Tag: television reviews

Alan Clarke (Source: Wikipedia)

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Underground filmmakers are often cited as an influence by subsequent directors while going unrecognized in the mainstream of their time. But during the peak years of his truncated career, and although never exactly a household name, British director Alan Clarke was far from being underground. (more…)

Gene Wilder as Lord Ravisbane.

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I was a modest, 20-year old television baby by 1972, and drifted on and off to the newly-minted network, PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). It had taken over in 1969 from NET (National Educational Television), and I found myself drawn to it, especially its drama. It’s hard to believe nowadays, but PBS in its early years actually aired American dramas that were free of English accents and upper-class angst. (more…)

Trey MacDougal (Kyle MacLachlan) and Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) — no longer the ideal American couple.

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I gave the Sex and the City revival series And Just Like That . . . a fair chance, but after three hours of diversity, wokeness, and “body positivity,” I found myself returning to binge on the original series with its almost universally white — and glamorous — cast.

I enjoyed the series when it was on HBO, but even as an unserious twentysomething, there was something about the WASP character’s arc that rubbed me the wrong way. Now older, wiser, and fully accepting of my own “white positivity,” I’ve realized on my second watch-through that the character Charlotte York’s marriage, divorce, and remarriage is an allegory for the Jewish displacement of WASPs as America’s most powerful ethnic group. (more…)

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I enjoy stories about intelligent people solving problems, hence my love for detective and espionage dramas, elements of which also spill over into the best superhero and science fiction. For instance, my favorite fictional character is Sherlock Holmes, who is not only a detective but does favors for British intelligence in the person of his brother Mycroft, plays superhero to Professor Moriarty’s supervillain, and of course employs science, both real and fictional.

I have always loved James Bond movies, but more for the action and spectacle than for the displays of intelligence work. (more…)

How does she know that “11 Inches of Snow in Minnesota” is my porn star name?

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Third commercial break

There’s another spot from GM, and after that is an ad for Pillsbury Plus Yellow Cake. It has pudding in the mix! Nom nom nom . . . (Speaking of annoying piss-ants, Saddam Hussein ordered his nuclear weapons researchers to buy 550 metric tons of it, according to anonymous sources in the Pentagon. (more…)

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

My young heart suddenly sank like Ted Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick on November 18, 1978. I discovered that the Star Wars Holiday Special was being shown on TV — but that it had aired the day before! (more…)

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I would be lying if I said I try to avoid pop culture, because it really doesn’t take much effort. When you are young, you pick stuff up from being around other young people, and if you are a parent, you pick stuff up from your kids. But I’m old and have no kids, and I find that if you don’t listen to the radio in the car and only watch Turner Classic Movies, it is actually quite easy to completely lose touch with pop culture. I’m perfectly happy having no idea who the latest singers and teen heartthrobs are. (more…)

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Nathan Fielder is a Jewish comedian and actor born in Vancouver in 1983. After a false start in the business world, he got his big break in 2007 on CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, as a socially awkward consumer affairs correspondent hosting a recurring segment called “Nathan on Your Side.” Fielder later developed this premise into his Comedy Central “reality” series Nathan for You, which premiered in 2013 and ran for four seasons.

I’ve heard him described as a blend of Woody Allen and Larry David, and indeed, he is ultra-Jewy. Fielder is a real Jewy Jewstein, as Howard Stern would say. (more…)

The Duggar family in 2021, from their official Facebook page.

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Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets (2023)
Directed by Olivia Crist & Julia Willoughby Nason

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. — Psalm 127:3-5 KJV (more…)

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It ought to be mighty difficult to make a bad production — be it documentary, fictionalized, semi-fictionalized — out of the career of master spy Kim Philby. Yet, somehow the makers of the six-part mini-series A Spy Among Friends have succeeded in that grim task. (First broadcast a year ago in England on ITVX; in America it’s streaming on MGM+.) This is not from lack of talent or production values. Rather, the problem appears to be poor knowledge of the subject and lack of respect for the available material, most notably the wonderful Ben Macintyre book of the same title, which inspired the TV series but did not inform it to any great extent — alas! (more…)

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Disney’s six-part miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi is so bad I was certain it was the work of Jar Jar Abrams. But no, it is the creation of someone named Deborah Chow.

Disney’s first Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, got off to a promising start. But I feared it was running out of ideas when the story kept returning to Tatooine. Another series, The Book of Boba Fett, never left Tatooine, and the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries begins and ends there. Tatooine rips off a lot from Arrakis, but sorry, it is not the most important planet in the universe. (more…)

Michael Tirrell James

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I recently wrote about the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and his then-mysterious “adopted black son” whose existence Johnson only ever referenced for entirely cynical reasons. In 2019 he claimed before Congress that he had asked his adopted black son what he thought about slavery reparations and that he was against it. This was the first time he had ever mentioned having a black son, nor does it appear in any of his official biographies. (more…)

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I was surprised at how much I liked Disney’s live action Star Wars series Andor, so I watched the Mouse’s next Star Wars series, Ahsoka. It was a trudge across vast, dreary plains of pulp, nostalgia, and estrogen-sodden wokeness — punctuated with peaks of genuine magic and drama.

The character of Jedi apprentice Ahsoka Tano, an orange-skinned alien, was created by George Lucas and Dave Filoni and first introduced in the 2008 animated film The Clone Wars, which focused on her relationship with Anakin Skywalker. (more…)