reviews by genre

My memories of Northern Exposure are of one of the finest television series I’ve ever seen, and watching its beginnings again, 14 years later, only confirms that assessment. This is the rare series that hit the ground running, with smart, ardent scripts written by writers who knew their characters well right from the start, performed … more…

“Wondaaaaa Womannnnn! Wondaaaaa Womannnnn!” Oh man, I’d forgotten that refrain accompanying every kick and punch in the Amazon princess’s fight for truth, justice, and the American way, but one chorus of it and I’m back on the elementary school playground, spinning that Wonder Woman spin and off to save the world. Any thirtysomething American woman … more…

Is it too punny to call Nip/Tuck cutting? I expected a series about Miami plastic surgeons to be obsessed with the physical, and with physical perfection. I never expected it to be so audacious and biting in its obsession with exploring the psychological roots of the drive for perfection — on both sides of the … more…

If there’s one thing that makes this 20-year-old sitcom worth revisiting — and there is only the one thing — it’s its value as an ethnographic specimen. What’s all the more startling is that such a thing is unlikely ever to be said in the vicinity of a Tony Danza vehicle again. But look how … more…

Upstart millionaire entrepreneur buys ancestral estate of upper-crust but destitute patrician. Gently witty class comedy ensues, as only the BBC can produce. Over the course of 20 half-hour episodes spread over three years — 1979 to 1981 — Richard DeVere (Peter Bowles) and Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton (Penelope Keith) spar over matters of taste, propriety, and the … more…

Delightfully bizarre, in a pecularily British way, and a spectacular hoot, Dame Edna Everage in a singular woman: Australian housewife, megastar, and mistress of a marvelous charisma, as she herself will inform you given half a chance. She’s also a huge put-on, of course, alter ego of comedian Barry Humphries and something of an institution … more…

Sixteen-year-old Sora does what lots of kids only fantasize about: she runs away and joins the circus. Arriving on a whim from Japan, she lucks into an audition with the Kaleido Stage, a kind of Ringling Brothers meets Cirque du Soleil, an amazing coincidence, considering that snagging an audition was precisely what brought her to … more…