Today is the first of three days of PBS coverage on the Television Critics Association virtual winter press tour. The American publc broadcaster, coming off its 50th season, has packed a lot into today’s agenda, including the usual (but always appreciated) access to President and CEO Paula Kerger. Much of the rest of today and
The latest Numeris Top 30 list of English Canadian TV viewership is interesting for how uninteresting it is. The week in question is January 18 – January 24, 2021. A lot was going on that week, including the inaugeration of US president Joe Biden. Coverage of that event knocked a lot of shows that would
It’s getting to the point where I don’t want to even open my phone in the morning in order to avoid seeing who passed away in the night. Talk about Groundhog Day. Every time Wiarton Willie sees his shadow eight more celebrities die. Yesterday came news that Dustin Diamond, who played Screech on Saved by
As showrunner Tassie Cameron tells me on brioux.tv: the podcast, “The only thing harder than making a TV show in the first place is making a TV show during a pandemic and then making a cop show during Black Lives Matter.” Cameron should know. She and Sherry White are the production team behind Pretty Hard
Fasten your seatbelts for The Lady and the Dale. Actor-producers Mark Duplass (The Morning Show) and his brother Jay (Transparent) are behind HBO’s five-part series, which centres around an audacious 1970s auto scam. Like the best of these documentaries, it is a story no screenwriter would dare make up. Here are the main details: a
You type a lot of obits these days when you work the TV beat. This one hits home harder than most — Jim Bawden. It was Bawden’s TV column I read in the Toronto Star back when I was in high school and college. He covered the medium in print for 40 years (including an
I am a little obsessed with a show called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. That was the reason why, one year ago following a Television Critics Association press tour session, I followed Cicely Tyson out into the hall. Way back in the late ’60s, the distinguished actress was a guest star on an early episode
In 2015, PBS aired a Pioneers of Television special saluting Mary Tyler Moore. Much of the special, of course, centred on Moore’s seminal sitcom of the early- to mid-’70s. The series was designed around Moore but the early seasons featured a trio of top TV performers: Moore as “make it on her own” career girl