THE OLYMPICS
Architecture School,” a new documentary series about college kids designing and building state-of-the-art low-income housing in post-Katrina New Orleans, belies its bland title.
Who could have predicted that the biggest Olympic cheating scandal wouldn’t involve any of the athletes?
The Olympics are bigger than ever this year, but they are hardly the only game in town. There’s lots of interesting TV playing this weekend. You just have to navigate your way through all of the NBC-owned cable channels airing Olympic sports to find them.
Later this month David Letterman will begin his 16th year on CBS — and the last in his long-running rivalry with Jay Leno on NBC.
NBC’s billion-dollar Olympics will air over several cable channels — all of which, by sheer coincidence, are owned by NBC! As in previous Olympiads, each channel will specialize in a handful of events. Here’s what they have on this week.
When local TV ratings were released for the month of July — rarely a newsmaking event in this or any other city — one set of numbers practically leaped off the page.
Bob Costas prides himself on steering clear of the hyperbole that afflicts most sports announcers. But NBC’s prime-time studio host for the Summer Olympics can’t help himself when asked about the opening ceremonies that will air Friday night from Beijing.
LOS ANGELES | Last summer a lot of us who watch TV for a living went bonkers for a new series on AMC called “Mad Men.”
What week is it for you? Is it “China Week” on Travel Channel, starting with the three-hour “Wild China” (7 p.m., )? Or is it “Shark Week” on Discovery, kicking off with a goofy “MythBusters” (8 p.m., Discovery) in which Adam and Jamie test whether dogs attract the eating machines — and whether chili powder will ward them off.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. | Television critics come to L.A. every summer to get acquainted with the stars and staff of the new fall shows. This year, though, with the TV industry still playing catch-up after the writers’ strike, we spent a lot of summer press tour being reacquainted with old favorites.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. | At the time, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 seemed like a high-tech race to Baghdad, with bunker busters and 3-D maps and real-time video from sat phones.
“Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal” (8 p.m., HBO) comes to us from the same duo that chronicled the last years of Tammy Faye Messner and made a documentary with Monica Lewinsky — a certain type of damsel-in-distress is their specialty.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. | There’s a new attack dog at Fox News Channel, and, no, it’s not recently hired contributor Karl Rove.
“How to Look Good Naked,” the Lifetime show in which fashion tipster Carson Kressley helps women accept their less-than-model-thin bodies, returns for its second season sporting a makeover of its own.
After five years fulfilling his epic vision for “The Wire,” David Simon has returned to his journalistic roots with “Generation Kill,” a seven-part miniseries about young Marines under fire in Iraq.
“Earth: The Biography,” a three-night, high-definition event beginning at 8 tonight on National Geographic Channel, invites comparisons to Discovery’s “Planet Earth” blockbuster, but this is a different animal. A Fox, to be exact. Yes, it’s another romp through the natural wonders of the world — glaciers, volcanoes, oceans and so on — but this one is packed with zoomy graphics and whooshy sound effects that put one in...
Paula Kerger, the president and CEO of PBS, was in town this week. And her host, Eugene Williams, decided that for lunch with a newspaper critic, local flavor was in order.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. | Whether or not the actors go on strike will soon be decided a few miles from here. Oddly, though, the prospect of a second shutdown of the TV and film industry in a year barely intruded on the proceedings at the TV critics’ summer press tour.
One of the joys of this time of year for a television critic is taking in some of the great shows currently on the air. These cable classics have turned summertime TV, once a cesspool of reruns, into a font of seemingly unending creativity.
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.
As I prepare for my annual journey to L.A. for the fall TV previews this week, I notice my desk is not exactly piled high with DVD screeners.
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.
“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.
