Also on Tuesday: Cops in the 1960s on TNT
Hope the producers of the new "Public Morals" (TNT, 10 p.m.) got to the "Mad Men" auction for 1960s duds for their similarly period era series. Except that the crooked…
Monday TV: Carrying Cameras and Guns
Hollywood action films and video games helped shape Matthew Van Dyke, a sheltered only child from Baltimore who, after graduation from Georgetown, began a series of filmed motorcycle trips as…
Sunday TV: Walking Back the ‘Dead’
Because it's the biggest scripted thing on cable "The Walking Dead" (AMC, 6:30 p.m.) has inevitably led to copycats, including its own spin-off. Unfortunately, "Fear The Walking Dead" (AMC, 10…
New Tonight: ‘Blunt Talk’ on Starz
It’s always funny when someone with such a stentorian voices as Patrick Stewart lends itself to comedy. Tonight he does so as a cable news personality Walter Blunt, who seems…
Also on Saturday: Tig Notaro’s Comedy
Near the end of her deliberately-paced standup special at Boston’s Wilbur Thaeater, “Tig Notaro: Boyish Girl Interrupted” (HBO, 10 p.m.) does something completely disarming. The comic, a double mastectomy patient,…
Playlist 8-21-15
A very strange night for the return of Friday Night Rock for the first time in nearly a month, since the CD players were not working. That meant I didn't…
Friday TV: Inside London’s National Gallery
Frederick Wiseman is the master of cinema verite -- seemingly turning on a camera and letting it run. But he finds out all kinds of things this way in investigating…
Hilarious Homage to the Documentary
For their final show on “Saturday Night Live, two years ago, Fred Armisen and Bill Hader did a sketch Seth Meyers wrote about a made-up punk rocker named Ian Rubbish.…
Also on Thursday: Downey and Dirty
He wasn’t the first right wing blowhard on the airwaves (that distinction may go to Joe Pyne). But Morton Downey Jr. brought that kind of confrontational bullying to his syndicated…
Other Things I’ve Written Lately
In recent weeks, I've written two different takes on a new interactive exhibit at the National Air & Space Museum. One for the Washington Post, the other for Smithsonian Magazine. Other…