> The atmosphere on this week’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE was far more relaxed now that last week’s Lindsay Lohan Extravaganza Express has left town.  That didn’t make it a great episode–SNL is lucky to manage 1 or 2 of those in a season–but it had its share of laughs. Jonah Hill was a good choice […]

  After almost 4 decades (!) on the air, it’s a little silly to describe any given SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE episode, or even season, as “critical” or “vital.”  Nevertheless, this is a big transition year for the show, with such veterans as Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis and Fred Armisen (on top of Kristin Wiig the […]

  Coming off its acclaimed, Emmy-winning production of Grease, FOX had the holiday live TV musical market cornered this year, NBC having opted out of its planned Bye Bye Birdie in favor of a Spring 2018 Jesus Christ Superstar.  FOX zigged a bit from past practices, choosing the recent (and short-lived) Broadway musical adaptation of […]

> A program note:  tonight at 9PM, HBO will premiere the documentary BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD, which screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival; it will then air many more times on the network’s channels.  It’s a fascinating, extremely well structured look at a point in 1970s pop culture history that’s been largely forgotten […]

  If tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE didn’t have much to recommend it–and it didn’t–blame can’t be put on its very busy host and musical guest Bruno Mars.  Mars did everything that was asked of him, and actually supplied the episode’s highlight, a rapid-fire series of musical impersonations (in the framework of a Pandora Radio sketch) […]

          GO ON:  TUESDAYS 9PM ON NBC   WHAT IT’S SAYING:  Chandler Bing… um, Matthew Perry is back!  Still sarcastically quipping to hide his deeper feelings after all these years.   WHAT IT’S REALLY SAYING:  Also back:  Dear John.  With a dash of a (less bizarre) Community, as the oddball grief […]

  Tonight’s PETER PAN LIVE proved that NBC, and producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, had learned some valuable lessons from last year’s successful but often painful production of The Sound of Music.  Chief among them was that it’s a better idea to anchor your show with an actress who can sing (and sing showtunes) […]

    It wasn’t so long ago that the announcement of an epic period love story starring Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen as war correspondent Martha Gellhorn and legendary novelist Ernest Hemingway, directed by Philip Kaufman, the man behind The Right Stuff, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Henry & June, premiering at the Cannes […]