1) Football, 4:35 p.m., Fox, and 8:15 p.m. ET, NBC. We’re two steps from the Super Bowl, with this weekend’s winners colliding next week for the conference championships. First, the Packers (shown here with Davonte Adams), who are used to the cold, host the Rams, who aren’t; the winner faces Sunday’s Bucs-Saints winner. Then the Bills (another cold-weather team) host the Ravens; the winner faces Sunday’s Browns-Chiefs winner. Read more…
There are good reasons for dramas to retreat to the past.
They need limits and obstacles. Romances work best amid “don’t” and “mustn’t”; crime stories are best if you can’t just call the cops or check the DNA and the video footage.
So Americans return to cowboy or pioneer days … the British visit the Victorian era … and “Miss Scarlet and the Duke” (shown here) – debuting at 8 p.m. Sunday (Jan. 17) on PBS’ “Masterpiece” – fits that era well. Read more…
1) “Erin Brockovich” (2000), 8 p.m., Pop. This is clearly a night to watch Julia Roberts, with three strong choices, at 8 p.m. The best is “Brockovich,” the true story of an office assistant who used brains and people-skills to confront a giant power company; Roberts (shown here with Albert Finney) won an Oscar and there were four more nominations, including best picture. In TNT’s “Ocean’s Eleven” (2001), she’s the ex-wife of a heist master (George Clooney); in the Movie Channel’s “Eat Pray Love” (2010), she tries mid-life changes. Read more…
Many TV shows – and many people – are rooted in one place. Some rarely leave the living room.
Not Kimani Ray Smith … or “Two Sentence Horror Stories” (show here), the odd little show (8 and 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays on CW, then streaming the next day on www.cwtv.com) he directs for.
Smith had a childhood he describes as “from the desert to the Arctic tundra.” That may make him ideal for a show that covers a broad range. Read more…
1) “Superstore,” 8:30 p.m., NBC. Racial justice, it seems, can come in unlikely areas. For the store, that includes the hair-care products: Only the Black-oriented ones are locked away. That leads to what “Superstore” does best – a mass meeting, where quirks escalate. Garrett (Colton Dunn, foreground, in a previous episode) is expected to speal for an entire race; it’s a witty episode, with subjects soon range from vending machines to “reparation pizzas.” Read more…
1) “Call Your Mother” debut, 9:30 p.m., ABC. Jean (Kyra Sedgwick, shown here) is an empty-nester with an empty life. “I haven’t had sex in four years,” she confides. “And it was four years before that. It should be an Olympic sport.” Now she tries to stir up her life: She’ll to California and insert herself into the worlds of her son and daughter. This is from writer-producer Kari Lizer, a decade after her “New Adventures of Old Christine” concluded. Sherri Shepherd plays Jean’s phone friend. Read more…
In the mainstream, show-business world – scripted movies and TV shows and such – Michael Apted’s legacy is impressive.
Apted – who died Thursday at 79 – directed a wide range of movies, from James Bond to Loretta Lynn, from a John Belushi comedy to a William Hurt mystery. He directed cable dramas, including “Masters of Sex” (which he also helped produce) and “Rome.”
But for many people, he did something far more important: He gave us “7 Up” and all its sequels, pulling us into the lives of Tony Walker (shown here) and others..
Roger Ebert called this “the noblest project in cinema history.” The New Yok Times called it “the most profound documentary series in the history of cinema.” I call it masterful. Read more…
1) “This Is Us,” 9 p.m., NBC. TV’s best drama series is in top form when using flashbacks to tell a story. Now it has a big one: Randall (Sterling K. Brown, shown here) grew up without knowing his birth parents. He later found his dad (now deceased), who believed that the mom had died shortly after giving birth. Last week brought news that she lived a full life before dying in Louisiana; now he goes there. That’s surrounded by the amiable “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” at 8 p.m. and an OK episode of “Nurses” at 10. Read more…
For TV critics, this can be an annoyance: Shows change.
Good ones go bad. Mork gets goofy, “Miami Vice” gets glitzy, Fonzie jumps the shark.
And occasionally, a bad (or ordinary) one becomes very good. The latest surprise is “The Resident” (shown here in its early days); after steady improvement, its fourth season starts beautifully, at 8 p.m. Tuesday (Jan. 12) on Fox. Read more…
For those who grew up with movies and TV shows, there’s something missing from real politics.
It’s that “Inherit the Wind” moment – the one where one side dissolves. We never get that in real life – or we didn’t until the capitol riot (show here). Let me back up: Read more…
