Mike Hughes on TV

Stories

A wild ride with the master of micro-budget movies

Right now, Roger Corman’s legacy is filling our Fridays with micro-budget movies.
Corman died in 2024, at 96, but his films persist. They were huge in quantity, mixed in quality, tiny in cost. And they launched great careers.
On April 10, for instance, two films — “The Wild Angels” (shown here) at 8 p.m. ET and “The Trip” at 11:30 — will show us Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, before “Easy Rider.”
On April 17, we see early work of Peter Bogdanovich (Targets,” 8 p.m.) and Francis Coppola (“Dementia 13,” 1 a.m.). A week later, it’s Martin Scorsese’s “Boxcar Bertha,” at 8. Those three men have gone on to get 15 best-director Oscar nominations, winning three times. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 8, 2026

Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for April 10: comedy, ragtime & a stampede

1) “Happy’s Place,” 8 p.m., NBC. This show often skids off the rails, but it instantly improves when Jane Lynch is there. Now Lynch — the five-time Emmy-winner — is back as imperious mother of Gabby. (They’re shown here.) Now she’s staying with Gabby, who’s desperate to oust her. Alongside another story (date night for Emmett), it’s a fun episode. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 7, 2026

Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for April 9: comedy time on Fox and Max

1) “Animal Control,” 9 p.m., Fox. Two weeks from its season-finale, this mixes three fun stories: Frank and Daisy (shown here) find a fresh way to lose money, then try to get it back …. Shred and Patel botch night duty … And Victoria can’t process her break-up with Parker. He’s played by Josh Segarra, who’s way overwrought as the “Best Medicine” cop, but much better here. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 7, 2026

Stories

It’s changeover time at NBC and Fox

For half of the big-four networks, this is changeover time.
NBC is shedding its Mondays, so it can go on a basketball binge; Fox is wrapping lots of shows, as it prepares a (mostly) scriptless spring.
Some of this is bad news long-range, but good for a while. We get an early flurry of finales, (including “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins,” shown here), when shows are usually at their best. Details include: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 6, 2026

Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for April 8: games, crisis and elephants

1) “The Floor” season-opener, 8-10 p.m., Fox. It’s a fun start, with varied categories (from “Lord of the Rings” to “household chores”) and interesting contestants, from the first ones (shown here) to Brooke Camhi, a lawyer who won the 2017 “Amazing Race.” Many of them are too slow to say “pass”; twice, however, people manage to win with only one second left. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 6, 2026

Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for April 7: A fun season ends; a revolution begins

1) “Best Medicine” season-finale, 8 p.m., Fox. Last week’s hour set this up neatly: Visiting Norwegians tricked the town into a damaging deal … Greg and George mentioned they’d secretly married … and Dr. Best pointed Louisa to his ex-girlfriend, a fertility expert. Now that blends beautifully, in an excellent episode that often has Elaine (shown here in a previous episode) learn about her college application. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 5, 2026

Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for April 6: “St. Denis” and basketball finales

1) “St. Denis Medical” season-finale, 8 p.m., NBC. Dr. Ron (David Alan Grier) has been a curmudgeon, resisting warmth. Now he faces triple-bypass surgery and insists he just wants to be ignored … leaving others (shown here) to fret. Put that alongside another story — the aftershocks from Matt and Serena’s passionate kiss — and you have a terrific episode, rippling with humor and sentiment. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 3, 2026

News and Quick Comments

Alas, season-finale time is near

Is it too early to worry about season-finales?
Maybe, but CBS is ready. It will wrap up one season this month (“Matlock,” shown here, April 23) and some others in the first half of May,
Most of these will be back in the fall, with a few exceptions: “The Neighborhood” had already said this is its last season; CBS won’t be bringing back “DMV,” “Watson” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and has given no word on “America’s Culinary Cup” or “Hollywood Squares.”
But for 17 others, this is just a summer break; the finale dates are:
Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 3, 2026

News and Quick Comments

PBS heads back to Broadway

PBS will be back on Broadway next month.
It will stuff four Fridays in May with “Great Performances” shows. That includes two full musicals — “Suffs” (shown here) and “Top Hat” — plus a documentary and a Nicole Scherzinger concert.
This has become a tradition, for the month leading into the Tony awards. Each year, “Great Performances” puts new specials alongside ones from London. In this case, “Top Hat” and the Scherzinger concert were filmed in England, the others in the U.S. The line-up, all at 9 p.m., is: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 3, 2026

Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for April 5: a faithful (and musical) Easter

1) Musicals. Amid a day of biblical films, Turner Classic Movies pauses for “Easter Parade” (1948), at 8 p.m. ET; the film has little to do with Easter, but does have Judy Garland, Fred Astaire and great Irving Berlin songs, Also, the Oscar-winning “Sound of Music” (shown here) is 6:45 p.m. on Freeform and 8:10 and 11:16 p.m. on BYUtv. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 3, 2026