Thought Dan Rather (doing long pieces at HDNet) and CBS (stuck with Katie Couric) had moved on from the National Guard memo imbroglio? Think again: Rather has filed a $70 million lawsuit against the network for breach of contract in the manner that it handled his departure. According to the New York Times report, Rather also charges that …

CBS, you may have read, is refusing to screen the premiere of controversial reality show Kid Nation for critics. That depends, however, how you define “critic.” Turns out the network did screen the show for audiences of children in several major cities–and there just happened to be TV crews on hand from the local CBS affiliates to do …

Patrick Harbron/The CW

I’ve already reviewed Gossip Girl once, and really twice, considering that the impressions from my Test Pilot preview this summer pretty much hold up. So I’m not going to review it a third time here, because of (1) deadlines and (2) what am I, a sucker? But here’s a public-service reminder to the O.C.-deprived to …

Sam Jones/FOX

In 1994, a successful network TV producer, having just sold a pilot in the then-boom market for sitcoms, decided to celebrate by pursuing a lifelong dream: climbing Mount Everest. Setting out with an experienced crew of climbers and sherpas, and taking the only videotape of his completed pilot with him, he ascended what …

HBO photo: Doug Hyun

TV is a medium made for showing the little things–small gestures, facial inflections, tiny shadings of meaning. It’s better suited to this than theater because that’s what moving pictures make possible: tight closeups, for instance, that eliminate the need for broad gestures and voices that project. And serial TV …

I’m falling behind in my TV viewing because of fall screeners, but I hope to give you a Tell Me You Love Me Watch shortly. Even though nobody asked. Even though all reports are that none of you are watching it. (I may well be the only person in America who’s watching the show twice.) I still want to do an occasional Watch to try to get …

I promise this will be my last post about Sally Fieldgate, because I have no desire to turn the former Flying Nun into freaking Aung San Suu Kyi over one discombobulated podium rant at the Emmys. But the New York Times has a nice postmortem about Fox’s night of the itchy dump-button finger. The most interesting bit has nothing to do with …

Brett Somers has died. She follows Charles Nelson Reilly, who passed away in May; I looked back on Match Game then, and Somers (who debuted on the show doing a guest stint with husband Jack Klugman) was an indispensible, combative part of it. (If I had based my top 100 TV list solely on my personal fond memories, I might have given that …

Robert Sebree/FOX

There are things you want to do and things you have to do. I want to review K-Ville for the show it could have been–a cop drama that portrays post-Katrina New Orleans by showing the struggle to maintain order. I have to review it for what it actually is: an unimpressive police procedural with a few social and …

The most memorable moment of last night’s Emmy awards was from an acceptance speech we didn’t hear. Or part of one, anyway. Having won best drama actress, Sally Field launched into a passionate, flustered speech about playing a mother and dedicating her performance to mothers in wartime. “If mothers ruled the world,” she said, “there …