Stories

Film finds global sweep of anti-semitism

Standing face-to-face with a racist, Andrew Goldberg found something surprising: He sort of liked him.
“He’s a very likable guy,” Goldberg said. “We had an interesting friendship.”
Goldberg interviewed Russ Walker(shown here) for “Viral: Anti-Semitism in Four Mutations,” the compelling documentary that airs at 9 p.m. Tuesday (May 26) on PBS. Walker proudly displayed a sign reading “What’s wrong with being a racist?” The flip side added: “God is a racist.”
Plenty of people saw the sign, knew Walker’s views … and voted for him anway, when he ran for the North Carolina House in 2018. “He was a 75-year-old guy with no staff,” Goldberg said, but he got 37 percent of the votes, running as a Republican in a strongly Democratic district. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 22, 2020

Stories

TV fills Memorial Day weekend void

For the third time, TV has fresh responsibility in a stay-near-home world.
First it was Easter without churches …. then Earth Day without being out in nature … and now Memorial Day without some of the usual parades and public events.
So TV has alternatives. It has a major concert (8 and 9:30 p.m. Sunday on PBS, see separate story) … a new mini-series (“Grant,” 9 p.m. Monday on History) … documentaries … and, of course, lots of movies, including three airings of the Spielberg/Hanks classic “Saving Private Ryan” (shown here). Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 21, 2020

Stories

Memorial concert scrambles in the year of COVID

As the virus shut down large chunks of life, Michael Colbert was sure of two things.
Yes, there would still be Memorial Day, even without some of the parades and picnics and such.
And the night before that, there would be the annual “National Memorial Day Concert” (shown here from a previous year); that’s at 8 and 9:30 p.m. May 24 on most PBS stations. “We need to have our rituals,” Colbert said. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 18, 2020

Stories

CW’s plan: Wait until January

The CW network has a fresh plan for stocking a fall schedule in the age of COVID:
It will simply wait. It will have a patchwork of acquired shows this fall and hold back the main ones – “Flash” and “Batwoman” (shown here) and “Riverdale” and such – until January. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 14, 2020

Stories

TV’s fall line-ups? It’s “involuntary stability”

TV networks have reached a fresh phase. We’ll call it “involuntary stability.”
Gone (for now) are the quick cancellations. Viewers may like this phase; networks try to seem happy.
When CBS announced that it has renewed 23 shows, Kelly Kahl, its entertainment president, said the network is in an “incredibly stable position.”
Then Fox was the first network to set its fall schedule (including Kim Catrall’s “Filthy Rich,” shown here). Charlie Collier, its entertainment CEO, talked of “relative stability”; Marianne Gambelli, its advertising president, praised “consistency” and “stability.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 13, 2020

Stories

It’s a scandalous tale of Di and lies, Elvis and Trump

When Elvis Presley died in 1977, the differences in news coverage were cavernous.
ABC and NBC led their newscasts with the story and had latenight specials. CBS started with a long Panama Canal piece, then did just 70 seconds on Presley. “Our job is not to respond to public taste,” Richard Salant, its news chief, told reporters.
And the National Enquirer? By the time those newscasts started, “there were six Enquirer reporters in the air for Memphis with $50,000 in cash,” said Mark Landsman, director of “Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer,” the fascinating documentary that debuts Sunday (May 17) on CNN. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 11, 2020

Stories

Documentary has pain and triumph

As Mike Nakayuma tells it, enlisting in the military “was not a deeply thought-out decision.”
Soon he was in Vietnam, heading into the jungle to induce firefights. A month away from going home, he was seriously wounded. “I thought, ‘I’m going to die.’” he says in “Asians Americans,” the compelling, five-hour documentary Monday and Tuesday (May 11-12) on PBS.
At the field hospital, the others were treated; he asked when it would be his turn. “They said, ‘Oh, you should have told us you were American. We thought you were a Gook.’” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 8, 2020

Stories

Two Marvel stars,two miniseries, three big roles

There’s a reason we need all those big-deal cable and streaming mini-series.
They let Marvel stars remind us that they’re also serious actors. Now we have:
– Chris Evans in “Defending Jacob,” which is halfway through its eight-episode run on Apple TV+. He plays an assistant district attorney whose teen son becomes a murder suspect.
– Mark Ruffalo in “I Know This Much is True,” a six-parter that starts Sunday on HBO. With the help of editing, he plays twins (shown here). One of them is schizophrenic … which is not to be confused with when Paul Rudd recently played a guy and his clone in “Living With Yourself” on Netflix. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 5, 2020

Stories

Bush profile: A cheerleader turns presidential

For four noisy – and kind of cheerful – decades, there was nothing presidential about George W. Bush.
Often, “he would be drinking, carousing and having fun,” Charlie Younger, a boyhood friend, says in s new PBS documentary.
He made friends easily, but stumbled at work and at life. One night, he got a driving-under-the-influence ticket; another, he crashed his car into garbage cans and challenged his father to a fight.
But then came the flip side. That’s what makes the film – “American Experience: George W. Bush,” 9-11 p.m. Monday and Tuesday (May 4-5) – so interesting. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 1, 2020