All articles filed in television

Originally published in Animato! in 1997, updated in 2007 The Atlanta Flames hockey game just entered its first intermission period, and the television commentators discussed the early action. Most viewers took that cue to head for the fridge, the bathroom, the wrestling match on another station. A few moments later, the next picture the home…

Once upon a time, there was a sitcom on network television that was so scandalous, so polarizing, so completely over the top, that it caused morality groups to clutch their pearls in shock. It forced local television stations to replace the program with their own local shows, so as to not offend their local audience.…

There was a time when Cartoon Network had some great original animation programs that were eye-catching and fun to watch. You know, Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack and Johnny Bravo and The Powerpuff Girls. I liked The Powerpuff Girls, it was a mixture of pop culture and bright-colored fun, with three super-powered heroines righting wrongs…

Every year, around this time, the major networks announce their new fall television lineups. And CBS yesterday announced that one of the new sitcoms they’re adding for the 2021-2022 season is a show called Ghosts. Here’s the premise. A millennial couple inherit an old building, and they plan on turning it into a bed and…

Back around 1988 or so, the brand new Fox network added a science fiction drama to their lineup. It was a reboot of the 1986 film Alien Nation, which was a science fiction buddy-cop movie. Sorta. But this iteration of the TV series was different. Very different. Because, as we know, the best science fiction…

I, like many of my generation, adored MAD Magazine. I enjoyed the subversive humor and parodies, the off-the-wall Don Martin cartoons, the Spy v. Spy battles from Antonio Prohias, the hilarious margin cartoons from Sergio Aragones, the Al Jaffee “fold-in” on the back cover, yeah, all of that. Now I’m aware that there were at…

It’s 1968, and kids like me are plopped in front of our TV sets, chomping on our Saturday morning Frosted Flakes and grooving to The Banana Splits, a children’s TV series with plenty of comedy and adventure. But I’m not writing about the Banana Splits today. I’m writing about one of the show’s many programs…

The headline says it. Mystery Science Theater 3000, the show that takes old movies and riffs on them – and riffs hard on them – seems to have more lives than a cat. Originally created as a public access program in Minneapolis, the show was picked up by Comedy Central, and was at one point…