All articles filed in television

I’ve blogged about Saturday morning cartoons before. Many times, actually. If you had the opportunity on a Saturday morning to get up early, fix yourself a bowl of Sugar Smacks and plop your 7-year-old tuchus in front of the television for 5 1/2 hours until your folks got out of bed and told you to…

For those of you who thought television shows like 90 Day Fiancee and Married At First Sight were the nadir of reality TV, I need to bring you back to the halcyon days of 2007. At the time, the cable channel VH1 had a successful run of reality TV shows, including The Surreal Life, then…

Jules Bass, the “Bass” of Rankin-Bass Animation, passed away recently. And with him, the last remaining vestige of one of the most prolific runs of stop-motion and cell animation for early television. You might know Rankin-Bass Animation for their holy trinity of children’s Christmas stories – Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and Santa…

While Saturday morning cartoons were the best way to survive the weekend – a nice big bowl of Froot Loops and 4 1/2 hours of animation while your parents slept – Sunday morning children’s fare was kinda hit and miss. I shall explain. In many cases, Sunday morning cartoon shows were essentially either Saturday morning…

I recently saw a Facebook post in which someone tried to redraw various real rock and roll bands as the equivalent of Saturday morning cartoon bands. Here’s one of the images. Okay, that’s kinda cute. But what you young kids might not realize is that back in the day, when you get up on a…

At one point in time, I was hooked on the Discovery Channel documentary series Deadliest Catch. The show featured the cinema verite lives of Bering Sea crabfishers as they braved the wintery storms of Alaska’s waterways to haul millions of dollars worth of king crab, snow crab and Bairdi crab for our tables. The show…

Last night, NBC brought back the time-travel procedural show Quantum Leap. You remember, the one from about 30 years ago, where every episode featured this one guy who traveled back in time, landed in someone else’s body and had to figure out what went wrong and how to make things right, all guided by a…

I am a big, big fan of televised academic challenge shows. Heck, I’ve already earmarked the upcoming Capital One College Bowl show on NBC as must-watch programming. That being said, I need you to watch this academic competition show from Nigeria. It’s one of the more popular programs in that country, and it features young…

News off of the media website Deadline brought joy to my heart. Tepid joy, but joy nonetheless. One of my favorite science-fiction TV shows, the cyberpunk drama Max Headroom, might be returning to series television – with Matt Frewer playing the electronic avatar character. According to Deadline, AMC Networks is working with producer Elijah Wood…

It’s hard for me to get involved in a new television series. I’m not looking for formulaic procedurals, I’m not a big fan of yuk-yuk 22-minute all-is-resolved sitcoms, and it’s gotten to the point where I’m watching 10-episode streaming dramas because at least I’m sure they’ll have a beginning and a middle and an end…