Jonathan Hession/Showtime Showtime’s The Tudors, which debuts this Sunday, tries to show us that the life of Henry VIII was one of great passions. The series, however, does not inspire great passions. The idea was good enough: to re-tell the story of Henry and Anne Boleyn, but turn the clock back to Henry VIII as [...]

HBO In the print TIME this week, I preview the first two of the last nine Sopranos episodes ever, debuting on HBO April 8. The spoilers in this piece are not very spoilery, but if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, you may want to bookmark this and save it. Or, you know, forget [...]

Chris Sligh may not have won American Idol this season, but he has a legacy. Two, actually. First, he broke my mammoth two-weeks-in-a-row run of predicting American Idol’s ejectees. Second, he proved that, while there are definitely patterns to American Idol voting and a history to learn from, you can’t just strategize your way to [...]

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched Lost yet, stay very still for eight hours, until the feeling of numbness passes. ABC/ Mario Perez Last night’s was a really cool episode of Lost. That is a different thing, however, from a really good episode of Lost. The installment in which the show explained–then killed off–the much-loathed [...]

I’ve had MSNBC on in the background while I write, and they seem to be devoting practically the entire morning to American Idol. So Tuned In’s going to step into the breach and cover the 2008 presidential race. Following up on Katie Couric’s controversial interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards, CBS has released its own [...]

Reviews of last night’s Idol performances are here. People who write “Discuss” in their blog posts are annoying, but–discuss. Bottom line, it was a night of not-their-best perfs from the best singers (LaKisha, Blake, Melinda, etc.) and of fairly good outings by some not-the-best singers (Gina, Phil), so most of my reviews are somewhere in [...]

A reminder that my weekly Judging American Idol feature will be up again tomorrrow morning at time.com. The best thing about my reviews, for all of us, is that they get one contestant shorter every week. I want to address a criticism, by the way, that has been made–well, not by any actual reader that [...]

Attention, Viacom executives: See that TV-looking thing above this post? It’s called “embedded video.” It’s what you get when you don’t lock up your content like Rapunzel in a tower, and when you let people who actually like your shows share them with other people. These people are called “fans.” The sharing is called “free [...]

Hola! Soy James! I’m not sure if you need to be a parent to find this TV Funhouse Dora the Explorer parody funny. But if you’re a parent of a Dora-aged child, it’s likely you’re too beaten down by propagating the species to actually stay up for Saturday Night Live. So thank God for YouTube, [...]

God help me, I actually find myself defending Katie Couric for the second time in a week. Couric’s 60 Minutes interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards (see it here, read the transcript here) has been criticized–at Swampland, among other places–as an insensitive hit job. Watching the entire interview (rather than the excerpts that Drudge has [...]

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched Battlestar Galactica yet, stop. I will not talk falsely now; the hour is getting late. SCI FI Channel Photo: Carole Segal So that was kind of a big one, yes? The makers of BSG had promised that the end of this season would be shocking and would entirely change [...]

The vampire squid compels you with his hypnotic eye to watch Planet Earth. Discovery/Stephen Downer Is it worth spending $1000 or more to watch a single TV series? I’m generally as tightfisted as the next TV watcher, but if I hadn’t already loosened my deathgrip on my purse strings to buy an HDTV, Discovery’s Planet [...]

In my TIME column this week: Charles Gibson is ascending, Katie Couric is floundering–and with her may be going the last ambitions that network TV news can ever draw in new, non-aged viewers again. Here’s a taste: Gibson’s success has been seen as a vindication of old-fashioned gravitas over flash. Which is fair enough; Gibson [...]

Calvert DeForest, best known as the diminutive, maniacally laughing Larry “Bud” Melman from David Letterman’s talk shows, has died at age 85. There’s probably no figure who captures the brilliant absurdity of Letterman, especially his early years, than DeForest, who appeared for years as Dave’s regular figure of bizarre, sprite-ish hilarity. When Letterman moved to [...]

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched last night’s Lost yet, go to that magic box in your living room, the box that will make anything you want appear, if you only think of it… ABC/MARIO PEREZ Well! I wonder how they’re going to get out of this one. I don’t mean Kate, Locke and Sayid. [...]

Nick Jr. As a parent, you have the shows that your kids watch that you love, the ones you tolerate and the ones you dread. (Unless you have banned TV from your house and engage your kids only in wholesome, improving pursuits. In which case, isn’t there a taffy-pulling blog you should be reading?) The [...]

My weekly American Idol performance review has been bumped up from the blog to its own page at time.com, where it’s getting the big, flashy, multimedia treatment. (Well, there are words and pictures. That’s two media, right?) Check it out, then come back here and tell me why I’m an idiot. Consider yourself the fourth [...]

FNL’s Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) talks it out with his father (Brent Smiga) / NBC Photo: Bill Records As part of the New York Times’ coverage of the big Iraq War Fourth Anniversary Celebration Gala, Alessandra Stanley surveys how the war(s) have seeped into TV series, not just on obvious shows like Over There and [...]

…isn’t it? Whenever a new medium decides to celebrate itself with its own awards show, it’s trotting down the jolly road to self-satisfied middle age. I mean, isn’t YouTube already its own self-ratifying awards system? You can immediately access a constantly updated list of the most-watched videos at the site, and the videos are already [...]