Monday TV: Two from Gordon Ramsay
It was never clear what exactly the differences were supposed to be between “Hell’s Kitchen” (Fox, 8 p.m.) and “Master Chef” (Fox, 9 p.m.). Yes, professional chefs were in the…
Sunday TV: New Western, Finale of ‘Thrones’
The Western is alive and well, judging from ratings of last week’s “Hatfields & McCoys,” which beat most everything on TV. Seems just the right time, then, to introduce “Longmire”…
Saturday TV: Fixing Lives, Many Alices
Iyanla Vanzant -- the author, talk show host, inspirational speaker and no relation to Little Steven -- has a new show on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network in which she counsels…
Friday TV: ‘Whale Wars’ Returns, Magic Ends
The guys from “Whale Wars” (Animal Planet, 9 p.m.) return for a new season, energized. The problem is, so are the Japanese whaling fleet they’ve been following. Weather doesn't cooperate…
Thursday TV: Ballet Dancers, Mountain Men
From a network whose other new reality show this week, “The Catalina,” was so tawdry that E! wouldn’t have touched it, tries to class things up with “Breaking Pointe” (The…
Wednesday TV: Dogs and Hockey on Network TV
You know things are going to be thin on network TV this summer when one of the first new shows is a straight up knockoff of “The Dog Whisperer.” “Dogs…
Tuesday TV: Al Qaeda in Yemen, Jeans in the East
Leave it to brave journalists to infiltrate the Al Qaeda compounds in Yemen. The Guardian’s Ghaith Abdul-Ahad does so, and with a camera crew for “Frontline” (PBS, 10 p.m, check…
‘Hemingway & Gelhorn’ vs. ‘Hatfields & McCoys’
Among its other uses, Memorial Day is a time to mark summer’s start, when people spend less time with their TV shows, networks take off their best shows, fill time…
Also on Monday: Memorial Day Fare
One of the few good things to come out of the current, seemingly endless wars are some stellar documentaries, reflecting what’s really going on in places like Afghanistan. There, the…
On Tonight: Fraud in Fins
One of P.T. Barnum’s first major frauds was something he called the Feejee Mermaid, a kind of lurid combination of monkey and fish with paper mache that brought in the…