: Living in the Material World'
"George Harrison: Living in the Material World," which premieres Wednesday and Thursday on HBO, is a long, lovely meditation on the Beatle sometimes called the Quiet One and the quiet one sometimes called a Beatle. Directed by Martin Scorsese at the invitation of widow Olivia Harrison, it is not especially informative in the way documentaries usually strive to be, a cataloging of causes and effects and significant facts and figures; nor has it been made as a brief for George's unsung genius. In fact, it leaves a lot out and doesn't always explain what it puts in. But it is not really so much a film about a career as it is about a life and not so much about a life of events as of spiritual progress — a portrait of character more than of "a character."
November 4, 2011
'Hell on Wheels' review: It takes a while to get chugging along
"Hell on Wheels" is the latest original series from AMC, the cable network also currently committed to shows about zombies, ad men, a meth-making former high school teacher and the yet-unsolved murder of a Washington teenager. What they all share is a certain gritted-teeth tension and an air of incipient violence, except for when violence is actually occurring. There will be blood, literally or figuratively.
November 2, 2011
'Fabric of the Cosmos' review: time, space and string theory
Science, which is confusing to many people — some to the point that they regard it as a form of superstition — has always needed its champions, its spokespersons, its interpreters, big brains who also function efficiently as celebrities and have a knack for taking impossible-sounding theories and making them sound, at least for the moment they're speaking, comprehensible.
October 29, 2011
U2's growing pains in 'From the Sky Down'
U2, the Irish pop band, is the subject of a fascinating new documentary, "From the Sky Down," premiering Saturday on Showtime. Like most modern rockumentaries, it was commissioned by the people it is about, and it will be included in some of the versions of the 20th anniversary deluxe re-release of "Achtung Baby," coming in November. (The most deluxe of these, the Uber-Deluxe package, which costs upward of $400, also comes with a pair of sunglasses like those singer Bono wore in his guise of the Fly.) But it has been made by Davis Guggenheim, the director of "An Inconvenient Truth" and "It Might Get Loud," which featured U2 guitarist the Edge, and so comes with an air of directorial independence; it is not a thing of unadulterated self-celebration.
October 14, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
Review: 'American Masters: Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound' on PBS
Her future boyfriend and sometime musical partner Bob Dylan was still in high school in Minnesota when Joan Baez first played Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass., in 1958 at age 17. We see her there, and then, in “Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound,” airing tonight on PBS as part of the series "American Masters" -- a teenager with long, dark hair; a Spanish guitar; and a mature mezzo-soprano voice. The next year, she appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and became famous. She made records that went gold. She was on the cover of Time.
October 3, 2011
Critic's Notebook: Andy Rooney signs off the way he signed on — with something to say
Andy Rooney, 92, said goodbye to "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" on Sunday night. It was the 1,097th edition of his well-known video essay, a regular feature of the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes" since 1978. That is a lot of things to have been mystified, troubled, angered, moved or amused by, and a lot of years over which to be mystified, troubled, angered, moved and amused by them. Viewer reactions to Rooney's pieces ranged similarly.
October 15, 2011
Television review: 'Case Histories'
If for no other reason than that you get to spend six hours with Jason Isaacs, I am going to recommend "Case Histories," the latest British import to take up residence under the banner of "Masterpiece Mystery" Sunday on PBS. It is not the only reason to recommend it, but it is by itself sufficient; indeed, it overwhelms any small arguments in its disfavor.
September 14, 2011
TV reviews: 'Free Agents' and 'Up All Night' on NBC
NBC, which has long made Thursday the bunker for its comedy, moves into Wednesday this week with a pair of solidly constructed new sitcoms, "Free Agents" and "Up All Night," about grown-ups in moments of midlife transition. Compared with the metafictions and mockumentaries and postmodern ironies that have come to characterize the Thursday night comedies, they are more reality-based, more particularly concerned with relationships and maturity and, in a less than sentimental way, matters of the heart.
August 5, 2011
TV review: 'Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension'
Animated stepbrothers Phineas and Ferb, of the Disney Channel series "Phineas and Ferb," go feature-length Friday with "Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension." It is suitable for (and recommended to) children of all ages — though much of it is meant specifically for children of a certain age, old enough to appreciate jokes that reference Georgia O'Keeffe, "The Jeffersons," Wittgenstein, Sartre and the "Fit as a Fiddle" number from "Singin' in the Rain."
September 25, 2011
Comic-Con icon Felicia Day
Felicia Day is a sort of famous person, by which I do not mean that she is moderately famous but that her fame is of a particular type.
October 1, 2011
Television review: 'Prohibition'
It's fall on PBS, when the big documentary blockbusters heave into view; and nobody builds them bigger than Ken Burns, whose name always seems to be part of the title, even when it isn't: "Ken Burns' Baseball," "Ken Burns' Jazz," "Ken Burns' Civil War." Burns likes to swallow huge subjects whole — American subjects — and this year he brings us "Prohibition," the story of the 14-year misrule of the 18th Amendment and of the decades-long temperance movement that preceded it.
July 19, 2011
TV review: 'Awkward.' on MTV
To oversimplify — though not by all that much — MTV's new high school comedy "Awkward." (the period is part of the title) is a female twist on the network's phallocentric "The Hard Times of RJ Berger," though in the same way that teenage girls are more mature than their male classmates, it is less sophomoric and sex-obsessed than its predecessor. Created by Lauren Iungerich, it has the spirit of "Juno" behind it rather than the ghost of "Porky's." If "Awkward." doesn't always listen to what that spirit is saying, it gets that head start nonetheless.
March 12, 2011
Television review: 'Best Player' on Nickelodeon
Without making any too great claims on its behalf, I would like to direct your attention, in a good way, to the Nickelodeon TV movie "Best Player," featuring two stars of "iCarly" who aren't Miranda Cosgrove. You won't mistake this for "The Lady Eve" or "The More the Merrier" in either invention or wit, but it has been made (by director Damon Santostefano, working from a script by Richard Amberg) with a light, sure hand. And although the film, which premieres Saturday, runs toward the obvious and the preposterous — sometimes both at once — it's cheery and charming and, in spite of its calculated commercial appeal, never feels cynical.
September 22, 2011
TV review: 'Whitney's' comic timing gains steam
Whitney Cummings, the stand-up comic, is having a big fall season as a creator of two new situation comedies — CBS' "2 Broke Girls" (a female odd-couple series co-created with Michael Patrick King, which premiered Monday) and her own "Whitney," which premieres Thursday on NBC. Both are multi-camera comedies, of the old-school "Seinfeld" sort — a form that, in a field lately dominated by single-camera comedies of the "30 Rock" sort, seems both familiar and new again, as younger voices make it their own. As if to underscore that point, Cummings announces over the opening title, "'Whitney' is taped in front of a live studio audience — you heard me."
July 30, 2011
Television review: 'Against the Wall'
Lifetime, which no longer bills itself as "Television for Women," but is anyway, premieres its first original cop show, "Against the Wall," Sunday night. The network has a long history with crime, of course, with all those TV movies about killers and stalkers and darkly handsome con men. But this is something else, and better made — something that, while it retains the essence of Lifetime, looks across the dial to TNT and USA, where character-driven procedurals have been blooming like wildflowers after a wet spring. (Indeed, "Against the Wall" was created by Annie Brunner, who wrote for TNT's "Saving Grace," whose executive producer Nancy Miller is also the executive producer here.)
September 3, 2011
Critic's Notebook: 9/11-related TV programs to watch
The 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon arrives a week from Sunday — I don't think I need to tell you the date — and as might be expected, television is all over it. Our decimal culture encourages comment, celebration or reflection whenever 10 years go by, but there is something about this anniversary that makes it practically inescapable. It is especially inescapable, one might say, now that the death of Osama bin Laden and the upcoming dedication of a memorial that transforms the footprint of the missing Twin Towers into inverted fountains have brought the narrative that began Sept. 11, 2001, to something like a close — though there are volumes left to be written.
November 28, 2010
Jimmy Fallon, you're growing on us
Now that Conan O'Brien has come to rest, presumably for more than seven months, as the host of a TBS talk show, it seems like a good time to take another look at the person who replaced him, and I don't mean Jay Leno. One year and nine months ago Jimmy Fallon — who, like O'Brien, was touched by the hand of Lorne, and I do mean Michaels — followed O'Brien into the "Late Night" chair previously vacated by David Letterman.
May 23, 2011
Television Review: 'Too Big to Fail'
"Too Big to Fail," which premieres Monday on HBO, is the latest of that network's high-toned original films ("Recount," "The Late Shift," "From the Earth to the Moon," the upcoming "Game Change") in which a large cast of medium-big-to-big-named actors assume the skin of the real people to put you backstage at history. In this case — the story of the 2008 financial meltdown and the attempt to keep us all from ruin — the paint is barely dry on the actual events. Indeed, their ongoing consequences will affect the next election.
April 15, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Pitchmen'
Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan sell things on television, famously. Mays, a burly man with a black beard and a voice that suggests incipient deafness, and could possibly cause it, is the more famous. But the cooler Sullivan -- who also produces and directs DRTV (Direct Response Television, as in "Operators are standing by") advertisements -- is the more versatile. Between the two, they have moved more than a billion dollars' worth of things that light up your house, clean up your yard, shape your body and otherwise improve your life -- products with names like Awesome Auger, Hercules Hook, Glass Wizard, Swivel Sweeper, the Stick-Up Bulb and Slimming Pants.
July 18, 2009
AN APPRECIATION
Walter Cronkite: And that's the way it was
For many who grew up in the 1960s and '70s, Walter Cronkite was the voice of unfolding history. On the "CBS Evening News" and on the spot, his eloquent mediation of the great events of an age almost pathologically overflowing with them was essential to the way those events were understood. Even when he was temporarily at a loss for words -- his tears at the death of John F. Kennedy, his inarticulate glee at the moon landing ("Whew, boy!") -- he somehow spoke for the nation he spoke to.
April 6, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Surviving Suburbia'
The second situation comedy to star Bob Saget, ABC's “Surviving Suburbia,” comes 14 years after the end of "Full House," the cuddly series in which he played loving father to the Olsen twins (conjoined in a single part). It is also 12 years since he hosted that influential bastion of adorable domestic hilarity, "America's Funniest Home Videos." And most every appearance since -- talk show spots, "Entourage" cameo, the dirty-joke movie "The Aristocrats," the hip-hop parody "Rollin' With Saget" and, above all, his dark, blue stand-up comedy -- has been, in effect if not by intent, to prove to the world that he is really Not That Guy.
March 20, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
Movable feast of laughs
Rob Thomas, the man behind "Veronica Mars" and "Cupid" (the old "Cupid," with Jeremy Piven, and the coming new "Cupid" with Bobby Cannavale) and briefly associated with the rebranding of "90210," has found a new outlet on the relatively remote reaches of Starz, the cable network that shares a name with a bushy-haired 1970s power-pop band. “Party Down,” which premieres tonight, is the show in question, and it is a smart, affable, mostly unpredictable ensemble comedy that reminds us that in the 500-channel universe, fine things can happen in unlikely places, as long as you are clever about budget, commit to a sensible number of episodes -- in this case 10 -- write well and cast right, and that what matters ultimately to heaven is not the eminence of the venue but the quality of the work.
March 9, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
Review: 'RuPaul's Drag Race' on Logo
RuPaul, the 6-foot-4 to 6-foot-7 (by his own varying accounts) African American drag queen who sashayed his way into mass consciousness in the 1990s with the club hit "Supermodel" and a VH1 talk show, is back on TV with “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” A reality competition show now about three-quarters through its first cycle on Logo, the LGBT-themed cable net, it aims to discover "America's next drag superstar" -- that is, the next RuPaul. It's a little bit "America's Next Top Model" and a little bit "Project Runway," and like drag itself, parodical without being a joke.
March 2, 2011
Television review: When troubadours were the scene in L.A.
"Troubadours: Carole King, James Taylor and the Rise of the Singer-Songwriter," a presentation of "American Masters" that airs Wednesday on KOCE, tells the story of the crowd that haunted Doug Weston's Troubadour in the late '60s and early '70s, the music they made, and (to a lesser extent) the mischief.
April 17, 2009
'Sit Down, Shut Up'
There was reason enough to expect something special from “Sit Down, Shut Up,” a new Fox animated sitcom created by Mitchell Hurwitz of "Arrested Development" and featuring a cast -- derived mainly from "Arrested Development" and "Saturday Night Live," with Tom "SpongeBob" Kenny bringing the cartoon cred -- that deserves to be called "all-star." But the show that premieres Sunday night, between "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" in the space formerly occupied by "King of the Hill," is weak -- not hopeless, but given the pedigree, heavily disappointing.
March 7, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Ashes to Ashes' on BBC America
“Ashes to Ashes,” which premieres tonight on BBC America, is a sequel to “Life on Mars,” the 2006 series whose American remake ABC has just canceled. It's an unlikely thing, given that the first series' main character killed himself in the final episode (though perhaps survived in another reality) and that all the other characters were (possibly) figments of his imagination. But it's in that "perhaps" and "possibly" that "Ashes to Ashes" finds a way forward, and although it's not as good as the original, it pushes many of the same buttons and sews on a few new ones. It's quite enjoyable.
December 12, 2008
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
At the Golden Globes, this year looks a whole lot like last year
Now that we've got electing a president out of the way, it's time to get back to the more important business of giving awards to television shows and motion pictures. More than a month out from the inauguration of Barack Obama, the nominees for the 2008 Golden Globes have been announced; the statuettes will be handed out nine days before power shifts in Washington. And then we can all go back to sleep until Oscar time.
May 22, 2010
Critic's Notebook: May 'Lost' mysteries never end
"Lost," the most complicated series in the history of television, will come to its end Sunday and without having seen a second of its 2 1/2-hour conclusion, I prophesy that it will leave many viewers unsatisfied, either because it will say too much or not enough, or because it will be too explicit or too vague, or too prosaic or too mystical, or too final or too inconclusive.
April 11, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Thrilla in Manila' on HBO
If you are not a boxing fan (I am not a boxing fan), the HBO documentary "Thrilla in Manila” -- the story of the Joe Frazier-Muhammad Ali rivalry, as it played across three fights from 1971 to 1975 -- is not the film to make you one. And if you are a boxing fan, well, even those here seem appalled at the brutality of the famous final bout, called one of the greatest fights in history, even as they celebrate the participants' gladiatorial resolve. But either way, the movie works.
January 16, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
Review: 'United States of Tara'
The family comedy has undergone some transformations of late, thanks mostly to cable television and its restless search for buttons and/or envelopes to push. “ United States of Tara,” a new Showtime series about a woman with four personalities (including her "own"), is solidly within this new tradition of the strange, alongside shows like " Weeds," "The Riches" and "Big Love" -- stories of families whose unusual lives or lifestyles set them apart from the supposedly normal world, which we are typically invited to see as grotesque.
September 4, 2008
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Sarah Palin's convention speech: She did just fine
The night formerly known as Night Three of the Republican National Convention was dedicated to "Reform and Prosperity." But more important, it was the party's, and the country's, first substantial look at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who in no time at all has become not only a national politician but a subject of controversy and a figure of symbolic import.
February 1, 2009
A 'Project Runway' fan defends it to reality TV critics
"Project Runway" is the show I name whenever I am asked to defend reality TV or my unwillingness to condemn it all out of hand. The popular fashion-designing competition finished its fifth season on Bravo last October and now circles in a holding pattern over its intended new network, Lifetime, while lawyers from its old home try to keep it from landing. (The disputed sixth season, minus its finale, has already been filmed -- and, for the first time, in Los Angeles.) I might also mention "Top Chef" as part of my reality defense, but "Top Chef" is just "Project Runway" with food.
January 17, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
Review: 'Wuthering Heights'
"Wuthering Heights": A Victorian novel with a name (and plot points) fit for a 1980s prime-time soap. It's one of those titles that rattles around in your head even before you've ever read the book or the Cliffs Notes, or seen it adapted for TV or the movies, which it has been at least once a decade since 1920, not even counting foreign-language films or the 2003 MTV musical update.
July 21, 2008
TELEVISION REVIEW
Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal
“Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal,” premiering tonight on HBO, reacquaints us with a woman never too long out of the public eye. It has been almost a decade since Fleiss left prison, where she'd spent 21 months of a three-year sentence for tax evasion, money laundering and pandering. In that time she has run a West Hollywood boutique, published a kind of scrapbook memoir, put out a "sex tips" DVD, written a magazine column, had a radio show, sold the rights to her life story to Paramount and accused boyfriend Tom Sizemore of domestic violence. (He was convicted.) Not necessarily in that order.
May 27, 2008
DVD REVIEW
'Square Pegs' fits right in
A comedy about kids that was not made for kids but was not not made for kids, "Square Pegs" premiered on CBS in the fall of 1982; a quarter of a century later, it has come to DVD in its surprisingly modest, 19-episode entirety. But 9 1/2 hours is time enough to make a point, when you have one.
March 11, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'The Chopping Block'
I don't know whether it's still the American dream to own a restaurant -- it may now be just to hang on to that horrible job you had hoped to quit soon -- but there are at least 16 people who still dream it, and they are contestants on “The Chopping Block.” Premiering tonight on NBC, this latest in a lengthening line of food-themed reality shows shares a title (and creators) with an Australian food-themed reality show, has much in common with another Australian food-themed reality show ("My Restaurant Rules") and the BBC food-themed reality show "The Restaurant," and boasts the same host as the UK version of the food-themed reality show "Hell's Kitchen," Marco Pierre White.
July 11, 2008
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Ashley Paige: Bikini or Bust'
"Ashley Paige: Bikini or Bust" is a Bravo-style entrepreneurial reality series centered on Hollywood bikini designer Paige, who, despite her big-name clientele, lives on the edge of penury, scrambling to pay bills or avoid paying them. "I'm an artist," she says. "I'm obviously not a businessman."
August 11, 2008
TELEVISION REVIEW
'The American Mall' -- teens, dreams and dancing in the food court
In simplest terms, “The American Mall,” which premieres tonight on MTV, is MTV looking at the Disney Channel's burgeoning teen-musical empire and thinking, "I got to get me one of those." It's “High School Musical” -- but in a mall! Instead of a dance set in a cafeteria, there's a dance set in . . . a food court!
April 1, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Pedro' on MTV and Logo
“Pedro,” which premieres tonight on MTV (and simultaneously on sister station Logo), dramatizes the short, productive life of Pedro Zamora, a third-season cast member of "The Real World" -- the 1994 San Francisco season, known also for the abrasive, abusive and generally uncooperative bike messenger Puck, who was kicked out of the house, in part because of his treatment of Zamora.
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
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