February 2012
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Got a Minute? Help Us Choose Some New TVWW Slogans
We here at TV WORTH WATCHING are so close to launching the next version of our website that it’s time to reach out, and start asking for help.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned here, it’s that most of our readers are the equal of most of our writers (just enough wiggle room there, I hope, to avoid offending anyone). So we want to tap your brains, and ask your help...
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Showtime's 'House of Lies' Still Standing -- And...
House of Lies, Showtime’s dark comedy about high-profile, high-risk management consultants, is halfway through its first season — and it’s a bite-sized, half-hour express train, compressing modern life into a plutonium-dense show that’s as fast and funny as it is smart.
If you haven’t been following, make the effort to catch up, and catch a worthwhile look at...
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Ken Burns Visits Barack Obama, Then Me -- But Only...
On Monday, I picked up Ken Burns at the 30th Street train station in Philadelphia and brought him to the campus at Rowan University in New Jersey, for a semi-stealth visit at a deliberately underpublicized Talking Pictures campus event in which he slipped into class for a two-hour talk — showing clips from recent and upcoming productions, fielding questions from students, and telling...
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What the Faulkner? The Sound and the Fury and 'The...
What’s left to be said about The Simpsons as it approaches its milestone 500th episode on Sunday, Feb. 19, at 8 p.m. ET? Well, we could talk about its literary kinship to the works of William Faulkner.
Is not Homer Simpson, with his abiding fondness for beer, deep-fried everything and lassitude, only a coon dog and a 12-gauge away from being prototypical of a certain sort of Southern...
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“Wednesday night at 8 p.m. ET on PBS, Nature presents a new installment, called...”
– David Bianculli on Raccoon Nation and his own raccoon encounters
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“The producers of The River (among them the now ubiquitous Steven Spielberg) hope...”
– Ed Bark, on ABC’s The River
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NBC's 'Smash': A Musical Treat, A Dramatic...
Smash, which was conceived as an idea by Steven Spielberg, begins with a very high ambition: Explore and dramatize, in a scripted weekly TV series, the act of creating a musical. As TV concepts go, it sounds simple. But in practice, it’s about as simple as filming a story about a killer shark — in the days before CGI.
One of the best conceits about Smash is that when the ...
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The Voice is a smart choice for the post-Super...
Any program that follows a Super Bowl inherits one of television’s very biggest audiences — but one which is, by that time, mostly inebriated or stoned, either partying or sulking (depending upon team loyalty), and not exactly paying attention.
Like commercials during the game itself, a post-Super Bowl offering must grab the eye first, because you can’t assume the ears are...
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“Remember music videos, kids? They were what MTV used to play, from time to time,...”
– David Bianculli
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“Mad Men and Downton Abbey — I know. It seems odd to talk about these two...”
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Once On 'X Factor,' Paula Abdul Is Now an...
In reality-TV terms, it would be like Donald Trump turning to his own son on NBC’s The Apprentice and dismissing him with a curt “You’re fired”: Simon Cowell has delivered several pink slips regarding his Fox series The X Factor, effectively X-ing out not only stiff-as-a-surfboard host Steve Jones and wishy-washy judge Nicole Scherzinger, but his American Idol crony Paula...
January 2012
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'Nova' Investigates a Fascinating Mystery -- And...
The newest installment of the PBS Nova series is the best mystery thriller I’ve seen on TV this year. It’s got forensic scientists trying to identify partial fingerprints and examine photographic evidence, investigators traveling the globe to track down promising leads, experts adamantly offering conflicting testimony — and enough twists and turns to satisfying the most...
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Phil Ochs Documentary Kicks Off Second...
Impressively — and amazingly — the PBS American Masters series has been examining popular art and profiling gifted artists for a quarter of a century. And now, to start Season 26, it turns it attention to yet another worthy, inspirational figure: talented, tragic folksinger Phil Ochs…
Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune, a 2010 documentary written and directed and co-produced...
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