TV REVIEWS: THE GOLDEN GLOBES

In the end, the TV critics concluded, Sunday night’s Golden Globes telecast amounted to yet another letdown, not so much because of the choice of winners — best drama: The Descendants; best comedy or musical: The Artist — but because of the commonplace performance of host Ricky Gervais. All of the critics had sharpened their [...]

CBS LAUNCHES NEW MORNING SHOW

CBS, which has never been a major competitor in the early-morning hours dominated by NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America is trying again. On Monday it raised its old banner CBS This Morning over what appeared to be two distinct talk shows — one at 7:00 a.m. featuring veteran PBS interviewer Charlie Rose that [...]

OLBERMANN RETURNS — AS IF HE NEVER LEFT

The oft-fired/oft-hired Keith Olbermann, lastly with MSNBC, returned to the cameras Monday night on Al Gore’s cable channel Current TV — and television critics agreed that it was as if he had never been gone. “He is the same fast-talking, hard-charging, unapologetically self-righteous defender of his version of liberal ideology that he always was. Only [...]

PELLEY MAKES LOW-KEY DEBUT ON CBS EVENING NEWS

Scott Pelley took over the anchor chair on the CBS Evening News Monday and relegated the story that most newspapers headlined and NBC led with — the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal — to No. 3 on his list of top stories, nine minutes into the newscast. “Good for Pelley and CBS News and their sense [...]

TV REVIEWS: THE KENNEDYS

So what was all the fuss over The Kennedys all about? That’s what the critics of the eight-part miniseries debuting Sunday on ReelzChannel appear to be asking. Certainly, they say, the series has its faults — many of them, according to most — but nothing really to get all that riled up about. Why the [...]

CRITICS ON 83RD OSCARS: SAME OLD, SAME OLD

One would be hard-pressed to blame Deadline.com’s Nikki Finke’s early release of the full run-down of Sunday night’s Oscar telecast for the fact that not a single surprise materialized during the entire show. “Predictable” was the description used by many TV columnists in their assessment of the affair. Virtually all of the favorites won: best [...]

AL-JAZEERA TAKES A VICTORY LAP

TV critics are continuing to praise al-Jazeera’s coverage of the Egyptian uprising, with several suggesting that its young, erudite reporters in the streets and its seasoned studio anchors displayed a more authoratative grasp of the situation than their American broadcast network and cable news counterparts. In the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley noted that it [...]

NO FIREWORKS IN PIERS MORGAN DEBUT

At the end of his interview with Oprah Winfrey on the premiere of CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, the host asked Winfrey, “How have I done?” Her reply: “You have been surprising.” “Surprisingly bad?” asked Morgan, laughing nervously. “No, just surprising,” Winfrey insisted. TV critics, some of them referring to that exchange, indicated that they, too [...]

OPRAH’S OWN NETWORK NABS SOLID REVIEWS

The reviews have been mostly positive for Oprah Winfrey’s OWN cable network, which launched on Saturday, New Year’s Day. The New York Times‘s Alessandra Stanley remarked that the network is “a place where cynicism takes a holiday and mockery hasn’t yet been invented. … a ‘meaningful, mindful’ cable network that seeks its own truth and [...]

SARAH PALIN’S ALASKA SURVIVES CRITICS’ GANTLET

In his review of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, an eight-part series produced by Survivor creator Mark Burnett that debuts on TLC Sunday, New York Daily News TV columnist David Hinckley writes that “the title came out backwards. It should have been Alaska’s Sarah Palin.” It is an opinion with which Palin probably wouldn’t disagree. In an [...]

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