TV
« Previous EntriesThe Genius of “Veep”
Sunday, April 21st, 2013I’m a big fan of “Veep,” which just started its second season and tells you everything you need to know about why you should distrust government. More in my Sunday column.
The Left Is Torching Downton Abbey
Friday, February 15th, 2013I’m a couple episodes behind on “Downton,” so I scrupulously avoid reading anything about it, but obviously not least among its pleasures is its conservatism. (Julian Fellowes is a Tory peer of the realm.) This Forbes headline caught my eye (though I can’t read the piece yet).
Review: “House of Cards”
Thursday, January 31st, 2013More like “House of Morons.” Kevin Spacey is a new Machiavelli of D.C. in a David Fincher-directed series for Netflix. My review is up.
Review: “The Americans”
Monday, January 28th, 2013Keri Russell plays a Soviet mole hiding out in the Washington, D.C. suburbs in 1981 in the new FX show “The Americans.” I couldn’t decide if it was suitably laughable or maybe not quite laughable enough. My review is up.
Maggie Simpson Returns to the Ayn Rand School for Tots
Tuesday, July 10th, 2012A five-minute, dialogue-less 3D short featuring The Simpsons precedes Friday’s release “Ice Age: Continental Drift.” Maggie is the star, getting dropped off at the infamous daycare program that divides students into the gifted and the “nothing special.” She endures a psychotic security check (”Your freedom assured by our probing” reads a placard), does ferocious battle [...]
“The Newsroom” Debuts
Sunday, June 24th, 2012In my Sunday column, a look at Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO show “The Newsroom.” Yes, I devote a lot of space to destroying one of his contentions, but I could have gone on in the same way for thousands of words. (Jonah Goldberg’s “The Tyranny of Cliches,” for instance, has already debunked a lot of [...]
Aaron Sorkin and the Ideological Turing Test
Friday, June 22nd, 2012Jake Tapper does an admirable job dismantling Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom.” I have written a piece that makes similar points that will run soon. Sorkin embedded himself with Keith Olbermann while creating the show, but he would have been wiser to embed himself with Rush Limbaugh (not that any conservative would be likely to welcome [...]
Luvvies
Wednesday, June 13th, 2012Asked why he blew off a “Family Guy” script meeting, Seth MacFarlane (couldn’t he behave a bit better, at least temporarily, while a reporter was tailing him?) first told The New Yorker it was “because I don’t get vacations” (I wonder if the legendary fact-checking squad assessed that fact) and once worked for “fifteen months, [...]
An Even Crueler Attack on Morgan Spurlock
Friday, April 20th, 2012Really, there is no nastier ways to criticise (it’s happening!!! I’ve been in London too long!) the Spurlockiness of Morgan than to actually quote the man. In the Mail on Sunday a couple of weeks ago, he made an effort to sum up British quirks in hilariously new ways. This is what he came up [...]
A Cruel Attack on Morgan Spurlock
Friday, April 20th, 2012His Brits-meet-Yanks program “New Britannia,” as seen by AA Gill of The Sunday Times:
Immediately after Game of Thrones, there was Morgan Spurlock’s New Britannia, an attempt to bridge the pond with some faux mockery. It proved that the chat show is the hardest format to get right; not just right, but bearable. This was achingly [...]