Linda Holmes

This is one in a series of essays running this week and next about the state of television in 2015. The series is based on developments at the recent Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., where broadcast and cable networks, along with streaming services like Netflix, presented ...

This is one in a series of essays running this week and next about the state of television in 2015. The series is based on developments at the recent Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., where broadcast and cable networks, along with streaming services like Netflix, presented ...

This is one in a series of essays running this week and next about the state of television in 2015. The series is based on developments at the recent Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., where broadcast and cable networks, along with streaming services like Netflix, presented ...

This is one in a series of essays running this week and next about the state of television in 2015. The series is based on developments at the recent Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., where broadcast and cable networks, along with streaming services like Netflix, presented ...

One of the accusations that was often leveled against Mad Men as an examination of social problems was that it paused too often to scoff at how foolish (or sexist, or racist, or environmentally ignorant) everyone was in the 1960s, as if we've outgrown all of it. One of the ...

Twice each year, all the major TV production houses bring critics to Beverly Hills, Calif. to introduce their latest shows. This summer, the sheer volume of new, scripted material is overwhelming.

Tuesday's Television Critics Association press tour presentations from ABC wrapped up with a panel devoted to the network's scripted ace in the hole: Shonda Rhimes, who created Grey's Anatomy and Scandal and is an executive producer of How To Get Away With Murder. Rhimes and her producing partner, Betsy Beers, ...

Most of the panel discussions that happen at the Television Critics Association press tour currently underway in Beverly Hills have something critical in common: the panelists are humans. (Please hold your jokes about Hollywood. The critics in attendance have made them all.)

Tuesday morning, that all changed when ABC presented ...

Tuesday was the first day of the summer press tour for the Television Critics Association. Press tour is an event that goes on for a couple of weeks, in which TV networks bring in personnel from their new shows (and sometimes their existing shows) for panel press conferences where the ...

This week brings two summer movies into our field of vision: an unconventional romantic comedy and a shrunken (in the good way) superhero adventure.

It had all the elements of an Internet hit: Two magicians hijack a TV news update, performing in the background behind an oblivious reporter. The video quickly went viral in Britain — but then it emerged that the Sky News team was in on the joke.

Both Sky News and ...

The comedy Trainwreck, written by Amy Schumer and directed by Judd Apatow, takes a few risks with the romantic comedy formula on which it ultimately relies. Plus: LeBron James!

This week's show brings back into the studio — well, remotely anyway — our original producer and music director Mike Katzif, now ensconced in New York working for the lovely people at NPR's Ask Me Another. Mike joins us for a talk about the Netflix comedy BoJack Horseman, ...

The new FX comedy Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll* stars Denis Leary as the decaying former singer of a briefly scorching New York band whose speedy self-immolation was brought about by debauchery and betrayal. The band was called The Heathens, because they were heathens. The singer is named ...

This week's show features our great friend Gene Demby of NPR's Code Switch and opens with a discussion of Key & Peele, the Comedy Central sketch show that's just come back for its fifth season. We look at some of what's to come in the early part of season five, ...

Where new levels of quality go, new levels of parody are sure to follow. So it makes sense that a strong run of historical sports documentaries, particularly from ESPN's 30 For 30 series, would give rise to a spot-on mock-documentary like HBO's 7 Days In Hell, airing Saturday night.

7 ...

Pinpointing the most important conversation in Magic Mike XXL is, admittedly, a little like pinpointing the most important zoological computer model in Jurassic World, but let's do it anyway.

The most important conversation in Magic Mike XXL, a joyfully raucous follow-up to 2012's moodier, indie-er Magic Mike, takes place between ...

I want to own up to something right away: I was predisposed to laugh at CBS's summer action/drama/kookoopants series Zoo. I find the idea of a menace-driven show called Zoo inherently hilarious, in part because "zoo" is a word made up of exactly two sounds, both of which are naturally ...

During our recent time with charming Bostonian librarian Margaret Willison, we managed to sit her down for a chat about audiobooks. We discovered that while I am a frequent listener to a variety of kinds of books (as I wrote about recently), Margaret uses them in a very ...

This week's show finds us cracking open Judy Blume's new adult novel In The Unlikely Event (it's an adult novel as in a-novel-for-adults, not an adult novel as in "too sexy for polite company). Joined by our friend and librarian-in-chief Margaret Willison, we talk about the structure of the book, ...