January 2010 Archives

STUDENT BLOG #3: An Anime Primer, and Pop Quiz: What Is "Moe"? (Hint: NOT One of the Three Stooges)

January 30, 2010 9:28 AM

[Bianculli here: All TV critics have their quirky specialties, and we here at TV WORTH WATCHING are no different. But I admit to being ignorant of, though curious about, the majority of Japanese anime programs. But one of my former college students at Rowan University, Rich Greenhalgh, is passionate about the subject, so I gave him a dare: Write a column about anime explaining what's hot, and why. He came through, and even provided links for us to become instantly anime-literate...]

Why Doesn't American TV Offer Edible Eyebrows?

By Rich Greenhalgh

2009's Japanese Anime season was a year no one saw coming. This year had the death and rebirth of an unstoppable God and the arrival of the all-girl "Beatles" of anime. Japanese anime is a genre mostly known for giant robots, cat girls, big guns, and samurais. What stole the hearts, minds, and money of many of Japans most fervent Otakus (Japanese for "Anime Geek/ Enthusiast"): four charmingly simple high school girls with a dream.

The past Spring's offering of K-On! simply followed the ingredients of the manga source material. All they needed was four female seiyuu's (Japanese voice actresses) who could also sing. Thus the female pop group "Sphere" was created specifically for the show (similar to the Monkees). Even the actresses themselves were still pretty new in anime. This show didn't have anything in its chamber but its obscenely excessive uses of 'Moe' (spoken 'Moh-Eh', short for 'Moekko' -- meaning blossoming girl) in its character design and episodic way of story telling.

What exactly is 'Moe'? It's an exaggeration on the importance of 'cuteness' in Japanese society. For example: American actress Summer Glau or TV's Kelly Ripa wearing cat ears is VERY Moe, whereas Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) or Olivia Wilde (House) is not. Others liken it to feelings of affection or devotion for a female without sexualizing them.

I have often stated that Dollhouse (on Fox) suffered a severe lack of Moe. Interestingly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in its first three seasons, used a lot of what is what is American Moe, even before it was properly defined. Archetypal females are often used in anime and right now the 'Moe boom' is huge.

K-On! (Keion) doesn't have gun battles, swordplay, mystery, magic, or excessive 'fan service' (scantily clad women) -- it just oozes pop music and oceans of Moe. Even the characters in the show tease each other about how insecure they are about being cute (which is like 'cute squared' in Japan). They are awkward, girly, lazy, teasing, and they're constantly eating desserts and wearing cute outfits while learning how to be a band.

Match this with a cute pop group and they became a license to print money. Both males and females got into this seemingly average show.

Each character has been merchandised to death on everything from guitars, apparel, figurines, giant pillows, and food products. The most popular is the practical yet shy bassist Mio Akiyama.

This show's music hit the top of Japan's Amazon music charts by the end of the first month after airing. It also broke a record for its Vol. 1 DVD, selling over 40,000 in a single day. Currently the first 3 volumes have sold over 8 million in US dollars (converted from Yen).

Click HERE to see the opening that started it all (Subtitled in English). The Moe characteristics will be VERY obvious.

And click HERE for a look at the real-life musical voices for K-On!, called "Sphere" (English Subbed).

How big is Moe marketing? The sales of the exact types of the musical instruments the girls play jumped and began popping up in display windows. The strangest yet? Tokai Tsukemono Corp will unleash pickled radish snacks that look like keyboardist character Tsumugi Kotobuki's (Mugi-chan) eyebrows, which are her most Moe trait.

Mio, on the other hand, has been officially endorsed by the Fender guitar company for being a lefty that rocks a vintage 62 Jazz Bass. The pop group Sphere has already released a second album, and season two of K-On! has already begun production, to the acclaim of fans and merchandisers alike. In this jaded age of Paris and Brittany, maybe America needs a little Moe. They will never be as big as The Beatles musically, but in musical anime, they might as well be.

The worst disaster of 2009 ironically comes from Kadokawa Shoten (who successfully started the original Moe boom back in 2004), in the form of the long-awaited (three years!) second season to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Haruhi season one became an instant cult sensation (even in its dubbed English form) across the globe.

Its lead seiyuu, Aya Hirano (Japan's answer to Miley Cyrus) is iconic in Japanese culture for this role. The main focus is Haruhi Suzumiya, a girl who unconsciously changes and warps reality around her because a part of her never really 'grew up.' Haruhi's only goal is looking for aliens, time travelers, psychics, and anything strange.

Haruhi has no idea she's changing the world around her, so she is constantly guarded and observed by mysterious and magically gifted characters (created by her) that disguise themselves as students and collude in keeping her illusion of a 'normal reality' intact. Should she become bored or disillusioned with her quest, all these characters may cease to exist. They have one hope. It's a cynical classmate who can barely stand her, named Kyon, who mistakenly gives her the idea of starting a club to investigate all these strange things.

One by one these strange beings start gathering under Haruhi's nose. Haruhi is pretty, intelligent, adorable and obnoxious, with too much enthusiasm and too many dreams. Japanese girls all want to be her and all the guys want to date her -- but Haruhi could care less, because she is looking for aliens, time-travelers, and psychics! God help the world and reality if she ever learns the truth is right behind her.

The anticipation for season two was as anticipated in Japan as that for the final season of The Sopranos was stateside. What could possibly ruin this omni-powerful franchise? The story arc called "Endless Eight." Imagine 75 percent of the final season of The Sopranos being the same episode, eight weeks in a row. Why? Because the characters are stuck in a 'time-loop' created by Haruhi, and their August summer keeps repeating 15,532 times). None of the characters know how to stop it and Haruhi and the world aren't aware she's doing it.

By the fourth rotation, fans were pretty annoyed. By the fifth, the voice actors were apologizing to fans. By the sixth week, fans were burning down the anime forums. By the seventh, fans had given up. On the eighth week, the studio apologized, and on the ninth week, the story ended.

The remaining new five episodes were moderately well received by whatever fans remained. What was the most anticipated, highly secretive, sure-fire event of the year turned out to be the butt of jokes that, among anime fans, will last endlessly for the next eight years! Not even David Lynch from Twin Peaks would have tried something this risky with this powerful a franchise. The actors had to voice the same episode eight times with minor differences, and the animators had to draw it eight different ways! -- same story. The ending was worse than being all a dream, or a "snow globe."

Click HERE for an Eight-Panel comparison of all eight at once.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeNfnUg7ZZE

Lost and Sopranos fans wouldn't tolerate this. The plans for season three appeared to be scrapped, but Kadokowa appears to have planned all along to make season three into a movie. Its running time is 150 minutes, which will cover "The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya" arc.

Otakus began pre-ordering tickets weeks in advance. A story from the English Otaku news site Sankaku Complex.com reports the story of one fan who proudly displayed his cache of thirty tickets (a whole row) he bought just for himself. These fans are devoted to their 'God' Haruhi. I can't imagine why someone hasn't made a live-action American version of Haruhi yet.

Click HERE for the short U.S. English-dubbed trailer for season one from Bandai Entertainment, so you can meet Haruhi for yourself. Season two will arrive in a few months.

And here's a clip of the Japanese actors doing a live stage concert as their characters. Click HERE to watch the packed stadium audience go total Fan-Crazy just to see them live. Mind you, these are 13-30+ year olds (It's subbed in English!).

Imagine if the cast of House or Lost did a live show?

Just when you thought American TV and its audience had issues, be glad you're not competing with Anime Idols and an obscene army of fickle Otakus, hell bent on worship. No one bought the hammer used in season four of Dexter, and no one knows the clothes and sneakers Dr. House is wearing. Japan's TV marketing would make Don Draper of Mad Men weep!

You can watch both these shows on YouTube by keywording their titles (adding English DUB or Subbed) or buy the season one collections at places like BestBuy.com or Amazon.com.

I could show you where to download them all for FREE... but you are not Otaku yet.

--

Rich Greenhalgh is a student at Rowan University. He shares at least one trait with the professional TV critics here at TV WORTH WATCHING, in that he's way too obsessed with, and enthusiastic about, various forms of pop culture. Please let him know if his Anime 101 summary was to your liking.

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Final Verdict on Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse": Regarding the Cast, Missed It By That Much

January 29, 2010 6:16 PM

As I type this, less than 90 minutes remain until Fox broadcasts the final, unpreviewed episode of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. The fact that I'm anticipating it attests to the promise that Whedon brings to every project -- but at this point, at the show's final hour, I think I've isolated where his latest genre missed the mark.

It cast the right actors -- but not always in the right roles...

Dollhouse (8 p.m. ET) was inspired by, and created for, Eliza Dushku, who stars in the central role of Echo. Echo is an "Active," a Doll, who can be reprogrammed with any abilities, any memories, any personalities desired by her clients -- or her handlers. Hostage negotiator. Extreme sports enthusiast. Loving wife. Pop singer. Dominatrix. And as the series progressed, there was an additional chameleonic requirement as well: Beneath all the parts was one submerged whole, an activist named Caroline.

All well and good, especially as the series progressed and Echo, rather than erasing memories of each personality and encounter, began to secretly retain them. And Dollhouse really got kicked into a higher gear once Whedon ventured into territory that, when I interviewed him on Fresh Air prior to the show's premiere, he denied was in his initial flight plan. He began revealing, slowly, that certain other members of the Dollhouse -- staff members, not reprogrammed Actives -- were not what they appeared to be.

Some, like Amy Acker's disfigured Dr. Saunders, were dolls themselves -- in her case, an Active named Whiskey. Others, like Harry Lennix's Boyd, weren't puppets, but were marionettes, the hidden Big Bads in the playhouse. And still others, like Reed Diamond's Dominic, were a little of both.

With the story lines, especially in this shortened second season, Whedon and his writing team have delivered more than enough twists and shocks to justify allegiance to the series.

The shockingly sudden shooting of Summer Glau's Bennett by one of the activated sleeper Actives, for example, was a shout-at-the-screen "Whoa!" moment.

But where Dollhouse slipped, I believe, was in having supporting players that were stronger, and more compelling, than its leads.

Dichen Lachman, as an Active named Sierra, was more magnetic, and showed more range, whenever she adopted another identity than Dushku's Echo did. So did Acker's Whiskey, once she was revealed as another Active -- her alter egos were few, but impressively far between.

And Enver Gjokaj's Victor proved not only a talented chameleon, but also a gifted comedian and mimic. His "imitation" of Fran Kranz's nervous Topher, when Victor was downloaded with Topher's personality, was a spot-on, very funny impersonation.

Conversely, the hero of the drama, Tahmoh Penikett's Paul Ballard, and the just-revealed villain, Lennix's Boyd, were, like Dushku's Echo/Caroline, less dynamic than those around them. Olivia Williams as Dollhouse executive Adelle, Diamond's Dominic, Alan Tudyk's murerous Alpha -- all of them did more with their screen time than their more prominent co-stars.

A Dollhouse with some of the roles reversed -- starting with Acker or Lachman as Echo -- may not have experienced a different fate, but it may have made for a a more dynamic show.

Meanwhile, we have tonight's finale, the continuation of last season's flash-to-the-future season finale, which Fox never showed but which Whedon released as an extra on the first-season DVD. So there's closure, at least. And tonight's episode, like last season's "missing" futuristic episode, features Felicia Day (in photo at top above), who starred in Whedon's Internet sensation, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

And best of all, there's more Whedon TV in OUR future. The man who wrote the episode and music for, and directed, the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and gave Neil Patrick Harris the title role of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, has been signed to direct an episode of Fox's brilliant Glee later this season, with Harris as guest star.

That show ALREADY has the right cast -- and, with Harris, a perfect guest star. With Whedon at the helm of that one, it's one to anticipate with... Glee.

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Please Stand By: New Blogs Coming This Afternoon, Tomorrow

January 29, 2010 10:16 AM

Hi, folks. Today I'm in New York, moderating an industry panel billed as a "Hollywood and History Master Class." And my plans to have today's column, on Fox's Dollhouse finale, posted before I dove in to those duties, didn't quite work out.

So please return around 5 p.m. ET, or thereabouts, for my Dollhouse assessment. And come back this weekend, when our latest guest column provides a sort of master class of its own -- on the latest in popular Japanese anime...

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GUEST BLOG #72: Diane Holloway on Diane Sawyer's First Month at "ABC World News"

January 26, 2010 12:28 PM

[Bianculli here: Contributing critic Diane Holloway thinks it's fair to compare ABC anchor Diane Sawyer's on-air style with that of Katie Couric at CBS, and makes a very good case explaining why...]

Comparing Sawyer to Couric
Is A Fair and Balanced Approach

By Diane Holloway

She's only been anchoring ABC World News for a little more than a month, but Diane Sawyer already feels perfectly at home, doesn't she? Have you heard anyone complain that she's too perky or lacks the necessary gravitas for the job?

I doubt it. Sawyer arrived in Charlie Gibson's chair on Dec. 21, which just happened to be Christmas week - when fewer viewers are on hand and (traditionally) less news is happening. She wore a dark suit and no jewelry. She sat behind a desk and delivered the news. Within a couple of weeks, she was reporting from Afghanistan, and not long after that, she was on the ground in Haiti covering an epic natural disaster.

Contrast Sawyer's arrival with Katie Couric's splashy debut at CBS Evening News in September 2006, and the comparison is, well, stunning. Of course, Couric, as media trumpets proclaimed at the time, was the "first female anchor of a network evening newscast," and that meant more hoopla was bound to greet her. So maybe that makes comparing Couric and Sawyer unfair.

But I don't think so. I think it's fair to compare both style and substance. After all, the two women have much common in their trajectory to the most coveted jobs in TV news. Couric anchored NBC's Today for 15 years; Sawyer anchored ABC's Good Morning America for a decade. Couric anchored and reported for NBC's Dateline magazine; Sawyer had stints on CBS' 60 Minutes and ABC's 20/20 (starting with the Primetime Live showcase hour later merged into it).

Is it sexist to compare the two anchors' style? I don't think so. The late Peter Jennings was often cited for his dashing, sophisticated appearance. Brian Williams is often described as a GQ type, while Gibson was often described as "rumpled."

Both Sawyer, 64, and Couric, 53, are undeniably attractive. Sawyer, a former America's Junior Miss from Kentucky, is blonde and glamorous. Couric, a former cheerleader from Virginia, is cute and perky. Both women are considered "insiders" -- Sawyer worked for President Nixon and is married to director Mike Nichols; Couric was married to attorney and TV legal analyst Jay Monahan until his death, and then dated Hollywood TV producer Tom Werner. Neither is a stranger to the red carpet scene.

But their network anchoring debuts were like night and day. CBS execs decided to highlight Couric's warm-and-fuzzy style from Today, and revamped the newscast with gimmicky bells and whistles. Couric said at the outset that she prefers to anchor from New York and let reporters cover the news. Sometimes she sat behind a desk, sometimes she sat in a chair for interviews, and sometimes she perched on the desk and flashed those highly-regarded gams.

Sawyer, on the other hand, downplayed her looks and stuck to the long-accepted format for a network evening newscast. Her first interview as anchor was a newsworthy grilling of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Her newscast is tried-and-true: Read the stories, quiz the reporters, communicate with the audience. When she's out of the studio and in the field, which she seems to love, she's all business.

To her credit, Couric shed the revamped newscast and her cute-and-casual style a few months into her CBS gig. She definitely knows how to do tough interviews -- just ask Sarah Palin -- and she is deeply knowledgeable about politics. Being first is never easy, but she and the CBS News producers should have known better than to try to put feathers on a dinosaur.

Sawyer already fits comfortably into the serious role of a network news anchor. It's nice that now, in what appear to be the waning days of network news, that we have two women in the three top jobs. We even have one woman over 60, which is yet another breakthrough. Let's hope Sawyer has a long run and is allowed to be old and frumpy someday. Now that would be progress.

-----

Diane Holloway was the TV critic for the Austin American Statesman for 30 years, until the downturn in the newspaper business prompted her to take a buyout. She's now sniffing out other possibilities. Before newspapers, she worked in Washington for the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Maybe something entirely different is next. Or not.

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Goodbye, Conan -- Hello, Returning Cable Series and Other Good TV

January 25, 2010 12:42 PM

Conan O'Brien said farewell to his NBC show, and his audience, Friday with absolute class -- thanking NBC rather than trashing it, and sending a special message to young fans not to be cynical. So long as entertainers such as Conan still get to follow their bliss on TV, that'll be an easier message to embrace.

Meanwhile, TV marches on -- and on this particular Monday night, there's a LOT worth watching...

Fox's House, and especially this week's edition of 24, are worthy offerings by commercial broadcast TV, while PBS brings us an excellent American Experience installment on Wyatt Earp. Tune in (9 p.m. ET; check local listings), and I predict you'll learn a lot more about Earp, and not just about his most famous gunfight, than you knew before.

And then there's cable, where the evening's returning shows include FX's sensational Damages (10 p.m. ET), starring Glenn Close, and Showtime's Secret Diary of a Call Girl (10 p.m. ET), starring Billie Piper.

[I originally mistyped that latter series title as Secret Dairy of a Call Girl. Whole other series entirely -- but I'd watch that, too.]

Both shows are starting season three, and starting them creatively and intriguingly. Damages introduces Martin Short, Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine and Len Cariou in new recurring roles, and Secret Diary picks up its story with Hannah, a.k.a Belle, publishing her first, successful tell-all book. But in a last-second programming switch, Showtime is delaying season three of Secret Diary until next week, and instead presenting tonight a 30-minute special in which the TV version of Belle, Billie Piper, interviews her recently unmasked real-life counterpart, Brooke Magnanti, who's now a neuroscientist.

For more on all these topics, listen to my report on today's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. After 5 p.m. ET, you can hear it online by clicking HERE.

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We Know Jay Leno's Next Move -- Now How About David Letterman's?

January 22, 2010 9:11 AM

We now know that Conan O'Brien's era as host of NBC's Tonight Show is at an end, and that Jay Leno will resume his former late-night throne in five weeks. The next question to ask -- and it's an enticing one, regarding CBS's David Letterman -- is "WWDD?"

As in, "What Will Dave Do?"...

The last time Letterman and CBS squared off against a reboot of The Tonight Show, it was June 1, the launch of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. O'Brien didn't have Leno as a prime-time lead-in then -- he had the premiere of a new NBC reality series (actually, a horrid revival of an equally bad ABC series), I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!

(Insert your own joke here. Make sure to include irony.)

[Note: For the rest of this story, the late-night hosts will be referred to by their first names. Since this entire battle has been personalized beyond belief, it seems only fitting.]

For Conan's first night at the helm of Tonight, he wanted to signal that his was a younger, different Tonight Show. His guests: Will Ferrell and Pearl Jam.

Seven months later, Conan's guests on his final show (Friday at 11:35 p.m. ET) are scheduled to be Tom Hanks and, once again, Will Ferrell.

When Conan premiered in June 2009, what did Dave do to counter-program?

He could have scheduled a week of reruns, let Conan have his day (and his week), then come back swinging after the initial curiosity had abated. Instead, he led with his best punch, programming for his own demographic by presenting Bill Cosby.

By night two, Dave had more overall viewers than Conan -- fewer in the coveted younger demographic, but nonetheless a victory Dave hadn't notched against Jay's Tonight Show in about a decade.

So the question now becomes "What Will Dave Do?"

On March 1, will Dave play opossum, or play hardball?

My guess: hardball.

No one knows, at this point, how many of Jay's formerly loyal Tonight viewers have been disenfranchised by this latest late-show mess, and defected to Dave for good. It's a good guess that Jay's first night back on Tonight, like Conan's first night there, will be victorious. But why make it easy? Why doesn't Dave give his newly won fans, and especially his old ones, reasons to stay tuned?

So whom should Dave counter-program, against Jay's March 1 NBC return, as his special guest on CBS?

Conan O'Brien.

Think of it.

Given the choice of what would count as Must-See TV that night -- Jay gloating over his Machiavellian return to late night, or Dave and Conan swapping razor-sharp barbs about it -- whom do you think would have more viewers on Monday? And, at least equally important, more YouTube hits the next day?

Skip the rerun option. Give Dave a fresh opening monologue, a Jay-related Top 10 List, and Conan as the first guest, and that's a show almost impossible to reject.

Dave vs. Conan? That lasted seven months.

Dave PLUS Conan? That's a one-night stand for the ages...

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Academy of TV Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame: The Smothers Brothers Get Inducted, Not Indicted

January 21, 2010 11:25 AM

I was an invited guest at Wednesday's Academy of Television Arts & Sciences dinner honoring new inductees into the Hall of Fame -- and it didn't dawn on me, until dawn the next morning, that I had forgotten to take notes. I was there because of, and to support, Tom and Dick Smothers, and just enjoyed the evening thoroughly.

For a TV critic, historian and professor, the whole night was a dream...

Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, who was there to introduce famed announcer Don Pardo, prefaced his remarks by giving credit to the Smothers Brothers for all the cutting-edge comedy that has come since. So did Rob Reiner, who introduced Tom and Dick, and who gave them credit not only for his career (his first show-biz job was as a writer on their Summer Brothers Smothers Show), but for paving the way for All in the Family and other envelope-pushing series.

Other inductees included Candice Bergen, introduced by Murphy Brown creator Diane English, and the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, whose induction was written and presented by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. MacFarlane impishly, and accurately, compared NBC's third-year cancellation of Star Trek to today's boneheaded handling of the Jay Leno-Conan O'Brien mess.

NBC, he explained, "was not known for good programming decisions even back then," which got a huge laugh from the crowd in the Beverly Hills Hotel ballroom.

Speaking of which... just this morning (Thursday), NBC issued a press release making it official: Beginning March 1, Jay Leno will return as host of The Tonight Show. Nowhere in the seven-paragraph press release was Conan O'Brien mentioned by name, or his tenure as current host of The Tonight Show acknowledged.

Another bit of class from the network that O'Brien has served loyally since 1993. Way to go, NBC. You're not only "More Colorful." You're More Classless.

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Today's Blog Is Late -- But With a Great Excuse

January 20, 2010 8:03 PM

Yesterday and last night, I taught my first classes of the new term at Rowan University in New Jersey. This morning and today, I flew to Los Angeles. And right now, in the middle of a mini-monsoon, I'm about to drive across town to attend the Emmy Hall of Fame ceremony, where Tom and Dick Smothers are among the honored inductees...

So that's why today's Best Bets were late, and why today's even later blog is so short. Tomorrow, more details. Right now, it's off to drive a rental car in the rain, with no GPS...

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GUEST BLOG #71: Tom Brinkmoeller On HIS Buried TV Treasures

January 18, 2010 10:44 AM

[Bianculli here: First, Diane Werts' FOR BETTER OR WERTS blog today covers a gaggle of new, and good, DVD releases. Also, one of our TV WORTH WATCHING contributors, Diane Holloway, just listed some of the shows on TV that made her happy. Now it's another contributor's turn -- and Tom Brinkmoeller intentionally surfs the fringes of the air waves...]

Forget the Whiskers on Kittens:
These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

By Tom Brinkmoeller

Some baseball players earn a roster spot by mastering a specialty (a pinch-hitter, a closer, a base-runner), while most earn their pay by trying to do everything well. On the TVWW team, I have made it my specialty to discover really good, off-the-beaten-track shows that tend to get lost in the wake of an industry fixated on weight-losers, amateur singers and I-think-I-can dancers.

This role became more clear to me when the cable company recently switched out our DVR and I had to reprogram the series I don't want to miss. For every 30 Rock or Big Bang Theory, there are, on our list, multiple little series many haven't heard of. Most air on public-television stations. And all are fantastic, in my opinion.

What follows, in capsule form. is a list of these series and a description of what they do so well. (Some may be out of production, but still are being played all over the country. Few of them, it's safe to say, are available in all markets. The "check local listings" proviso applies, as always.) Click on the titles for more info.

MUSIC/ART

From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall -- A TV spinoff of the popular NPR series, the program brings young musicians to New York to perform before a live audience. The talent scale each week transcends impressive and is an antidote to the prevalent obsession for pop stardom. Host/concert pianist Christopher O'Riley makes sure the series and its participants don't take it all too seriously: no judges; no texted votes; no ultimate winner. Just a celebration of serious talent grown to greatness through a lot of hard work.

Design Squad -- A second series that celebrates talented youth whose intelligence and resourcefulness are more important than their ability to sing. Each week two teams of teens are challenged to design and deliver, in two days, a product requested by an outside company or party. They first have to agree on a design, then build it and test it before the run-off competition in which the client picks the winner. Anyone who admires seeing really smart people take on real-world challenges and solve them in innovative ways will find his series as fascinating and upbeat as it is entertaining.

Classical Destinations -- A BBC-produced series that explores classical-musical masters and the cities and countries they lived in and that affected their works. Whether it's Austria and Mozart, Norway and Grieg or any other of the great composers, this half-hour, beautifully shot series is a combination travelogue and music history that makes it extra-enjoyable to learn a bit more about music that lasts. Simon Callow hosts (see photo at top).

Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis -- This is one of the series that no longer is in production, but episodes still are running and age only makes them better. Lewis hosts the series, which features two or three guest jazz musicians each episode. The talk is intelligent and entertaining, and a featured part of each show is a performance by each guest, and usually a combined performance to end the half-hour. What a great opportunity to learn about jazz from its top players.

Landscapes through Time with David Dunlop -- Dunlop, who calls himself a landscape painter, is a talented artist who knows a lot about art history as well as the scientific reasons for what makes good art work. In each half-hour program, Dunlop travels to a locations where a great artist worked and explains the artist's work as he paints an interpretation of a scene the artist once painted. A totally unique concept that's carried off especially well.

FOOD

Mexico One Plate at a Time -- Chicago chef and restaurant owner Rick Bayless isn't just one of the country's most recognized experts on Mexican cooking -- he's an unassuming and fun-to-watch cooking expert whose ego is the total opposite of the current batch of celebrity TV chefs. That, in itself, makes the show wonderful. The fact that his approachable recipes are backed up by trips to food sources in Mexico makes it all the better.

Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie -- Gourmet, the magazine of this show's title, soon will disappear and with it, almost surely, this beautifully photographed and produced series that traveled all over the world to look at food at many angles, from production to the kitchen. But reruns are just as wonderful and relevant as when they were first-run, and video podcasts make the series even more accessible.

Food Trip with Todd English -- Boston-based restaurant owner and chef English doesn't have the comfort level with being on television that many chefs have, but his trips to all parts of the world to look at cuisines and how he can adapt what he learns to his restaurants still is multiple-times better than nearly anything that shows up on the Food Network.

Lidia's Italy -- Lidia Bastianich is cut from the Julia Child stock of chefs: She knows what she's talking about (her chef, restaurant-owner and cookbook-author credentials are impressive) and she cares more about the food than the building of her stardom. Besides, she's an Italian grandmother, which, according to popular culinary legend, is the height of authority when it comes to cooking Italian.

TRAVEL

Art Wolfe's Travels to the Edge -- Wolfe, a well-known and respected still photographer of nature and wildlife, goes to places pretty far off the tourist track in each episode to record the scenery and animals in these far-way places. He's accompanied by a video crew, and Wolfe's photos are integrated into the usually stunning moving record of the trip. Anyone interested in photography will find Wolfe's explanations of his shots and how and why he composes them are the equivalent of a free expert seminar.

Fantastic Festivals of the World -- This series of hour-long programs that wonderfully showcases folk festivals from around the globe was shot for Discovery HD Theater when it was spending money on other programming than testosterone-oriented car shows. It's often buried on the cable channel's schedule, and probably will disappear for good in the near future. Catch it while you can. Its quality level is just as high as its definition level.

--

Tom Brinkmoeller has labeled himself "The Brink of Obscurity" because of his penchant for searching out and sharing the flecks of programming gold usually buried deeply under the TV industry's huge mounds of dross.

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GUEST BLOG #70: Diane Holloway Warms Up to January

January 14, 2010 12:03 PM

[Bianculli here: Here's Diane Holloway, with a rundown of some shows that make her happy the New Year has arrived. And for the record, click HERE to hear Thursday's edition of NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, , in which I talk with Terry about Jay vs. Conan...]

In January, TV Gets Fun Again... And Here Are Several Reasons Why

By Diane Holloway

While some folks fall into the post-holiday blues in January, I get happy. It's a new year and those god-awful reruns and Frosty specials are gone! New year, new episodes.

What's not to like? OK, it's cold outside, but I live in Texas where cold is a passing problem. Brew some tea, watch some TV.

So I'm looking forward to the return of my favorite shows this month, along with the possibility of at least one decent newcomer.

For fluffy fun, NBC's Chuck, which finally began its third season Sunday, is satisfying. The former big-box electronics store salesman has received another download to his brain that gives him the super-agent fighting skills to match his data-memory brilliance. He's still destined to be overwhelmed by the transition from plain guy to super-spy, but he's taken another step toward a 007 existence. And Zachary Levi remains super-charming in the role. The series has settled into its regular Monday 8 p.m. ET time slot.

HBO's Big Love, at 9 p.m. ET Sunday, has just returned, kicking off its fourth season of polygamist melodrama. I've always thought of this show as a fundamentalist Mormon version of Dallas. Maybe they should have named it Salt Lake City. Or Utah.

Any man who ever thought it would be fun to have multiple partners will watch this and realize how exhausting that can be. Bill Paxton plays Bill Henrickson, proud papa to three separate "sister-wife" families headed by Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Nicki (Chloe Sevigny) and Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin). Besides domestic complexities, Bill also faces business and extended-family challenges. The whole concept of Big Love is a big, bold - and thoroughly enjoyable - mess.

You might think a woman like me, of a certain age, would be weary of Fox's 24 and American Idol by now, but you would be wrong. I can't help myself. I still love 'em both. Call it arrested development or a very small brain.

Fox's 24 opens its eighth season this Sunday and Monday, 9 p.m. ET, by burning off four of its 24 hours. Jack Bauer is minding his own business in New York when yet another crisis arises, sucking him back into the counter-terrorism business (or "bidness," as we say in Texas). The domestic bliss Jack sought with daughter Kim and her baby quickly fades as world horrors begin to bubble up.

Anil Kapoor (the game show host in Slumdog Millionaire) plays an endangered Middle East leader, Freddie Prinze Jr. plays a new CTU agent, Mykelti Williamson is the new CTU chief and Katee Sackhoff is Jack's new love interest. Among the returnees are Cherry Jones as the president and (of course) Mary Lynn Rajskub as Chloe. Yes, Chloe is still frowning. (The show's regular slot is again Monday at 9 ET.)

As for Idol, well, except for the change in judges (Ellen DeGeneres is in, Paula Abdul is out, and it's Simon Cowell's last year, all of which you may have heard about), not much is wildly different in the ninth season, which began Tuesday and Wednesday this week (8 p.m. ET) on Fox. I hate the cringe-producing early episodes, but the prospect of another breathtaking talent like Adam Lambert makes the journey worthwhile for me.

My favorite spine-chilling mystery, Damages, begins its third season on Jan. 25 (moving to Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on FX). Glenn Close's Patty Hewes returns as one of TV's most complex and intriguing characters. An icy litigator with a tragic streak a mile wide, Patty continues to reveal layers of herself that shock and amaze. Does she have a conscience? Sometimes ... but maybe not now. You never know.

When the new stories begin, Patty is working for the government to recover billions of dollars in an investment scheme that sounds a lot like Bernie Madoff's fraud-fest. No longer Patty's protege, Ellen (Rose Byrne) nonetheless winds up back in the serpentine plot. Can't wait.

It's entirely possible that ABC's new legal sudser The Deep End (Thursday, Jan. 21, at 8 p.m. ET) will be tedious in the long run. After all, it starts off in fairly typical soap opera style: five exceptionally pretty young lawyers in Los Angeles begin their trek toward partnership, with sexual intrigue playing almost as big a part as legal shenanigans in the pilot.

But I'll try anything with Billy Zane (he's a slithery boss here), and I can't pass on up-and-coming Austin actor Mehcad Brooks (True Blood, In the Valley of Elah, Glory Road), who is making serious inroads in Hollywood these days based on talent and eye-popping good looks. Brooks plays one of the young lawyers.

Two more January returnees to cheer: Southland, which was axed by NBC, got picked up by TNT to run Tuesday nights at 10 ET. (The original pilot kicked things off this week; watch a recap here.) And Burn Notice, which should raise temperatures considerably on cold winter nights, starts another run of new episodes Thursday, Jan. 21 at 10 p.m. ET on USA.

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Diane Holloway was the TV critic for the Austin American Statesman for 30 years, until the downturn in the newspaper business prompted her to take a buyout. She's now sniffing out other possibilities. Before newspapers, she worked in Washington for the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Maybe something entirely different is next. Or not.

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