Month: October 2022

Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for Oct. 27: Halloween is here, a bit early

1) “Welcome to Flatch,” 9:02 p.m., Fox. For the second straight night, Halloween episodes fill the line-up. In this one, a trip to the psychic brings opposite reactions: Cheryl feels cursed; Barb (Jamie Pressly, shown here) suddenly has fresh lust – in a surprising direction. It’s a so-so episode, but has a big finish … leading into “Call Me Kat,” complete with a costume party. This will be one of the final five episodes to include Leslie Jordan, who died Monday (see separate story) at 67 Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 25, 2022

Stories

Jordan brought a new version of TV stardom

When Leslie Jordan first got there, Hollywood knew what a star should look like.
That was 40 years ago, when TV was dominated by Tom Selleck and Selleck types. A star would be 6-foot-4, handsome, a lades man, with a Midwestern-type voice.
And Jordan (shown here), who died Monday (Oct. 24), was the exact opposite. He was 4-foot-11, gay, with an impish charm and a pronounced Tennessee accent.
“I realized that my job was the funny guy that comes in with the zingers,” he told the Television Critics Association in 2018. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 25, 2022

Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for Oct. 26: funny Halloween, serious history

1) “The Conners” and more, 8-10 p.m., ABC. Ever since its began (as “Roseanne”) 34 years ago, this has had great Halloween episodes. (shown here). This time, Dan wants the house decorated, but everyone is busy; Becky tries to take over. That’s followed at 8:30 by horror-film spoofs on “The Goldbergs.” At 9, someone steals the Halloween candy from “Abbott Elementarty”; at 9:30, Tom may have a Halloween-time stalker on “Home Economics.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 24, 2022

Daily Best Bets

Best bets for Oct. 25: a wedding, a killing and more

1) “The Resident,” 8 p.m., Fox. Dr. Bell (Bruce Greenwood) has covered all the extremes. He was the show’s villain, botching surgeries and hiding the evidence … then its hero, an unflinching force for good … and then an afterthought, getting out-of-state medical treatments. Now he’s back and marrying Kit (Jane Leeves, shown here), who has his old job as the hospital’s CEO. It’s the 100th episode of this above-average show and yes, there’s a wedding crisis. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 23, 2022

Stories

After a long break, TV’s busiest actress returns

After decades of TV movies, Kellie Martin (shown here) had a good reason to step back.
That was during the start of the pandemic, when her daughters were 13 and 4. “They had never needed me more,” she recalled. “There was so much to figure out, with online schools and everything else.”
Now, two and a half years later, she’s finally returned to acting. She has a small and dead-serious role in “An Amish Sin,” at 8 p.m. ET Saturday (Oct. 29) on Lifetime.
Her return, she said, was partly because of the story – from real-life accounts of Amish girls whose sexual abuse reports were discounted. And also because a friend asked her to. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 22, 2022

Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for Oct. 24: crises — real, fictional and TikTok

1) “Independent Lens,” 10 p.m., PBS (check local listings). Meet stars of TikTok – Spencer X. a beat-boxer with a million-dollar mouth … Deja Foxx, once a homeless teen and now a Columbia honors student who supports herself and her mom with videos ranging from sexy to socio-political … Feroza Aziz (shown here), who slid genocide protests into an eyelash tutorial. We also hear about chilling TikTok sins, from censorship to shaping youths with subtle biases. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 22, 2022

News and Quick Comments

PBS views the growing evidence of war crimes

Alongside the agony of war in Ukraine (shown here), there’s another process: documenting war crimes.
The result, said Tom Jennings – director of a “Frontline” report at 10 p.m. Tuesday (Oct. 25) on PBS – will be a tribunal that “will essentially be a new Nuremberg: Nuremberg 2.0.”
That, however, would be a long time from now. Raney Aronson-Rath, the “Frontline” producer, points to the successful conviction of Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian general. That “took over five years – just the trial …. Collecting of evidence before that was multiple years.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 21, 2022

Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for Oct. 23: killer clown, deadly dragon

1) “The Simpsons,” 8 p.m., Fox. Even now, in its 34th season, the show manages to change. Previous years had “Treehouse of Horror,” with three offbeat tales; that will be here next week, but first is a fresh twist — “Treehouse presents” a take-off on Stephen King’s “It.” Homer and other teens fight a killer clown (shown here) … then return 27 years later, to try again. The Homer/Marge romance is flipped, in a tale that’s too gory for some viewers, but great fun for many. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 21, 2022

Stories

“Hair Tales” soars with Black history

It’s a subject that’s close to most people, elusive to some.
It sometimes soars above us, sometimes not. It droops or dazzles or delights or just disappears.
We’re talking about hair, and the special role it has had in Black history, before and after the Afro-powered (shown here) ’70s. Now that’s the subject of “Hair Tales,” a six-hour series available on Hulu and (9 p.m. Saturdays) on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Yes, six hours on hair. There’s a lot to talk about, said producer Michaela Angela Davis. “There’s joy, there’s resilience, there’s challenge. There’s history … there’s hysteria.”

Best-bets for Oct. 22: Athletes bat, skate and smash

1) Sports surge. Baseball and college football collide. The former has two best-of-seven series, sending winners to the World Series. Today, Aaron Judge (shown here) and the Yankees host the Astros at 5:07 p.m. ET on TBS; the Padres-Phillies game is, 7:45 on Fox. That faces lots of football, including Mississippi State (ranked No. 24) at Alabama (No. 6) at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN, Minnesota at Penn State (No. 16) at 7:30 on ABC and Kansas State (No. 17) at Texas Christian (No. 8) at 8 on Fox Sports1. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 20, 2022