The Television Critics Association press tour begins today. Week 1 is dominated by cable as HBO brings out its all-stars to promote their upcoming projects, including “Extras” star Ricky Gervais, “Six Feet Under” producer Alan Ball and the creator of “The Wire,” David Simon.
Even before the TV networks started closing their Baghdad bureaus, it was obvious that nothing got viewers reaching for the clicker faster than the words, “In Iraq …”
“Ganja Queen” (8 p.m., HBO) is an expertly told and timely story that shouldn’t be overlooked just because it doesn’t involve Americans. Schapelle Corby, a 27-year-old Australian in Bali, was imprisoned when customs officials found a load of pot in her bag. The Kafkaesque ordeal that followed and its potentially devastating outcome — in Indonesia, possession with intent is punishable by death — sets off an international crisis. For the U.S...
Good, bad or otherwise, the “Get Smart” movie has proved one thing to me: I am officially an old guy.
Bob Butler and I churn out an awful lot of column inches about documentary film. But try to see it from our P.O.V.
A revisionist look at Dwight D. Eisenhower, a picture book about evil kitties and page-turning novels set in the Sunflower State are among the 15 titles that were chosen as Kansas Notable Books for 2008.
The columnist George Will once said that his cable company could slowly remove every channel from his lineup except for ESPN, and it might be months before he noticed.
Four months ago it was my privilege to spend a day in Greensburg, Kan., listening to people talk about rebuilding their town after an EF-5 tornado in May 2007.
“Weeds” returns for a fourth season (9 p.m., Showtime) that promises to be even loopier than the third. Now we’re to believe that Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker) is living on the lam, having torched her marijuana-laden house and run off to the Mexican border, and has gotten into bed with smugglers who move illegals. Pot-selling suburban mom, that I could buy. But I draw the line at hot 40-something coyote! At least the always-delightful Albert Brooks will be chewing up scenes...
Because primary season lasted five months instead of five weeks, I spent many nights in front of the TV watching voting results trickle in.
Tim Russert, who died suddenly Friday of a heart attack, was arguably the most influential television journalist covering American politics.
It figured. No sooner did I upgrade to a super-spiffy HD TiVo — enough to bank two weeks’ worth of shows should my cable be chewed to pieces by opossums — than I started watching TV on the computer.
Eleven years ago, suffering through my first Kansas City summer, I couldn’t imagine I’d ever say this, but: Gee, where’s the hot weather been lately?
“Army Wives” returns for its second season (9 p.m., Lifetime), with action resuming four days after the explosive, if shopworn, plot device that brought down the curtain on this show’s incredibly successful first season.
“In Plain Sight,” a new action series on USA (8 p.m.), stars Mary McCormack as a tough-as-nails but smoking hot U.S. marshal whose beat is integrating new people into the federal witness protection program. McCormack’s troubled character, Mary Shannon, seems patterned on Holly Hunter’s character on “Saving Grace,” except that Mary is hobbled by mediocre script-writing (she got better lines as Howard Stern’s wife in “Private...
Sharon Jones sings that it takes 100 days and 100 nights to know a man’s heart. Well, with this season of “30 Days” we will have seen documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock spend one month apiece taking part in the following fish-out-of-water activities: working a minimum wage job, serving time in a county jail, mining coal underground in West Virginia and living on an Indian reservation.
After reading the memoirs by Paul Shirley and Matthew Polly, I’m convinced that being reared in Kansas is excellent preparation for writing a terrific fish-out-of-water story.
Thursday marked the beginning of summer on the TV calendar, despite the below-normal temperatures outside. Turns out, though, that the cool conditions are perfectly suited to a season that continues to act as the networks’ remainder pile, a place to cast off broken pilots and reality shows even trashier than “The Moment of Truth.”
“Recount” (8 tonight on HBO). Seemingly aimed right at fans of HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” is this docudrama re-enacting events of the 2000 Florida presidential election re-count that wound up determining who went to the White House — and, by extension, what happened after 9/11. Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary star.
About the time that Kansas City Crime Commission president Rick Easley was thinking of doing a local version of “America’s Most Wanted,” the well-known Fox TV show was passing another milestone.
Ratings down. Paula using a cheat sheet. Ryan wearing out his welcome. “Ominous Signs for ‘American Idol,’ ” was the headline over a Los Angeles Times story in mid-April that pretty much summed up the media elite’s impatience with TV’s biggest show. “Could it be that the singing smash, which has entirely reshaped television over the past seven seasons, is finally proving mortal?” the writer asked.
Some of the most important casting decisions on the HBO series involved the men who wrapped themselves around our female leads.
Have you heard? There’s a “Sex and the City” movie coming out. And the studio behind it seems determined to exceed the publicity overload that greeted the finale of the HBO series four years ago — and in ways that are sure to produce polarized reactions from men and wo… er, foes and fans of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte.
One thing you can’t say about the TV networks’ unveiling of their fall schedules this week is that they overpromised and underdelivered.
The future of NBC late-night was etched in stone Monday at a New York press conference. That’s when former “Saturday Night Live” star Jimmy Fallon was introduced as the person who will take over “Late Night” when its current host, Conan O’Brien, heads to Burbank to take over the “Tonight Show.”
This year marks the end of a decade-long tradition. Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune and I were the only non-coastal TV writers to make the annual trek to New York City to be flies on the wall for the “upfronts,” those high-tech presentations the networks put on during the third week in May for their advertisers.
“Caught on Safari: Battle at Kruger,” 7 p.m. on the National Geographic Channel, tells the story behind the amazing video of a lion attack in a South African park that has played millions of times on YouTube. We meet the tourist who caught the eight-minute sequence (short version: lions and crocodiles compete to have a baby buffalo for lunch — and both lose) and the safari director who guided them to the scene. See the video in much better resolution than on YouTube...
If there is anything instructive to take away from last week’s “scandal” regarding the Vanity Fair photo spread of Miley Cyrus, it’s that Americans put a higher value on wholesomeness than the media sometimes assume they do.
On the anniversary of the EF-5 tornado that wiped out an entire town, public TV stations throughout Kansas will air “Greensburg,” from Kansas native Brian Schodorf, whose cameras were there right after the twister struck.
