The situation with situation comedies today is no laughing matter. When the news shows for fall were announced this spring, there were few comedies on the list – and one was a reboot of The Wonder Years. The best new comedies that are made today, many for streaming services, could compete for awards as dramas,
The Golden Globes has long been dismissed as a Fake Awards show, run by an elite mob of elusive hacks who give statues out to the highest bidders. That hasn’t stopped viewers from tuning in each year — in fact, The Globes viewership has stayed steady while Oscar and Emmy viewership has seen steep declines
I was just starting university in 1977 when a strange little show became something of an obsession: Fernwood 2Nite. It was spun-off from the equally odd and hilarious Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman with TV comedy legend Norman Lear in on both productions. Alan Thicke was among the Fernwood producers. The series mocked local, small-market TV
By the time I started covering television in the mid-’80s, one of the titans of the industry was already switching sides — Fred Silverman. The native New Yorker, who passed away Thursday at 82, did what nobody before or since has ever accomplished — he was the top programming exec at each one of the
Wednesday night was a nostalgic night, but also an extraordinary night in broadcast network television. There were two half season finales on CBS and Fox: Survivor and The Masked Singer. With the best storytellers in comedy and drama having migrated to cable networks such as HBO and streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and
Wednesday night, Norman Lear and Jimmy Kimmel go back Live in Front of a Studio Audience. The 97-year-old television showrunning legend and the ABC late night talk show host return with a second live special. This time they will again re-stage a brand new presentation of a script from Lear’s pivitol ’70s sitcom, All in
If you take one cue from Sunday night’s 71st annual Emmy Awards make it this: don’t wait another day to catch up and see what all the fuss is about with Fleabag. The British series, available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video, won Best Comedy, Best Direction and its star and creator, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, won
Wednesday night’s “Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s ‘All in the Family’ and ‘The Jeffersons’” was an uplifting homage; a sweet valentine to TV in the ’70s. If you’re old enough to have watched these classic sitcoms back in the day, then this night was for you. I could have just looked