Amy Poehler’s documentary on Desi and Lucy premieres Friday on Amazon Prime Video. Lucille Ball and husband Desi Arnaz’s iconic sitcom I Love Lucy (1951-’57) can still be seen weekdays in the greater Toronto area (on Hamilton’s CHCH) as well as on streaming platforms (Prime Video, Apple TV or your Roku device). If you’re new
If you thought Aaron Sorkin had some ‘splainin’ to do for liberties taken with his biopic “Being the Ricardos,” you might want to compare it to this new documentary from a first-time director who knows from comedy — Amy Poehler. With the help of 23 hours of recorded conversations left behind by Lucille Ball, Poehler
Way back in July of 1960, TV Guide ran its 10th cover story on Lucille Ball. The headline was terse: “Humiliated and Unhappy.” Writer Dan Jenkins caught up with TV’s “zany redhead” two months after her divorce from Desi Arnaz and right before a career misstep in a Broadway musical called “Wildcat.” Jenkins wrote that
Aaron Sorkin takes liberties. The creator/executive producer of The West Wing moved a few facts around in telling the story of electronic television inventor Philo T. Farnsworth with his Broadway play “The Farnsworth Invention” (2007). For one thing, he wrote that Farnsworth was defeated in court by wiley RCA boss David Sarnoff over his patent
You’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do if you’re not celebrating 70 years of I Love Lucy. Television’s most enduring comedy began on Oct. 15, 1951. With the help of showrunner Jess Openheimer, Lucille Ball, who bounced from RKO comedies to chorus girl roles in movies, turned a radio hit into a TV sensation. She did
If you’re watching CBS tonight (Friday) and you notice the I Love Lucy episode is in colour, don’t tough that dial! Since there haven’t been any dials on TV screens in 25 years, that should be easy. The good news is that CBS is broadcasting another fully restored and digitized episode from the 1951-’57 series
It’s not an overstatement to say that the most influential sitcom in the history of television premiered 68 years ago today — I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball, a one time RKO chorus girl who stood out in a string of feature film dramas and comedies in the late ’30s and ’40s, became TV’s biggest star
Broadcast network TV has had more obituaries lately than the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. All the action is over on streaming, we are told, as Apple, Disney, Warners and others ramp up their VOD launches in a “Winter is Coming” battle to the death with Netflix, Amazon and others. Reports on the