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The 9/11 attacks happened almost ten years ago. Since then, we’ve lived through whole cycles of war and cultural change; Osama bin Laden is dead and Jack Bauer is off the air. This fall, one of 24’s producers is returning on Showtime with a terrorism thriller, Homeland, that’s very …
The irony of attending the TCA TV critics’ press tour is that, between the daytime sessions is that it leaves you little time for actually watching television, between the daytime panels and the evening schmooze events. (I know, it’s a rough life. Well, it is for the talent, anyway. Last night’s CBS/CW/Showtime panel featured Sarah …
The big news out of CBS’s press tour had to do with the information (or lack thereof) about Ashton Kutcher’s introduction on Two and a Half Men. But there were tidbits from the various other panels, including the revelation that Ted Danson was groomed to play a CSI from his earliest years:
* “I grew up around skulls,” said Danson at …
Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next season’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that eventually get on the air can prove much better or worse. But premature opinions are why God invented the Internet, so …
America, meet Walden Schmidt. At the introductory CBS session of the TCA TV critics’ press tour, CBS programming head Nina Tassler had some news about Ashton Kutcher’s new character, who will take over for Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men this fall. Tassler described Schmidt, who will be introduced in a two-part season opener, as “an …
The story over AMC’s feud with the Sony studio over Breaking Bad broke while I was just getting to press tour, but for those of you who haven’t heard about it: things are getting tense between network and studio over the fifth and ostensibly final season of the show. The makers of Breaking Bad want a full season to wrap things up; …
Keith Olbermann, former MSNBC star / bete noire, did not come up explicitly in the questioning at the MSNBC panel today at the TCA press tour. But his mutually negotiated departure earlier this year was a subtext of many of the questions addressed to news chief Phil Griffin and hosts Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and Chris …
I arrived at the Beverly Hilton for TCA press tour in the middle of the afternoon, so I missed the first half of NBC’s day of presentations, in which we learned that The Playboy Club is actually about the empowerment of women and that new programming chief Robert Greenblatt would like to bring a little bit of the spirit of his old …
I’m en route to the TCA press tour in Los Angeles, where I’ll be operating the Tuned In west coast bureau through Saturday. Much of today will be spent in transit, but I’ll be blogging from there the rest of the week–possibly a lot some days and little other days, depending how much time I spend in sessions or writing and how much time …
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, stop surreptitiously watching that porn in your bed and watch last night’s Breaking Bad.
With the focus on the superlab, Gus’ business and Walt and Jesse’s status, the first couple of episodes of season four have been rather, well, male so far. The third, “Open House,” turns its attention …
The TCA TV critics’ press tour (which I will be joining next week) continued with its cable round yesterday, as critics and reporters heard from AMC, a critics’ darling that has recently taken some dings in its Teflon armor over the season finale of The Killing, ugly negotiations over Mad Men and a shakeup at hit zombie drama The …
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This Dead Tree Alert is a bit of a cheat; there is no new issue of TIME magazine this week. But MTV turns 30 years old on Monday, and in the issue currently on newsstands, there’s a photo spread on 30 highlights from MTV’s 30 years on the air. And, for a bit more fun, time.com has put …
No time for a lengthy writeup of last night’s excellent Louie, “Subway/Pamela,” but a few quick, bulleted thoughts:
* There are a lot of great things that Louie does, but it deserves more credit for bringing back the art of the silent film, as in the (mostly) wordless subway sequence that opened the episode.
