Week’s top-10 for Jan. 6: An extraordinary batch of debuts
1) “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” (shown here) debut, 10 p.m. Tuesday, NBC. Lab accidents used to Read more…
Year: 2020
Best bets for Jan. 4: New football, old reruns
1) Football, 8:15 p.m. ET, CBS. We don’t expect to see Tom Brady (shown here) and the New England Patriots this early in the play-offs; they’re usually perched up high, drawing a first-week bye. But they lost their season-finale, finishing with a 12-4 record and losing out (via tiebreaker) on a bye. Tonight, they host Tennessee (10-6). That follows a 4:35 p.m. game on ESPN and ABC, with Buffalo at Houston; both teams are 10-6. Read more…
McCarthy: A brash bully demanded attention
It was six decades ago … but in some ways, it seems like now.
There was name-calling, finger-pointing, fact-checking, a televised congressional hearing. There was talk of State Department evil. This was the Sen. Joseph McCarthy era; a PBS documentary takes a fresh look … and dispels some assumptions.
The wrong notion, historian David Oshinsky told the Television Critics Association in July, is that McCarthy was a “slightly moronic, animalistic person. (Instead,) this was one very shrewd politician.
”That comes across in the film. McCarthy is described as affable, talkative, easy to like. “In some ways, he was quite a charming guy,” says Leon Kamin, one of the people McCarthy attacked. Read more…
Best-bets for Jan. 3: Action in Hawaii, music in Tennessee
1) “Hawaii Five-0” and “Magnum P.I.,” 8 and 9 p.m., CBS. When you have two Hawaiian action shows back-to-back, a crossover seems inevitable. Now Magnum is on private-eye business, shadowing a husband who may be cheating. Then there’s something bigger: The guy might have stonen a list of undercover CIA agents. Soon, there’s a joint effort (shown here) by McGarrett’s “Five-0” squad and Magnum and friends. That’s complicated by a kidnapping and by CIA resistance. Read more…