Linda Holmes appears in the following:
The Ups And Downs Of 'Younger' Life
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
It remains a sore point in my TV-watching heart that ABC Family's fabulous comedy-drama Bunheads lasted only one season, so I was particularly pleased to see that its star, Tony winner Sutton Foster, was coming back to television. Specifically, she's in a comedy called Younger on TV Land, which premieres ...
5 Thoughts On Trevor Noah Taking Over 'The Daily Show'
Monday, March 30, 2015
We learned Monday morning what will become of The Daily Show on Comedy Central after Jon Stewart departs: It will be hosted by Trevor Noah, a 31-year-old South African comedian who joined the show as a contributor in December of last year, where he opened with a joke ...
'The Breakfast Club' At 30: '80s Classic Still Relatable Today
Friday, March 27, 2015
Small Batch Edition: Talking 'X-Files' With Kumail Nanjiani
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Kumail Nanjiani is a standup comedian, the co-host of the comedy show The Meltdown With Jonah And Kumail for Comedy Central, an actor (including a regular gig on HBO's Silicon Valley), and a popular Twitter presence. But the reason we sat down with ...
The End Of The Estate: 'Downton Abbey' Is Officially Saying Goodbye
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Recent reports were officially confirmed today — the upcoming sixth season will be the last for the very successful drama Downton Abbey, according to an announcement Thursday from Carnival Films and Masterpiece. Executive producer Gareth Neame had this to say:
Millions of people around the world have ...
Here Comes 'The X-Files,' Back For More Mulder, More Scully, And More
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Everything old really is new again. Even aliens.
Fox announced today that The X-Files, which ran on television from 1993 until 2002 and was accompanied by feature films in 1998 and 2008, will be back as a six-episode "event series," with production beginning this summer. Creator and Executive Producer Chris ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour: Nick Hornby's 'Funny Girl' And Adapting Books
Friday, March 20, 2015
While our pal Stephen Thompson is in Austin, Glen Weldon and I are happy to be spending the week talking to our pals Barrie Hardymon and Chris Klimek about the latest Nick Hornby novel, Funny Girl. It follows the life cycle of a British sitcom born in the 1960s, from ...
The 'Empire' Touch: A Cookie By Any Other Name
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Empire closed out its remarkable first season on Wednesday night with a two-hour finale that proved once again one of the fundamental lessons brought to you by this show: whether this is your cup of tea or not, the people who make Empire really know what they're doing.
In the ...
Small Batch Edition: On Loving Romance With Sarah Wendell
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Sarah Wendell is the wrangler and editor and general mischief-maker at the site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, which reviews and discusses romance novels and serves as a home for many devoted romance fans. She's also a fascinating speaker and writer, so when she was in town recently, we ...
'The Jinx' And The Challenges of Public Curiosity
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
It was hard not to compare HBO's six-part miniseries The Jinx to the hit podcast Serial. Both featured serialized storytelling from reporters unafraid to be part of the stories they were telling; both were very well received. But the similarities dissipated as the conclusions approached.
Serial ended with an acknowledgment ...
'Community': No Longer A Broadcast Show, But Still A Lovable Weirdo
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Community, producer Dan Harmon's increasingly self-aware sitcom, has become less and less about a band of community-college misfits and more and more about being a television show. Perhaps it's fitting that a show about being a show continues its odd life with a move from NBC to Yahoo ...
In 'I Hate Christian Laettner,' ESPN Explores The Belly Of The Beast
Friday, March 13, 2015
I was in the house watching by myself when Duke played Kentucky in the Elite Eight in the 1992 NCAA basketball tournament. I was home from college for what must have been spring break, and for whatever reason, my parents were out. I was in the deepest part of the ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour: Cultural Anniversaries And Great Things For Kids
Friday, March 13, 2015
Back in February, when it was terribly icy, we were scheduled to record our Oscars Omnibus live in Studio 1 at NPR HQ. Unfortunately, the weather interfered, and we had to push the show forward. While this meant we didn't have people live in the room to react with glee ...
A Girl, A Shoe, A Prince: The Endlessly Evolving Cinderella
Friday, March 13, 2015
"Woman gives birth to a gourd."
This is the opening to the description of an Italian variant of the Cinderella folk tale — or, really, a relative of one of its relatives — taken from a book called Cinderella; three hundred and forty-five variants of Cinderella, Catskin, and Cap o'Rushes, ...
A Travel Show For Your Favorite Weird-Museum And Dance Enthusiast
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
When we get to talking about HBO and Sling, about cord-cutting and the future of television, we tend to focus on the advantages of being able to pick out only the core channels you watch most; the ones you know you love. Now and then, though, I'm glad for the ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour, Small Batch Edition: 'King Of The Nerds'
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
In something of a companion piece to our earlier segment on nerd culture, Stephen and Glen sit down in this edition to chat about the social dynamics at work and at play on TBS's surprisingly charming competition show King Of The Nerds. Glen carefully distinguishes it from its ...
An Interview With A Regular Watch
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Ever since we interviewed the Monopoly iron in 2013, we have occasionally published fever-dream interviews with newsworthy inanimate objects. In light of yesterday's Apple announcement of its smart watch — and in light of the fact that it is neither the first nor the last such watch to ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour: 'Focus,' Con Men And Rock And Roll
Friday, March 06, 2015
On this week's show, we sit down with our good pal Gene Demby for a wide-ranging chat about movies and music.
We start with the Will Smith con-artist movie Focus, which was number one at the box office last weekend and was still in the lower half of ...
'American Crime': An Ambitious And Inventive Drama With Miles To Go
Thursday, March 05, 2015
American Crime opens as a bedraggled, initially almost unrecognizable Timothy Hutton takes the worst possible middle-of-the-night phone call: The police need him to identify the body of what they believe is his murdered son.
This phone call and this crime lie at the heart of the new drama series, created ...
'Mindy' And The Little Story That Just Might Work
Wednesday, March 04, 2015
My reaction to the initial revelation that Mindy Lahiri, the heroine (?) of Mindy Kaling's The Mindy Project, was pregnant was the same one I think a lot of people had: Oh, brother.
This was the case for two reasons. First, baby stories are notoriously difficult to make interesting, and ...