Committing yourself for 12 hours to any TV production is a big deal. But before you decide you don't have the time for Ken Burns' new multipart documentary, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," consider just giving it a 30-minute tryout.

Watch the first half hour Sunday on PBS, and I bet you will become hooked on one of the best and most rewarding viewing experiences of the TV year. This is a film with both beauty and brains -- it is gorgeous to look at, it will make you think and possibly even stir your soul.

A history of the nation's great parks might not sound as hot and toe-tappingly transgressive as the saga of jazz or as action-packed and heart-rending as the Civil War, two American narratives that Burns has explored in landmark films for public television. But the parks have their own power, and part of it comes from a visual glory that neither of those other two topics inherently held.

Continue reading "Ken Burns' 'National Parks' film has beauty, brains" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (32)
Categories: PBS
        

If you want a lovely TV escape from the uncertainty, anxiety and rancor of American life these days, tune in PBS for the debut of "Inspector Lewis, Series II" Sunday night at 9 on Maryland Public Television.

In a radio review I did last week for WYPR-FM, I described  my reaction to the first few minutes of Sunday night's episode as feeling like someone was pouring honey over my brain. It was that relaxing and sweet.

The stress, agitation and madness of dealing with media unpleasantness caused by the likes of cable shouters Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann all that day just melted away as Lewis (Kevin Whately) and his snarky sergeant, DS Hathaway (Laurence Fox), entered the hallowed halls of Oxford to see which crazy member of the academic community was killing people this week.

UPDATE 8:15 p.m Sunday: What a literary bunch we are. Everybody except one gave the right answer. As you can see from the time of the comments, Sherry T. was the first, and so she wins. I'll contact her with some options. But the Z on TV video archive is well stocked, and we will be doing this more often particularly with higher end stuff like these Brit mysteries. Now please go watch "Lewis" and stop back tonight or tomorrow and let me know what you think. And thanks! Z

(Kevin Whately as Inspector Lewis on Masterpiece/Mystery)

Continue reading "'Inspector Lewis' - Escape with a fine Brit mystery " »

Posted by David Zurawik at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (31)
Categories: PBS
        

Wouldn't it be nice if American television cared as much about the composition of the Supreme Court as it did Michael Jackson?

Sadly, that's not the country or the media universe we live in, but the two most reliable sources of news and information in American TV will be on the case Monday morning when the Senate confirmation hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor begin.

Cable channel CNN and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer will offer live coverage, and that means everyone with a TV set will have access. For Maryland viewers, the good news is that Maryland Public Television says it will carry the NewsHour coverage -- local carriage is not an automatic, as local PBS outlets can opt out.

Continue reading "Where to turn for TV coverage of Sotomayor hearings" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: CNN, Cable and Network News, MPT, PBS
        

Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes, an American Masters PBS documentary about one of the nation's most distinctive and beloved humorists, doesn't debut until Wednesday night. But I am writing about this remarkable American Master film now to give you time to clear your schedule or set your TiVo to make sure you do not miss it.

Nobody does biography like American Masters, the PBS signature series founded by Baltimore native Susan Lacy. In recent years, some entries in the series have a felt a little rushed and thin, but when this series gets it right the result is stunning. American Masters has not gotten a biography this right since its dazzling film on Leonard Bernstein that Lacy herself directed.

The producer and director here is Peabody and Emmy Award winner Peter Rosen, and he and his crew foillowed Keillor and his Prairie Home Companion crew around the country for most of a year to make the documentary. The power of this film is in the revealing -- and even transcendent -- moments that Rosen captures with his lens.

Continue reading "Don't miss this inspired PBS film on Garrison Keillor " »

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: PBS
        

David Suchet returns to Masterpiece Mystery Sunday at 9 p.m. in what may turn out to be the longest running performance by an actor in a single role ever.

This is the 20th year he's been doing Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, and he is, again, flawless.

There are only two books being done--Mrs. McGinty's Dead and tonight's offering, Cat Among the Pigeons-- this season. If you can only catch one, make it tonight's.

If you remember your Christie--and who doesn't--this one takes place at a ritzy boarding school for young ladies and the staff starts dropping dead. (The gym teacher, known in Christie land as the "games mistress," goes first. She more than deserved it.)

Continue reading "David Suchet flawless in new Hercule Poirot on PBS" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: PBS
        

After 14 years of going solo at the PBS anchor desk, Jim Lehrer is expected to announce Tuesday at a programming conference in Baltimore that The NewsHour wth Jim Lehrer will return to a co-anchor format in the fall.

Lehrer, who will turn 75 on May 19, will be joined at the anchor desk by a rotating cast of correspondents including Gwen Ifill, Judy Woodruff and Jeffrey Brown.

The dean of network anchormen underwent a heart valve procedure last year that kept him away from the show for several months. But Lehrer told the Sun he was in excellent health and felt fit as ever as he prepared to moderate a presidential debate last fall. And while he has occasionally been absent from the anchor desk of The NewsHour during the last year, he has been a strong on-air presence through the election and the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Continue reading "Jim Lehrer's PBS newscast to get co-anchor, new look " »

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Cable and Network News, PBS
        

One of the more shameful aspects of non-fiction film making in this nation involves the lack of major projects chronicling the Native American experience.

The lack of historical storytelling about Native Americans is the best evidence I know to support the cynical cultural studies argument that history is merely the stories told by those who won the wars and hold the power.

I fear that We Shall Remain, a five-part series that starts Monday night on PBS, arrives on too fragmented a TV landscape and at a time when viewers are too preoccupied with the current economic crisis to take much notice of any historical epic that demands a major commitment of time.

But give PBS and the American Experience series great praise for trying to make sure that the Native American narrative is told in such a way that it reflects the truth of that experience and finds a home in the nation's consciousness and conscience.

Continue reading "PBS tells Native American history with power, care" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Documentaries, PBS, TV Review
        

Peabody Awards for 2008 will go to one of the most diverse and socially-responsible lineups of programs in the history of television's oldest and most prestigious award. They range from ABC TV's serialized drama, Lost and HBO's John Adams miniseries to CNN's coverage of the presidential election and NBC's Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. YouTube, Saturday Night Live and The Onion were also honored.

In terms of Baltimore flavor, ABC News won for its Hopkins documentary, a sequel to Hopkins 24/7 that followed the lives of doctors and patients at the world-renowned hospital. WBAL-TV (Channel 11), Baltimore's NBC affiliate, will share a Peabody with 24 other stations owned by Hearst-Argyle -- for reporting by a TV group on political candidates and races.

"All-access filmmaking in the corridors and operating rooms of a fabled teaching hospital produced human drama of open-heart intensity," the judges said of the Hopkins series.

Continue reading "From Hopkins series to SNL, Peabodys get it right" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: ABC, Baltimore Television, NBC, PBS
        

This might come as a shock to readers who have been following the screwy programming exploits of Maryland Public Television at this blog the last four months, but MPT has finally done something right -- something very right. It has produced a solid, in many respects, first-rate biography of former Gov. William Donald Schaefer.

The one-hour film, titled Citizen Schaefer, will premiere at 9 p.m. Monday on MPT, and it is worth going out of your way to see. For long-time Baltimore and Maryland residents, it vividly brings back a sense of the 1960's political tumult out of which Schaefer, the political figure, emerged. For more recent arrivals to the area, it will help explain the peculiar politics of this city, state and region.

The best thing about the film: As much of an appreciation of Schaefer as it is, and as much as it sidesteps the darker side of behind-closed-doors politics in places like Baltimore in the 1960s, the production is not a simplistic one-dimensional whitewash of the man and his career.

Continue reading "MPT has a winner in film on William Donald Schaefer" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Baltimore Television, Documentaries, PBS, TV Review
        

Continue reading "Let Gov. O'Malley know how you feel on MPT tonight" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Baltimore Television, PBS, TV and Politics