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Television

Gone but not forgotten

Henry VIII and The Tudors bid adieu
Yes, True Blood has resumed, and Futurama and Weeds wait in the wings. But let's take a moment to hail The Tudors , which bows out this Sunday night at 9 after four seasons on Showtime.

By: JON GARELICK | June 20, 2010

Easy does it

Treme tours New Orleans
Writer/producer Eric Overmyer was quoted in a New York Times Magazine article last month, but it’s worth repeating: “ Treme is not the The Wire .” He went on: “Those who are expecting The Wire or wanting The Wire may be frustrated.”

By: JON GARELICK | April 08, 2010

Reality riffs

Jerome Robbins's Opus Jazz on PBS
When Jerome Robbins's New York Export: Opus Jazz boogied onto the scene in 1958 then took Europe by storm. Created for Ballets: U.S.A., a company of ballet, modern, and jazz dancers that Robbins had put together for a government-sponsored cultural exchange tour, Opus Jazz was a kind of spinoff from the 1957 hit musical West Side Story , which Robbins directed and choreographed.

By: MARCIA B. SIEGEL | March 17, 2010

Must Flee TV?

With his new ‘reality sitcom,’ the artist formerly known as Robbie Roadsteamer tries to stop the Allston hipster brain drain
If Jersey Shore and Last Comic Standing had a threesome with Curb Your Enthusiasm in the men’s room of Great Scott, the bastard issue might look a little something like Quiet Desperation .

By: CHRIS FARAONE | March 10, 2010

Nothing beats nothing

Jerry Seinfeld and Ricky Gervais return
Jerry Seinfeld held out on a Seinfeld reunion till last year, when he finally found a way to do a comeback that wasn't really a comeback. He and Seinfeld co-creator Larry David resurrected the greatest sit-com of the '90s as a show-within-a-show on David's Curb Your Enthusiasm . The reunion made Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer hilariously relevant again.

By: JOYCE MILLMAN | March 02, 2010

Spy ware

PBS does The 39 Steps
Hitchcock fans will feel right at home with the DVD box of the 2008 BBC production that's making its American debut this Sunday on Masterpiece Classics .

By: JEFFREY GANTZ | February 23, 2010

Lonely island

Michael Emerson sheds some light on Lost
This Tuesday, the sixth and final season of Lost will launch onto home screens (ABC; February 2 at 9 pm). When the show last left us, you'll recall, it appeared to have killed off one of the Island's main string pullers, Jacob (Mark Pellegrino), in 2007 while simultaneously detonating a nuclear bomb underneath the Island in 1977.

By: RYAN STEWART | January 29, 2010

Miss perfect

The new BBC/WGBH Emma gets a 10
I know what you're thinking: " Another Emma ? Didn't we just have a bushel of Jane Austen adaptations for TV?" Well, WGBH did give us four new Austens, but that was all the way back in 2008, a Jane-ite eternity.

By: JEFFREY GANTZ | January 12, 2010

More than Mormons

The big love that dare not speak its name
Despite the comparably juicy family dysfunction it offers, Big Love hasn't achieved the iconic status of its HBO predecessor The Sopranos . Maybe viewers relate better to the mob than to Mormons.

By: JOYCE MILLMAN | January 06, 2010

The power of Cesar

Leader of the Pack
The funniest moments of Cesar Millan's PackPower Tour show at Agganis Arena last Sunday came during intermission, when the three big video screens showed a snippet from "Tsst," the South Park parody episode where the Dog Whisperer goes up against Cartman.

By: JEFFREY GANTZ | December 16, 2009

Interview: Cesar Millan

The Dog Whisperer comes to Boston
"Pit bulls are not bred for healing people, or for healing dogs. But because I channel the energy into something more humane, they're using all this pit-bull energy into really making it happen."

By: JEFFREY GANTZ | December 09, 2009

Interview: Leonard Nimoy

Hot Vulcan
If Leonard Nimoy’s acting work had been limited to that deliriously crazy music video for “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins,” he’d probably still be celebrated by a lot of us.

By: ROB TURBOVSKY | November 16, 2009

Hoop nightmare

Len Bias’s death was more than just a basketball tragedy.
It wasn’t quite the world-shattering, where-were-you-when moment as the space shuttle Challenger exploding into cottony plumes earlier that year. But I still remember my naive and dazed disbelief upon hearing that basketball star Len Bias had died of a cocaine overdose on June 19, 1986

By: MIKE MILIARD | October 28, 2009

Interview: Ken Burns

On his latest PBS documentary, The National Parks
After watching The National Parks: America's Best Idea , it would be easy to conclude that it all could have been said a lot faster. Ken Burns disagrees — but he's not just being defensive.

By: CLIF GARBODEN | September 25, 2009

Photos: The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Images from Ken Burns's latest documentary
Scenes from The National Parks: America's Best Idea , a six-part, 12-hour film by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, George Masa.

By: PHOENIX STAFF | September 24, 2009

Holy landscape!

Ken Burns worships America's spiritual resource
At its core, Ken Burns's PBS 12-hour epic The National Parks: America's Best Idea (nightly on WGBH Channel 2 at 8 pm, from September 27 through October 2) is a selective, initiative by initiative, advocate by advocate, chronicle of the evolution of the National Parks system and the changing roles protected lands have played in American culture since Congress validated Yosemite in 1864.

By: CLIF GARBODEN | September 24, 2009