Robert Lloyd
5:51 PM PDT, May 12, 2012
Review: 'Johnny Carson: King of Late Night' goes behind throne
Johnny Carson did not invent late-night television — he wasn't even the first (or second) host of "The Tonight Show," which he captained for 30 years until he quit the business cold in 1992 — but he is the most important person ever to have made it his home. His name may mean increasingly little to younger generations, but late-night is still very much the thing he created, shepherded by hosts formed in his image. Any time a talk-show host plays disaster for comedy, building more laughs on the back of a dud joke than he might be getting with a live one, you are watching the shade of Johnny Carson.
May 5, 2012
Review: Eddie Izzard the real prize in Syfy's 'Treasure Island'
"Treasure Island," the 1883 Robert Louis Stevenson novel about 17th century buccaneers sailing for buried booty, has been translated again to film, with Eddie Izzard as the one-legged, parrot-toting Long John Silver — a role previously inhabited by the likes of Wallace Beery, Orson Welles, Charlton Heston and Robert Newton, whose performance in the 1950 Disney version is what you imitate whenever you talk like a pirate.
May 1, 2012
TV review: 'Jesse Owens' on fast-forward
The Olympics are (almost) back, and it's a good time to sing again the ballad of Jesse Owens, the black American track star who put the lie to Adolf Hitler's master-race malarkey at the 1936 Summer Olympics by winning four gold medals. (It's never not a good time to sing that song, of course.) "Jesse Owens," premiering Tuesday on PBS SoCal as part of the series "American Experience," is the latest work to take up that inspiring tune.
April 20, 2012
Review: Julia Louis-Dreyfus makes a first-rate, funny 'Veep'
Armando Iannucci's droll, fleet "Veep," which premieres Sunday on HBO and stars Julia Louis-Dreyfusas Selina Meyer, vice president of the United States, has nothing to do with Sarah Palin, who once came close to occupying that post and bears a minor resemblance to the star. It is, rather, an Americanization of Iannucci's fitfully ongoing 2005 BBC series "The Thick of It" and its spun-off 2009 film "In the Loop," whose protagonists are minor ministers in the U.K. government, and which make comedy from the place where power and powerlessness, ambition and limitation overlap.
6:22 PM PDT, April 23, 2012
Television review: 'The L.A. Complex' twists the familiar
Oh, Canada, so near and yet so far. We share a language, albeit with different notions of how to pronounce "sorry" and "about"; we use your streets and your studios to stand in for America in our budget-conscious television shows, and your actors to represent Americans, and your film crews to record them. And yet your own television is something quite different.
April 5, 2012
TV review: From starlet to nun in 'God Is the Bigger Elvis'
"God Is the Bigger Elvis," Rebecca Cammisa's Oscar-nominated short subject, which comes to HBO Thursday — Holy Thursday, by the Catholic calendar — tells the story of Dolores Hart, who turned her back on Hollywood stardom in the early 1960s to become a Benedictine nun.
April 6, 2012
Television review: It's hard to fall under 'Magic City's' spell
"Magic City," an attractive, but frustrating new series from Starz about a Miami Beach luxury hotel, is the third drama this TV year, after the quickly dead "The Playboy Club" and the probably not returning "Pan Am," to be set in the middle of the 20th century. While on the face of it these shows seem like an attempt to draft off the cultural energy of "Mad Men," and may well be, they also represent in their small, halting way the birth of a new American genre, to join the western and the gangster film — midcentury stories of big dreams and dreamers, of prosperity and its undercurrents, set at the corner of Eisenhower and Kennedy, furnished with Eames chairs and cigarette machines.
April 14, 2012
Television review: 'NYC 22' on CBS walks a respectable beat
"NYC 22," which premieres Sunday on CBS, is about rookie policemen in the upper reaches of Manhattan. The newsworthy particulars are that it is the work of Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions; that it was created by Richard Price, who wrote the novels "The Wanderers" and "Clockers" (made into movies by Philip Kaufman and Spike Lee, respectively), the De Niro film "Mad Dog and Glory," Martin Scorsese's "The Color of Money" and several episodes of "The Wire"; and that its Price-penned pilot was directed by James Mangold ("3:10 to Yuma").
April 4, 2012
Television review: 'Best Friends Forever' won't last that long
"Best Friends Forever," which premieres Wednesday night, is NBC's second relationship comedy of the winter-spring semi-season, after the fine but blown-off "Bent." As with "Bent," only six episodes have been ordered, and though this is not in itself a portent of failure — the first season of "Seinfeld," which launched in the summer, lasted but five episodes — I don't see the network digging in for a longer haul. It's the sort of relatively realistic comedy it greenlights to its own later confusion.
March 31, 2012
Television review: 'The Killing' returns to the scene
When "The Killing" concluded its first season on AMC in June 2011, cries of dismay not heard since David Chase finished off "The Sopranos" with 10 seconds of carefully crafted dead air rang throughout the land. Seemingly ready to declare, after much hemming and hawing, that Seattle City Council President and mayoral candidate Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell) was the killer of teenager Rosie Larsen, it changed its mind in the final minutes, leaving many viewers, critics and citizens alike, feeling they had been victims themselves of an insult and an injury.
April 3, 2012
Television review: 'No Kitchen Required' travels far, feels too close
"No Kitchen Required" is a new show from BBC America in which three chefs from three corners of the English-speaking world travel to remote locations to have their way with the native cuisine, and vice versa. If the words"Top Chef" and"Survivor" were not uttered in the same sentence at some time while this series was being pitched, I will eat my own cooking.
October 14, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
Review: 'American Masters: Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound' on PBS
Her future boyfriend and sometime musical partner Bob Dylan was still in high school in Minnesota when Joan Baez first played Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass., in 1958 at age 17. We see her there, and then, in “Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound,” airing tonight on PBS as part of the series "American Masters" -- a teenager with long, dark hair; a Spanish guitar; and a mature mezzo-soprano voice. The next year, she appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and became famous. She made records that went gold. She was on the cover of Time.
1:45 PM PDT, March 22, 2012
Review: Like Don Draper, 'Mad Men' Season 5 is a work in progress
After 17 months, "Mad Men" returns to AMC, television and the universe Sunday night. I have seen the fifth season's two-hour opening episode. There is a party in it. I can say no more.
March 3, 2012
'Stevie TV' review: Stevie Ryan has a license to mock
Stevie Ryan, whose self-starring sketch comedy, "Stevie TV," premieres Sunday on VH1, is an overnight sensation several years in the making. Although Ryan is just now hitting what in old media terms constitutes the Big Time — that is, to say, she is now on an old medium — Ryan has been a New Yorker-profiled Internet star for a while now, best known for the YouTube videos she posted as the chola Little Loca, based on girls she knew and admired growing up in the California high-desert town of Victorville.
January 31, 2012
Television review: 'Key & Peele'
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, veterans of Fox's sketch comedy "MADtv," have a new series of their own, the self-titled "Key & Peele." Premiering Tuesday on Comedy Central, it is a genial, at times almost genteel half-hour in which the pair's obvious niceness shines through even their more pugnacious characters. (Key's version of road rage is to shout, "Selfish!") In a roundabout way, that's the point.
December 24, 2011
Television review: 'Doctor Who' Christmas special
Every year at this time, a terribly old yet terrifically youthful supernatural being drops in from out of the sky. I speak of course of the Doctor, as in "Doctor Who," whose annual Christmas special premieres Sunday — Christmas itself! — on BBC America.
January 3, 2012
Television reviews: 'Work It,' 'Jane By Design'
The economy — sluggish, recession-y, depressed — while slow to recover has also been slow to inspire television series about the slow-to-recover economy. As if in recompense, not one but two shows with premises rooted in high unemployment premiere Tuesday.
October 5, 2011
TV review: 'George Harrison: Living in the Material World'
"George Harrison: Living in the Material World," which premieres Wednesday and Thursday on HBO, is a long, lovely meditation on the Beatle sometimes called the Quiet One and the quiet one sometimes called a Beatle. Directed by Martin Scorsese at the invitation of widow Olivia Harrison, it is not especially informative in the way documentaries usually strive to be, a cataloging of causes and effects and significant facts and figures; nor has it been made as a brief for George's unsung genius. In fact, it leaves a lot out and doesn't always explain what it puts in. But it is not really so much a film about a career as it is about a life and not so much about a life of events as of spiritual progress — a portrait of character more than of "a character."
October 29, 2011
U2's growing pains in 'From the Sky Down'
U2, the Irish pop band, is the subject of a fascinating new documentary, "From the Sky Down," premiering Saturday on Showtime. Like most modern rockumentaries, it was commissioned by the people it is about, and it will be included in some of the versions of the 20th anniversary deluxe re-release of "Achtung Baby," coming in November. (The most deluxe of these, the Uber-Deluxe package, which costs upward of $400, also comes with a pair of sunglasses like those singer Bono wore in his guise of the Fly.) But it has been made by Davis Guggenheim, the director of "An Inconvenient Truth" and "It Might Get Loud," which featured U2 guitarist the Edge, and so comes with an air of directorial independence; it is not a thing of unadulterated self-celebration.
March 12, 2011
Television review: 'Best Player' on Nickelodeon
Without making any too great claims on its behalf, I would like to direct your attention, in a good way, to the Nickelodeon TV movie "Best Player," featuring two stars of "iCarly" who aren't Miranda Cosgrove. You won't mistake this for "The Lady Eve" or "The More the Merrier" in either invention or wit, but it has been made (by director Damon Santostefano, working from a script by Richard Amberg) with a light, sure hand. And although the film, which premieres Saturday, runs toward the obvious and the preposterous — sometimes both at once — it's cheery and charming and, in spite of its calculated commercial appeal, never feels cynical.
September 25, 2011
Comic-Con icon Felicia Day
Felicia Day is a sort of famous person, by which I do not mean that she is moderately famous but that her fame is of a particular type.
August 5, 2011
TV review: 'Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension'
Animated stepbrothers Phineas and Ferb, of the Disney Channel series "Phineas and Ferb," go feature-length Friday with "Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension." It is suitable for (and recommended to) children of all ages — though much of it is meant specifically for children of a certain age, old enough to appreciate jokes that reference Georgia O'Keeffe, "The Jeffersons," Wittgenstein, Sartre and the "Fit as a Fiddle" number from "Singin' in the Rain."
July 30, 2011
Television review: 'Against the Wall'
Lifetime, which no longer bills itself as "Television for Women," but is anyway, premieres its first original cop show, "Against the Wall," Sunday night. The network has a long history with crime, of course, with all those TV movies about killers and stalkers and darkly handsome con men. But this is something else, and better made — something that, while it retains the essence of Lifetime, looks across the dial to TNT and USA, where character-driven procedurals have been blooming like wildflowers after a wet spring. (Indeed, "Against the Wall" was created by Annie Brunner, who wrote for TNT's "Saving Grace," whose executive producer Nancy Miller is also the executive producer here.)
October 1, 2011
Television review: 'Prohibition'
It's fall on PBS, when the big documentary blockbusters heave into view; and nobody builds them bigger than Ken Burns, whose name always seems to be part of the title, even when it isn't: "Ken Burns' Baseball," "Ken Burns' Jazz," "Ken Burns' Civil War." Burns likes to swallow huge subjects whole — American subjects — and this year he brings us "Prohibition," the story of the 14-year misrule of the 18th Amendment and of the decades-long temperance movement that preceded it.
July 19, 2011
TV review: 'Awkward.' on MTV
To oversimplify — though not by all that much — MTV's new high school comedy "Awkward." (the period is part of the title) is a female twist on the network's phallocentric "The Hard Times of RJ Berger," though in the same way that teenage girls are more mature than their male classmates, it is less sophomoric and sex-obsessed than its predecessor. Created by Lauren Iungerich, it has the spirit of "Juno" behind it rather than the ghost of "Porky's." If "Awkward." doesn't always listen to what that spirit is saying, it gets that head start nonetheless.
September 3, 2011
Critic's Notebook: 9/11-related TV programs to watch
The 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon arrives a week from Sunday — I don't think I need to tell you the date — and as might be expected, television is all over it. Our decimal culture encourages comment, celebration or reflection whenever 10 years go by, but there is something about this anniversary that makes it practically inescapable. It is especially inescapable, one might say, now that the death of Osama bin Laden and the upcoming dedication of a memorial that transforms the footprint of the missing Twin Towers into inverted fountains have brought the narrative that began Sept. 11, 2001, to something like a close — though there are volumes left to be written.
November 28, 2010
Jimmy Fallon, you're growing on us
Now that Conan O'Brien has come to rest, presumably for more than seven months, as the host of a TBS talk show, it seems like a good time to take another look at the person who replaced him, and I don't mean Jay Leno. One year and nine months ago Jimmy Fallon — who, like O'Brien, was touched by the hand of Lorne, and I do mean Michaels — followed O'Brien into the "Late Night" chair previously vacated by David Letterman.
May 23, 2011
Television Review: 'Too Big to Fail'
"Too Big to Fail," which premieres Monday on HBO, is the latest of that network's high-toned original films ("Recount," "The Late Shift," "From the Earth to the Moon," the upcoming "Game Change") in which a large cast of medium-big-to-big-named actors assume the skin of the real people to put you backstage at history. In this case — the story of the 2008 financial meltdown and the attempt to keep us all from ruin — the paint is barely dry on the actual events. Indeed, their ongoing consequences will affect the next election.
April 15, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Pitchmen'
Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan sell things on television, famously. Mays, a burly man with a black beard and a voice that suggests incipient deafness, and could possibly cause it, is the more famous. But the cooler Sullivan -- who also produces and directs DRTV (Direct Response Television, as in "Operators are standing by") advertisements -- is the more versatile. Between the two, they have moved more than a billion dollars' worth of things that light up your house, clean up your yard, shape your body and otherwise improve your life -- products with names like Awesome Auger, Hercules Hook, Glass Wizard, Swivel Sweeper, the Stick-Up Bulb and Slimming Pants.
July 18, 2009
AN APPRECIATION
Walter Cronkite: And that's the way it was
For many who grew up in the 1960s and '70s, Walter Cronkite was the voice of unfolding history. On the "CBS Evening News" and on the spot, his eloquent mediation of the great events of an age almost pathologically overflowing with them was essential to the way those events were understood. Even when he was temporarily at a loss for words -- his tears at the death of John F. Kennedy, his inarticulate glee at the moon landing ("Whew, boy!") -- he somehow spoke for the nation he spoke to.
April 6, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Surviving Suburbia'
The second situation comedy to star Bob Saget, ABC's “Surviving Suburbia,” comes 14 years after the end of "Full House," the cuddly series in which he played loving father to the Olsen twins (conjoined in a single part). It is also 12 years since he hosted that influential bastion of adorable domestic hilarity, "America's Funniest Home Videos." And most every appearance since -- talk show spots, "Entourage" cameo, the dirty-joke movie "The Aristocrats," the hip-hop parody "Rollin' With Saget" and, above all, his dark, blue stand-up comedy -- has been, in effect if not by intent, to prove to the world that he is really Not That Guy.
March 20, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
Movable feast of laughs
Rob Thomas, the man behind "Veronica Mars" and "Cupid" (the old "Cupid," with Jeremy Piven, and the coming new "Cupid" with Bobby Cannavale) and briefly associated with the rebranding of "90210," has found a new outlet on the relatively remote reaches of Starz, the cable network that shares a name with a bushy-haired 1970s power-pop band. “Party Down,” which premieres tonight, is the show in question, and it is a smart, affable, mostly unpredictable ensemble comedy that reminds us that in the 500-channel universe, fine things can happen in unlikely places, as long as you are clever about budget, commit to a sensible number of episodes -- in this case 10 -- write well and cast right, and that what matters ultimately to heaven is not the eminence of the venue but the quality of the work.
March 9, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
Review: 'RuPaul's Drag Race' on Logo
RuPaul, the 6-foot-4 to 6-foot-7 (by his own varying accounts) African American drag queen who sashayed his way into mass consciousness in the 1990s with the club hit "Supermodel" and a VH1 talk show, is back on TV with “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” A reality competition show now about three-quarters through its first cycle on Logo, the LGBT-themed cable net, it aims to discover "America's next drag superstar" -- that is, the next RuPaul. It's a little bit "America's Next Top Model" and a little bit "Project Runway," and like drag itself, parodical without being a joke.
March 2, 2011
Television review: When troubadours were the scene in L.A.
"Troubadours: Carole King, James Taylor and the Rise of the Singer-Songwriter," a presentation of "American Masters" that airs Wednesday on KOCE, tells the story of the crowd that haunted Doug Weston's Troubadour in the late '60s and early '70s, the music they made, and (to a lesser extent) the mischief.
April 17, 2009
'Sit Down, Shut Up'
There was reason enough to expect something special from “Sit Down, Shut Up,” a new Fox animated sitcom created by Mitchell Hurwitz of "Arrested Development" and featuring a cast -- derived mainly from "Arrested Development" and "Saturday Night Live," with Tom "SpongeBob" Kenny bringing the cartoon cred -- that deserves to be called "all-star." But the show that premieres Sunday night, between "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" in the space formerly occupied by "King of the Hill," is weak -- not hopeless, but given the pedigree, heavily disappointing.
March 7, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Ashes to Ashes' on BBC America
“Ashes to Ashes,” which premieres tonight on BBC America, is a sequel to “Life on Mars,” the 2006 series whose American remake ABC has just canceled. It's an unlikely thing, given that the first series' main character killed himself in the final episode (though perhaps survived in another reality) and that all the other characters were (possibly) figments of his imagination. But it's in that "perhaps" and "possibly" that "Ashes to Ashes" finds a way forward, and although it's not as good as the original, it pushes many of the same buttons and sews on a few new ones. It's quite enjoyable.
December 12, 2008
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
At the Golden Globes, this year looks a whole lot like last year
Now that we've got electing a president out of the way, it's time to get back to the more important business of giving awards to television shows and motion pictures. More than a month out from the inauguration of Barack Obama, the nominees for the 2008 Golden Globes have been announced; the statuettes will be handed out nine days before power shifts in Washington. And then we can all go back to sleep until Oscar time.
May 22, 2010
Critic's Notebook: May 'Lost' mysteries never end
"Lost," the most complicated series in the history of television, will come to its end Sunday and without having seen a second of its 2 1/2-hour conclusion, I prophesy that it will leave many viewers unsatisfied, either because it will say too much or not enough, or because it will be too explicit or too vague, or too prosaic or too mystical, or too final or too inconclusive.
April 11, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Thrilla in Manila' on HBO
If you are not a boxing fan (I am not a boxing fan), the HBO documentary "Thrilla in Manila” -- the story of the Joe Frazier-Muhammad Ali rivalry, as it played across three fights from 1971 to 1975 -- is not the film to make you one. And if you are a boxing fan, well, even those here seem appalled at the brutality of the famous final bout, called one of the greatest fights in history, even as they celebrate the participants' gladiatorial resolve. But either way, the movie works.
January 16, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
Review: 'United States of Tara'
The family comedy has undergone some transformations of late, thanks mostly to cable television and its restless search for buttons and/or envelopes to push. “ United States of Tara,” a new Showtime series about a woman with four personalities (including her "own"), is solidly within this new tradition of the strange, alongside shows like " Weeds," "The Riches" and "Big Love" -- stories of families whose unusual lives or lifestyles set them apart from the supposedly normal world, which we are typically invited to see as grotesque.
September 4, 2008
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Sarah Palin's convention speech: She did just fine
The night formerly known as Night Three of the Republican National Convention was dedicated to "Reform and Prosperity." But more important, it was the party's, and the country's, first substantial look at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who in no time at all has become not only a national politician but a subject of controversy and a figure of symbolic import.
February 1, 2009
A 'Project Runway' fan defends it to reality TV critics
"Project Runway" is the show I name whenever I am asked to defend reality TV or my unwillingness to condemn it all out of hand. The popular fashion-designing competition finished its fifth season on Bravo last October and now circles in a holding pattern over its intended new network, Lifetime, while lawyers from its old home try to keep it from landing. (The disputed sixth season, minus its finale, has already been filmed -- and, for the first time, in Los Angeles.) I might also mention "Top Chef" as part of my reality defense, but "Top Chef" is just "Project Runway" with food.
January 17, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
Review: 'Wuthering Heights'
"Wuthering Heights": A Victorian novel with a name (and plot points) fit for a 1980s prime-time soap. It's one of those titles that rattles around in your head even before you've ever read the book or the Cliffs Notes, or seen it adapted for TV or the movies, which it has been at least once a decade since 1920, not even counting foreign-language films or the 2003 MTV musical update.
July 21, 2008
TELEVISION REVIEW
Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal
“Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal,” premiering tonight on HBO, reacquaints us with a woman never too long out of the public eye. It has been almost a decade since Fleiss left prison, where she'd spent 21 months of a three-year sentence for tax evasion, money laundering and pandering. In that time she has run a West Hollywood boutique, published a kind of scrapbook memoir, put out a "sex tips" DVD, written a magazine column, had a radio show, sold the rights to her life story to Paramount and accused boyfriend Tom Sizemore of domestic violence. (He was convicted.) Not necessarily in that order.
May 27, 2008
DVD REVIEW
'Square Pegs' fits right in
A comedy about kids that was not made for kids but was not not made for kids, "Square Pegs" premiered on CBS in the fall of 1982; a quarter of a century later, it has come to DVD in its surprisingly modest, 19-episode entirety. But 9 1/2 hours is time enough to make a point, when you have one.
March 11, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'The Chopping Block'
I don't know whether it's still the American dream to own a restaurant -- it may now be just to hang on to that horrible job you had hoped to quit soon -- but there are at least 16 people who still dream it, and they are contestants on “The Chopping Block.” Premiering tonight on NBC, this latest in a lengthening line of food-themed reality shows shares a title (and creators) with an Australian food-themed reality show, has much in common with another Australian food-themed reality show ("My Restaurant Rules") and the BBC food-themed reality show "The Restaurant," and boasts the same host as the UK version of the food-themed reality show "Hell's Kitchen," Marco Pierre White.
July 11, 2008
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Ashley Paige: Bikini or Bust'
"Ashley Paige: Bikini or Bust" is a Bravo-style entrepreneurial reality series centered on Hollywood bikini designer Paige, who, despite her big-name clientele, lives on the edge of penury, scrambling to pay bills or avoid paying them. "I'm an artist," she says. "I'm obviously not a businessman."
August 11, 2008
TELEVISION REVIEW
'The American Mall' -- teens, dreams and dancing in the food court
In simplest terms, “The American Mall,” which premieres tonight on MTV, is MTV looking at the Disney Channel's burgeoning teen-musical empire and thinking, "I got to get me one of those." It's “High School Musical” -- but in a mall! Instead of a dance set in a cafeteria, there's a dance set in . . . a food court!
April 1, 2009
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Pedro' on MTV and Logo
“Pedro,” which premieres tonight on MTV (and simultaneously on sister station Logo), dramatizes the short, productive life of Pedro Zamora, a third-season cast member of "The Real World" -- the 1994 San Francisco season, known also for the abrasive, abusive and generally uncooperative bike messenger Puck, who was kicked out of the house, in part because of his treatment of Zamora.
Copyright © 2012, The Los Angeles Times
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