Let's catch up here at Z on TV with some of my other print and podcast work on the new fall network season. It should all be right here every day for regular readers of this blog, but it often doesn't work out that way. Don't get me started. I'm ready to rant.

So, here are three pieces of the fall lineup that I would like to hear your thoughts on. First, this post includes my full review of Julianna Margulies in "The Good Wife." We have all had a chance to see it now -- even on TiVo -- so what do you think? I am especially wondering how women feel about this show. And here is my preview of "FlashForward," which premieres Thursday night on ABC.

And here's a link to a podcast I have up on Ken Burns "The National Parks: America's Best Idea," which debuts Sunday on PBS. You'll also find a podcast on Larry David's HBO series  "Curb Your Enthusiasm" there. And the production values on these podcasts are among the best you will hear anywhere online (or on the radio) because they come to us courtesy of Baltimore public radio station WYPR-FM with Lisa Morgan, co-producer of "The Signal" producing, and program director Andy Bienstock hosting the podcasts. So check them out.

Now, here's "The Good Wife" review. Please let me know what you think about this provocative series...

Continue reading "Talking new fall TV: From 'Good Wife' to Ken Burns" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)
Categories: TV Review
        

There are spoilers here, so stop now if you haven't see the sorry season finale of 24.

To all those readers who were mad at me for making fun of the melodramatic Jack-is-dying story line the past few weeks, is there one of you who in his or her heart of hearts can honestly say that wasn't one lame ending Monday night? There's Jack in a coma, and here comes Kim arriving to volunteer for the highly risky "stem cell procedure" that could bring him from sure-to-die, one-man biological time bomb back to life. But will it work?

The only thing they didn't do is have Jack's vital signs monitor flat line in the final seconds. Oh wait, they did that last week on Grey's Anatomy.

Continue reading "What a sorry season finale for Jack Bauer and 24" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (45)
Categories: Fox, Scripted Series, TV Review
        

What in the world ever happened to Heroes? Where did its TV magic and cultural mojo go?

As  I watched a screener of Monday night's season finale, I couldn't help but think back two years ago at this time when Heroes was the absolute buzz of the TV world. It seemed like I was writing a different trend story every week with Heroes at the center of it. Heroes as the new model for network drama with all its digital platforms. Heroes driving all the other networks to embrace serialized storytelling. Heroes finale viewing parties being set up on campuses from College Park to UCLA. Hiro (Masi Oka) as a template for the new global TV hero.

Not much of that this year, is there. Can you hear the fizzle?

Continue reading "Heroes season finale: Can you hear the fizzle?" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
Categories: TV Review
        

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
        

The great sports documentaries are the ones that manage to wed their game stories to the culture and politics of the times in which they were played.

HBO’s Thrilla in Manila, which chronicles the epic rivalry between heavyweight boxers Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, is steeped in the racial and social class issues that separated the two men and fueled the famous 1975 showdown in the Philippines from which the film’s title is drawn.

If Thrilla is not a great sports documentary, it’s on the waiting list – only a half cut or so off the pace. Catch it. If not Saturday night in its premiere at 8, then in one of its many HBO replays: Sunday, Tuesday, Friday or April 19, 22 and 28.

There is an added treat for Baltimore and Maryland area viewers: Radio station WYPR newsman Sunni Khalid is featured as one of the talking heads in the documentary, and Khalid is on the money time and again in his analyses of the fighters and the post-1960’s racial politics at play.

Continue reading "HBO's Thrilla in Manila: a knockout documentary" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Documentaries, HBO, TV Review
        

I love the concept, but I am not so crazy about the execution of College Life, a new reality TV series debuting Monday night on MTV.

The premise involves giving four entering freshmen at the University of Wisconsin digital cameras and letting them chronicle their passage from high school to life at one the nation's best academic institutions in one of its greatest cities, Madison, Wisconsin. (Full disclosure: If the "best" and "great" adjectives sound excessive, the fact that I graduated from UW might have played a tiny role in my choice of words.)

But, seriously, I was eagerly awaiting the screener on this series, because I wanted to see how the new, lightweight, easy-to-use digital filmmaking technology would work out in the hands of these freshmen. I have long thought the new cameras could be better used in everything from daily journalism to ethnographic studies. If reality TV had to be the testing ground where they first proved their worth at taking viewers inside subcultures and behind closed doors, so be it. I was also excited about the series, because I believe going off to college is such an important rite of passage for so many people -- one that often defines the arc of the rest of their lives.

Continue reading "MTV offers skewed look at college life from inside out" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Documentaries, TV Review
        

Southland, the new John Wells drama premiering Thursday night on NBC, is a first-rate cop drama. The question is whether prime-time network TV needs another cop drama right now given the fact that viewers are far more focused on the economy than big-city crime these days.

Another question might be whether readers need a preview from me given the fact that NBC seemed to have shown virtually every frame of Thursday’s night pilot last week during breaks in the finale of ER. Was not the relentless intrusion of promos for this series incredibly annoying? I wonder how many potential viewers NBC drove away with its overkill for the show that would replace ER this week in its Thursday night time period.

The series is set in Los Angeles, but it could be Baltimore or New York – only with smog and more sunshine.

Continue reading "NBC's Southland: Is there life left in the cop drama?" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)
Categories: NBC, Scripted Series, TV Review
        

Let me cut right to chase on Harper’s Island, the new CBS drama premiering Thursday night: There’s human blood in the water at the start, and the pilot closes on a character losing his lower torso in a slow and grisly fashion to the hack, hack, hack of a killer’s blade.

And that kind of horror-movie violence might be the very thing that makes this series a rating winner.

Mind you, I am not predicting such success – there are too many flaws in the ointment of this series for me to confidently do that. But I’m just saying that Hollywood makes tens of millions of dollars in movie theaters with inexpensive feature films that rely on the same formula of beautiful young people getting savagely butchered while on some kind of outing that was expected to be a happy event, so why not TV?

Continue reading "Harper's Island -- there's blood in the water on CBS" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: CBS, Scripted Series, TV Review
        

Amy Poehler earned my undying admiration for her work during the 2008 election on Saturday Night Live – particularly the Sarah Palin rap she delivered from the Weekend Update desk along with that fabulous chorus line of dancing moose. Because of her work during this monumental election, I will go to my grave singing her praises.

I need to say that because the preview of her new NBC series, Parks and Recreation, which premieres Thursday night at 8:30, is going to seem like a mixed one based on my reluctance to predict success for the show despite its several winning elements. 

With all the pre-air hype and snippets that NBC has shown during other prime-time shows everyone knows that it is intended to be a companion piece for The Office, another mockumentary workplace sitcom featuring a mid-level manager with a wildly inflated self-concept. It is created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, executive producers of The Office, and it will debut Thursday night sandwiched between two episodes of NBC’s most successful comedy. Nice launch if you can get it.

Continue reading "Amy Poehler has heavy lifting in new NBC sitcom" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 6:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: NBC, Scripted Series, TV Review
        

I stopped watching ER after the first five years, but I decided to give the finale a try after the spirited replies I received to my Thursday post about ER not being the equal of St. Elsewhere. While I was far from dazzled, I have to say creator John Wells took the series out with a respectable finale.

I especially liked the final scene with the ER team suiting up and standing ready to respond in the courtyard to the arriving fleet of emergency vehicles loaded with victims of an industrial explosion. Perhaps, it was one last tweaks at the critics who said the pilot looked more like a feature film and would never make it as a TV series -- because it was definitely a movie ending.

There were no brilliant or original threads in the finale, but I also liked the story line of Dr. Greene's daughter visiting with a group of prospective medical students. I wish, though, that Wells had cast the part a better. The actress playing Greene's daughter didn't do much but smile. A better performance by the young actress would have added a lot more emotion to the last shot we saw of her running into the hospital after Dr. Carter.

Continue reading "ER ends on a respectable note -- but nothing special" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (34)
Categories: Scripted Series, TV Review
        

It is a national day and night of celebration and mourning for fans of the long-running ER. 

I realize how dangerous it is to say anything less than gushing when fans are grappling with separation anxiety as they are today. But the truth is that St. Elsewhere was a more important and better medical drama. It was far more innovative, with much better writing. It was also groundbreaking in its handling of adult subject matter, and I dare anyone to come back here after the final credits roll and tell me that tonight's finale was better than the brilliant ending of St. Elsewhere. Remember the child and the snowy globe?

ER was a medical drama that wanted to be a soap opera, St. Elsewhere was a medical drama that wanted to be a Samuel Beckett play.

Still, ER was a great drama in terms of its cast and 15-year run, if nothing else, and tonight's finale does mark the end of an era.

Here's what I said in a piece on the finale at cnn.com, and I believe history will bear me out.

Continue reading "Go ahead and weep for ER, but it is no St. Elsewhere" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 7:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (27)
Categories: NBC, Scripted Series, TV Review
        

Premiering at 8 p.m. Wednesday on the MTV and LOGO cable channels, the 90-minute production tells the life story of Zamora, who emigrated as a child to the U.S. in 1980 as part of the Mariel boatlift from Cuba. About 125,000 refugees were allowed to leave the island by Cuban leader Fidel Castro in hopes of crossing to the United States in a flotilla of ill-equipped boats and ships. To its credit, the film includes bits of Zamora's life in Cuba as a child and the agonizing separation from several of his teenage brothers when the Cuban authorities denied them the chance to leave because they were of military age.

The focus of the film, though, is the span from when Zamora was 17 years old and found out he was HIV-positive to 22 when he died of AIDS. Shortly after getting the diagnosis he became an activist -- speaking to high school students in the Miami area about the disease. But he became a national and international figure in 1994 when he appeared on MTV's The Real World: San Francisco as the first openly gay, HIV-positive lead character on the series -- and in the history of prime-time TV. Pedro is made by Bunim-Murray, the production company that created The Real World.

Continue reading "MTV's Pedro -- reality TV and a life that still matters" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Reality TV, TV Review
        

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
        

When was the last time in the history of late-night shows that the featured guest and host chatted about "capital ratios," "credit default swaps" and "toxic assets"?

The answer is never until last night when President Barack Obama appeared on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno to try and reassure Americans that he had a plan and good people in place to get the country out of its economic crisis.

For all the ease with which Obama sat in the chair nearest Leno’s desk, right leg crossed over left, looking as smooth and cool as Tony Bennett as he sold his economic proposals for 35 minutes of air time, what a remarkable moment in TV history it was.

Continue reading "Leno and Obama: the TV talk show as political tool" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 1:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (54)
Categories: NBC, TV Review, TV and Politics
        

I just watched the HBO's live telecast of the New York stage production, Will Ferrell: You're Welcome America, A Final Night With George W. Bush, and I loved it.

I loved the concept -- even though it dates back to the earliest days of TV in the late 1940's -- of trying to use the medium to extend the Broadway stage into homes across the country. The idea has largely been abandoned, but it can still work for both the theater world, which needs TV money more than ever, and the pay cable industry, which desperately needs daring and exclusive programming that viewers cannot get anywhere else.

You're Welcome America certainly offered a healthy dose of vibrant, engaging, liberating and socially relevant programming Saturday night. And it offered me something I could not find anywhere else in popular culture -- closure to the eight-year presidencty of George W Bush. After seeing Ferrel's inspired mockery of Bush and his dangerously hapless tenure in office, I can finally let go of Bush, Cheney, Rove and all the rest.

Continue reading "HBO, Ferrell shine in bringing Bush stage satire to TV" »

Posted by David Zurawik at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: HBO, TV Review, TV and Politics