The outstanding sci-fi/police procedural/adventure television series Person of Interest is now (finally!) available for digital download on all the major platforms, as well as on DVD and live on CBS TV.

Very unfortunately, the series is still not available for streaming. That may sound like a difference without dimension, but we'll see what it ( Read more... )

Near the end of the 1944 serial Zorro's Black Whip -- in which an 1880s Idaho newspaper publisher and masked vigilante named Barbara Meredith (Linda Stirling) leads her territory toward statehood cleverly and persistently, in anachronistic outfits -- comes a clip show.  This surprised and amused me ( Read more... )

I canceled my cable service on Saturday.  My sister had given me an HD converter box for my birthday, and when I finally plugged in the old rabbit ears and bowtie antenna, I discovered that not only is the reception incomparably improved from analog days -- it was all snowy static and two channels, barely, back then -- I could get more channels ( Read more... )

I tried two summer television series this year, The Good Guys and The Gates.  Apparently, both have been picked up instead of cancelled (how odd! normally, my viewership is a kiss of death).  The Good Guys, a buddy-cop action comedy, is a keeper for me.  The Gates, a nighttime soap with supernatural suburbanites, is not so much ( Read more... )

I've been meaning to pass on this discovery for weeks!  Star Trek (The Original Series) is now available on CBS.com under "TV Classics" on their "Shows" menu and, judging from the one episode I watched there, the streaming quality is excellent.

The high quality is why this is news.  Of course Star Trek has been on the official site for years.  ( Read more... )

Have you every wondered, "Golly, could The Daily Show really be as great as kirbyfest is always saying?"  Watch Mr. Stewart's extended parody of Glenn Beck.  We report, you decide.  (Psst! The answer is, "Yes.")

Television series finales seem to come in two overarching varieties.  It's almost as essential as funeral or wedding, as simple as tragedy or comedy, but I'm going to instead propose the "massacre" versus the "family portrait."

NUMB3RS came to an end on Friday night.  Oh, sure, it was billed as the season finale, not the series finale, but I ( Read more... )

The local PBS station began showing Lost in Austen last Sunday night.  The first episode barely held me.  I couldn't bear hearing voices so close to the text but hitting it always off-key as they wove the inevitable changes of swapping modern, real Amanda for eighteenth-century, fictional Lizzie.  Tonight, however, at the end of the second ( Read more... )

From an opinion column by Brent Bozell titled "TV's Increasing Female Body Count:"A new study by the Parents Television Council called "Women in Peril" reveals that between 2004 and 2009, CBS, NBC, and Fox (but not ABC) all green-lighted a significant increase in ... violence against women.  On average ... there was a 2 percent increase in overall ( Read more... )

CBS will premiere the new seasons of both NCIS (Tuesday 09/22 8/7c) and Numb3rs (Friday 09/25 10/9c) this week.  Time to set the VCRs, TiVos, DVRs, and whatever else we use these days.  (And if your machine conks out, remember that it will be online the next morning. ~g~)

Has anyone heard of anything new this season worth setting the recorder