Monday TV: Disapproving ‘Approval Matrix’
The adaptation of New York magazine's reliable and smart back page feature into a TV show is just the kind of thing that would land it in the middlebrow/despicable field.…
Sunday TV: Teen Choice, Shark Week
The 2014 "Teen Choice Awards" (Fox, 8 p.m) has already had more slime than Nickelodeon's Kid Choice Awards. In fact, the spectacular water main break at the UCLA campus caused…
Letter from The Beach
Some still advertise the beach as the place to "get it away from it all." It is to laugh. Certainly, it's a time I look forward to each summer. But…
Saturday TV: An Almost Outstanding ‘Outlander’ Adaptation
Fans of the Diana Gabaldon series of romantic books have already taken to the handsome adaptation of "Outlander" (Starz, 9 p.m.). More than 1 million have watched the debut online;…
Bloody Early Medicine on ‘The Knick’
"The Knick" (Cinemax, 10 p.m.) begins with a kind of a test: If you can make it through the first 10 minutes of an early, 1900 C-section with all of…
Also on Friday: Late Night Watergate
Among the specials marking the 40th anniversary of the resignation of Richard Nixon, you might have heard that it took a long while for Watergate as a crime to make…
Also Friday: ‘Jonah from Tonga’ Returns
Of the three characters from his "Summer Heights High" series, Chris Lilley has already done a spinoff concentrating on the spoiled private school snob Ja'mie. He now moves to the…
Thursday TV: Garfunkel and Oates’ Debut
Song parodies are having another moment, with Weird "Al" Yankovic debuting at No. 1 and the leading female duet funny song team starting its new series finally, "Garfunkel and Oates"…
Mailbag: Another Side of Danny Kaye
So I wrote about Danny Kaye the other day, or at least a story about a guy who does a one-man Danny Kaye show, for the Washington Post. Then I…
Wednesday TV: All About Altman
The great film director Robert Altman, who created a style and a number of greatly entertaining films, is the subject of a new documentary by Ron Mann, "Altman" (Epix, 8…