Playlist 1-23-15
Back after a two week absence, returning to a newly cleaned and painted studio was a surprise and disorienting. Never did find the wifi password. Had the best intentions of…
Friday TV: A Magician’s Magician
Ricky Jay is not only a great magician, he's a great historian of that corner of entertainment and he's also an actor you've seen in a number of things, from…
Thursday TV: Rainn’s New ‘Backstrom’
It isn't easy to create a character like "House," who has a prickly personality but still manages to save the day. The latest attempt is the detective "Backstrom" (Fox, 9…
Wednesday TV: Restaurant Competition
Turns out I ate at one of the 16 restaurants battling it out on the new reality competition "Best New Restaurant" (Bravo, 10 p.m.) the other day. And I can…
Talese on Sinatra
On the last day of press tour Tuesday, at a panel for "The Italian Americans" premiering Feb. 17 on PBS, I got the chance to ask Gay Talese about Frank…
Tuesday TV: State of the Union and More
The annual State of the Union (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS, CNN, CSPAN, Fox News, MSNBC, BET, BBC America, Bloomberg TV, Fox Business, 9 p.m.) is our annual ritual of…
Two Recent Plays: ‘Beast’ and ‘T’
The renaissance of timeless animated Disney musicals occurred during the time of “Beauty and the Beast” more than 20 years ago. There followed the golden age of Disney stage musicals…
PBS Announces ‘Civil War ER’
After scoring big with British drama such that various "Masterpiece" projects will build out of the "Downton Abbey" run, PBS announced it would get into domestic drama now as well.…
An MLK Holiday Start for Larry Wilmore
It seems a little too perfect that "The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore" (Comedy Central, 11:30 p.m.), once named "The Minority Report" by the former "senior black correspondent" at "The…
Also on Monday: Military Whistleblowing
It's not easy to blow the whistle on a military platoon. That's what a 21-year-old Specialist Adam Winfield, an infantryman in Afghanistan learned when he tried, with the help of…