Linda Holmes

Focus, starring Will Smith as a smoothie con man with a heart of gold, is trying very hard to be a kind of film that only works when it seems effortless. Specifically, it seems to be engineered to be a close relative of Steven Soderbergh's 2001 Ocean's Eleven, in which ...

When Downton Abbey, which wrapped up its fifth-season run on PBS Sunday night, is fun, it's so much fun. And when it's not good, it's usually talking about Mr. Bates and Anna and somebody getting murdered.

The final episode — which aired in the UK as the Christmas special — ...

Even were it not a strong show out of the gate, you'd have to give Fox's new comedy The Last Man On Earth, premiering Sunday night, at least this much: they know how to save on hiring extras.

Will Forte, a flexible and talented performer who's been looking for just ...

Petra Mayer of NPR Books sat down with our regular panelist Glen Weldon to chat about the massive graphic novel The Sculptor, by Scott McCloud. They talk about what the book does and what they wanted from it, and from there, they go on to recommend some other good reads.

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Well, now that we're past the Oscars (whew!), this week's show takes us into some quality television, both departing and arriving. It also brings to the table our pal Barrie Hardymon to join me, Stephen Thompson and Glen Weldon for this smaller-screen chat.

First, we saw the end ...

Parks & Recreation finished its run earlier this week with the series finale. Brian and NPR's Linda Holmes wrap up their recaps of the show. 

The most famous scene in the first season of Survivor, back in the summer of 2000, involved the castaways, who were very hungry indeed, catching and cooking a rat, then tentatively picking meat off the bones. There was also a challenge that involved eating grubs as quickly as possible. This ...

After seven seasons, NBC's gently acerbic, lovingly rendered Parks and Recreation ended its run Tuesday night with an extension of the final season's voyage to 2017. In further flashes to a few years or even decades later, we learned about April and Andy's kids, Garry's future as a beloved eternal ...

The rain that fell on Hollywood as the hours of red-carpet coverage wore on may have provided one of the evening's best visuals: actual people running around wearing plastic bags as they guided famous people out of limos, under umbrellas and to the waiting microphones of interviewers who wanted to ...

The nominees are in, the arguments have been had, and the ceremony is all that's left of Oscar season. (Well, and the griping over what should have won.)

On Sunday night, we'll be where lots of other people will be: on Twitter. NPR film critic Bob Mondello will ...

We didn't get to tape our Oscars Omnibus live the way we planned (stay tuned for a make-up date for ticketholders), but we did get to sit down with our friend Bob Mondello to talk about all eight contenders in the Best Picture race. (For more on Selma, ...

Linda Holmes and movie critic Bob Mondello sit down with Audie Cornish to talk about the upcoming Oscars.

This week on Parks & Recreation, April & Andy make plans to move to DC for April's new job, and Leslie gets a new DC-based gig, too. Brian and friends offer their reactions.

So here we are, many of us in the D.C. area, doing what many in the Northeast — particularly New England — have been doing lately: looking out the window.

Let us put aside for the moment the question of whether offices are closed too much or too little. It's ...

This week on Parks & Recreation, Leslie upends expectations when she skips the traditional “pie-mary” pie-baking contest for candidates’ wives. Brian and friends offer their reactions.

The surprising announcement from Comedy Central suggests the show will carry on with a new host after its host of 16 years takes his leave later this year.

This week, Parks & Rec revisited the land dispute between Leslie Knope and the tech giant Gryzzl which bears some resemblance to LG's plans for a new HQ in the Palisades.

Fresh Off The Boat, a comedy premiering Wednesday night on ABC, is the rare series that features Asian-American actors in a show about an Asian-American family. It closely resembles ABC's Black-ish not primarily because both shows feature casts of color, but because both shows share a sort of emerging ABC ...

After years in which the themes of Super Bowl ads seemed to be bikinis, high jinks and crude things happening to old people, what a surprise to find out that Sunday night, the theme was feelings.

Not regular feelings like the ones you have when something actually happens to you, ...

This week, Parks & Rec tackled the world of data mining in 2017. We talk about the satirical treatment of Gryzzl, an Amazon-Google-Facebook behemoth that's spying on Pawnee residents.