All articles filed in television

Steven Bochco passed away yesterday at age 74.  For a generation of television viewers, he was a visionary in television drama.  He experimented with new techniques and storylines, he created new aesthetics in drama, and changed the way we watched prime time television forever. Today’s blog post shows many of Bochco’s greatest television programs –…

It seemed such an innocuous little television skit.  Two minor characters on The Simpsons, Principal Seymour Skinner and his boss, Superintendent Chalmers, have a little three-minute storyline in an episode called “22 Short Films About Springfield.”  In the storyline, Skinner invites Chalmers to dinner, then discovers that the dinner is burning.  Rather than tell Chalmers…

We live in a time when special effects in motion pictures and in television have really advanced beyond anything we could ever previously imagine.  Realistic worlds.  Spectacular alien beings.  Awesome plotlines thaqt draw millions of fans to message boards and to Internet fan sites for discussion and discourse. Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, you…

Last year, four of the major broadcast networks debuted time-travel programs.  Two were based on movie properties – ABC’s Time After Time (H.G. Wells chases Jack the Ripper to modern-day New York), and the CW’s Frequency (modern-day police detective communicates with father from 20 years ago through ham radio).  One was a comedy, Fox’s Making…

My Star Trek fandom is – well – balanced.  If I enjoy a TV series, I’ll watch it from start to finish and over and over again.  Loved the original series.  Loved Next Generation. Even loved Voyager. But after one season of Star Trek: Discovery, the new Star Trek iteration on my CBS All Access…

I do enjoy a good documentary now and again … especially ones that expose the seamier, grittier side of corporations, businesses and organizations. Which is why I’ve started following a new podcast, and have recently binge-watched a new Netflix documentary series.  Oh yeah, and I’m waiting for new episodes of an old CNBC favorite. Let…

You heard me correctly.  I will not watch ESPN for the next two weeks.  I will not listen to ESPN on my car radio on my way to or from anywhere.  No Mike and Mike, no NFL Countdown, none of that.  This boycott begins now, and will end on October 24, 2017. And this is…

I’m becoming more and more intrigued in watching The Orville, Seth McFarlane’s sci-fi comedy-drama homage to Star Trek.  Yeah, I know, people who watch The Orville are frustrated Trekkors who think that the new Star Trek: Discovery is a Trek show that lost its way, and that The Orville is the Galaxy Quest TV series…

Every so often, I find a vintage television show on YouTube that catches my interest.  And for various reasons, I want to find out more about it. Such is the case with an Australian program called Agro’s Cartoon Connection. If you tuned on your Oz TV in the mid-1990’s, you might have seen a puppet…