Posts Tagged ‘historical drama’
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Will”

  WILL:  Monday 9PM on TNT – If Nothing Else Is On… TNT’s WILL, a gloss on the early life of William Shakespeare (and an unacknowledged one on the movie Shakespeare In Love), would seem like an extreme o...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Hell On Wheels”

  HELL ON WHEELS:  Saturday 9PM on AMC HELL ON WHEELS has found a cozy spot for itself on Saturday nights, where the older audience available for TV-watching has given it comfortable total viewer numbers, if less impressi...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Peterloo” & “Viper Club”

  PETERLOO (Amazon – November 9):  Not so much a movie as an illustrated historical recitation.  Mike Leigh’s film concerns the brutal 1819 government militia attack on civilians listening to a public address...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Mad Men”

  MAD MEN:  Sunday 10PM on AMC Fresh episodes of MAD MEN will likely still be airing more than a year from now, so all the obituaries for the series that have been appearing lately run the risk of sounding like “Gen...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Finale Review: “Boardwalk Empire”

  BOARDWALK EMPIRE was, from its start, HBO at its best and most frustrating.  The show was sumptuously produced, on a scale that no other small-screen purveyor of content could match, famously including the recreation of...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

AFI FEST Film Review: “Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom”

  MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM:  Watch It At Home – More Like a Trudge The movies haven’t figured out what to do with Idris Elba.  The powerful, fiery actor has been spectacular on TV, first on The Wire and ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED FINALE REVIEW: “Bonnie & Clyde” – Part 2

  BONNIE & CLYDE saved its most idiotic inspiration for the end.  Up until its last few minutes, the second half of the Lifetime/A&E/History miniseries was perhaps marginally better than its first (which we dealt ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Da Vinci’s Demons”

  Starz’s DA VINCI’S DEMONS was unsatisfactory in just about every respect, all the way through to tonight’s Season 1 finale, a cluster of cliffhangers that resolved almost nothing.  Watching the end of ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “Turn”

  TURN:  Sunday 9PM on AMC Previously… on TURN:  In 1776, apolitical New York cabbage farmer Abe Woodhull (Jamie Bell) is pulled into spying for the colonial cause, inveigled by his old friends Ben Tallmadge (Seth ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Black Sails”

  From the viewpoint of its newly-concluded third season, the first 2 years of Starz’s BLACK SAILS feel like a very long and somewhat misguided prologue to where the series is now.  With Michael Bay as its leading E...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SHOWBUZZDAILY REVIEW: “42”

  42:  Watch It At Home – The Hallmark Baseball Hall of Fame It may well be that 42 is the Jackie Robinson movie audiences want.  It’s a straightforward, handsomely-produced, inspirational telling of a genuin...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Halt and Catch Fire”

  A serialized drama without major stars, a familiar genre or a grabby premise simply can’t afford to take half its season figuring itself out.  (Having a title that says absolutely nothing about what the series is ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Finale Review: “Hell On Wheels”

  The final season of AMC’s HELL ON WHEELS was a sprawl, made worse by the network’s decision to play the season in two chunks separated by a year.  This last stretch of 7 episodes was particularly choppy.  O...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Darkest Hour” & “Mudbound”

  DARKEST HOUR (Focus/Universal – Nov. 22):  A shameless piece of rabble-rousing Hollywood biography, directed by Joe Wright and written by Anthony McCarten, and served hot on a platter to Oscar voters.  The subjec...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Hell On Wheels”

  The fourth (and as it turns out penultimate) season of AMC’s HELL ON WHEELS was its most conventional and choppily focused.  Under showrunner John Wirth (the show’s 3rd in that post), the neo-western has aba...
by Mitch Salem