Country music innovators old and new give a preview of Ken Burns’ latest in-(super-deep)-depth doc, another pop culture icon is made weirdly more fun by those classic blocks, and we watch salmon spawn. It’s just another Saturday the 14th… Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss would … Continue reading What To Watch: 09/14/2019
Five days you work, one whole day to play; come on everybody wear your rollerskates today… and bounce rock over to your television as there are things on, including the season finale of the longest-running comedy sketch series (or pretty much anything without the words … Continue reading What To Watch: 05/18/2019
Victoria Gotti’s Victoria Gotti: My Father’s Daughter is an exercise in alternative facts so galling it could be written by Donald Trump. Adapted from Gotti’s 2014 memoir This Family of Mine: What It Was Like Growing Up Gotti, Gotti narrated, co-wrote, and co-produced this loose … Continue reading Victoria Gotti: My Father’s Daughter, A Cheap Exercise in Revisionist History
Oh, Peak TV, you are just impossible, as Friday brings a torrent of new streaming to go along with the usual Friday dump that always promises some joyous treasure while we dig through others’ trash for our next new TV thrill. Just HOW hard has … Continue reading What To Watch: 01/25/2019
The long tradition of fondly remembered made-for-TV films that replayed on Lifetime is not limited to poorly-acted teensploitation thrillers. In the 1990s the big networks aired quality crime dramas, too. There are 52 weeks in a year, and occasionally those weekend movies were great, without … Continue reading A Made-For-TV CLASSICS: “A Woman Scorned” and “Her Final Fury”
Death of a Cheerleader, often called A Friend to Die For, is a 1994 made-for-NBC movie starring Tori Spelling as a Mean Girl in a small California town. Kellie Martin plays Angela Delvecchio, a very Catholic, very good, mostly-ignored teenage girl. Valerie Harper stars as Angela’s mom, and … Continue reading Death Of A Cheerleader: Tori Spelling’s Greatest Work?
I watched Lifetime’s ripped-from-the-mouth-of-Nancy-Grace-circa-2015 murder scandal Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret at the behest of my favorite podcast, My Favorite Murder. (Much like comedian Karen Kilgariff, I too felt that incessant media coverage was enough, but I was wrong!) In 2008 Jodi Arias murdered Travis Alexander … Continue reading Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret Surprisingly Tasteful for a Lifetime Murder Movie
Over two years ago Lifetime looked at its Emmys hopes and dreams, threw caution to the wind, and told the tale of notorious murder suspect, Lizzie Borden, who may have killed her father and stepmother on a hot Massachusetts afternoon with an ax. I’ve long … Continue reading Lifetime Whacks With Lizzie’s Ax
What will Preacher Jesse Custer do? Wouldn’t Freddy (aka more serious Omar Little) and a Lifetime Movie stepdaughter want to know. It’s another busy Sunday night of shot callers, pranking principals, neurotic comics, and celebrities who know how to play the game. BRAD’S PICK: Preacher [AMC, 9p] … Continue reading What to Watch: 07/31/2016
Often the most prized, most nostalgic, films in this blog’s examination of made-for-TV greatness were films that aired a Movie Of The Week, before going (inevitably) to Lifetime. One such gem is 1990’s In Defense of A Married Man, available to stream on both Netflix and … Continue reading “In Defense of a Married Man,” A Made for TV Gem
