Monthly Archives: January 2011

From its origins as a satiric newspaper in Wisconsin, the Onion has become something of an empire suddently this month with the premieres of both “The Onion News Network” on IFC and “Onion SportsDome” on Comedy Central. Both expertly parody the slickest excesses of their targets with the dense parody found in its publications and [...]

Joan and Melissa Rivers are back on cable, but not on the red carpets where they stood sentinel for so long. We’ve done it,” says Melissa, who stars with her mother on “Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best” that started this week on WE. The fun has gone out of it, says Joan Rivers.  “When [...]

One weak spot on the three-hour comedy night on NBC Thursday, which resulted in pretty good ratings for both “The Office” and “Parks & Recreation,” seen by 8.2 million and 6.1 million respectively, was the measly 4.1 million who saw the pilot for the new “Perfect Couples.” The show had theoretically premiered before.  After the [...]

I wasn’t surprised to see that “Harry’s Law” did fairly well in its debut this week, drawing 11 million viewers. There may be a lingering desire for the mix of humor, law, political speech-making and absurdity that kept “Boston Legal” on the air so long. “Harry’s Law” is the first new show from creator David [...]

CBS kept the company line when discussing Charlie Sheen, who stars as a cad on TV’s most successful comedy and ends up in headlines for his cavorting with call girls and porn stars Just as Chuck Lorre played dumb for a joke when the issue came up during the last TV critics press tour, CBS [...]

Conan O’Brien sat forlornly in a director’s chair on his modest talk show set. It’d been months since the turmoil that yanked him from “The Tonight Show,” two months since he premiered his resulting on cable. And while he seems at last at ease and having fun in the relative shadowland of basic cable, after [...]