TV

Plus: Larry Fitzgerald reminds us how great Jerry Rice was, exaggerated crime on TV, and diplomatic blunders.

Plus: Larry Fitzgerald reminds us how great Jerry Rice was, exaggerated crime on TV, and diplomatic blunders.

Plus: Larry Fitzgerald reminds us how great Jerry Rice was, exaggerated crime on TV, and diplomatic blunders.

On this latest episode, the Substandard takes on Creed II and the Rocky oeuvre. JVL buys a flatscreen, Vic remembers seeing Ricky Jay, and Sonny talks about standing "on" line.

Booth crews just don't understand sports analytics. They should. Also: A less extreme (and more responsible) interpretation of the administration's climate report.

Booth crews just don't understand sports analytics. They should. Also: A less extreme (and more responsible) interpretation of the administration's climate report.

Phil Christman on the Hulu film ‘Minding the Gap’: Three young skateboarders rewrite their destinies.

The business of NFL broadcasting contracts. Plus: All things Scotland, from notes from a visit to notes on the TV show 'Outlander.'

Chris R. Morgan on the lasting appeal of the horror genre.

Plus: 'Tis the season for around-the-clock coverage of Elizabeth Warren and around-the-clock Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel.

Plus: 'Tis the season for around-the-clock coverage of Elizabeth Warren and around-the-clock Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel.

Headlined by the record-breaking Drew Brees (b. 1979). Plus: Wonder Woman explains the American electorate, and 'Chicago P.D.' fails miserably to explain American crime.

John Podhoretz on the creaky, predictable return of the ’90s sitcom ‘Murphy Brown.’

Tom Clancy’s hero returns in a new Amazon series, but with less geeky charm. Nicholas H. Loya explains.

Will the Texans finally get healthy and become favorites? Plus: "Packing" the court, and packing as much action into an episode of "24" as creatively possible.

Will the Texans finally get healthy and become favorites? Plus: "Packing" the court, and packing as much action into an episode of "24" as creatively possible.

The most recent entries in the film universe went to the blockbuster formula. Amazon has a chance to right the ship.

Five decades after his assassination, a new Netflix documentary looks at the last months of Bobby Kennedy.

Noir series now on Netflix vividly captures the contradictions and dynamism of the Weimar era.

Sequel to ‘The Karate Kid’ is a hit, may be good for some kicks.

A possible record number of QBs will be taken in the NFL Draft's first round (and there's a chance that analysts will really, really like the picks). Plus: Why teams make seemingly inconsequential trades.

The Good Place is the most unexpectedly profound show on television. NBC’s afterlife sitcom, which just concluded its second season, stars Kristen Bell as an impostor in paradise and Ted Danson as her supernatural overseer. It begins by skewering shallowly sentimental ideas of heaven and then…

Back in the 1990s, when I was a student at Cambridge, I met Queen Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret. A party had been arranged in her honor by the historian J. H. Plumb. There was jazz and dancing; the champagne flowed. Her Royal Highness drifted around, making excruciatingly banal conversation…

When the series Enterprise went off the air in 2005, the consensus was that the whole Star Trek enterprise (so to speak) was exhausted: The show’s ratings were too low to keep it on the air and the franchise’s two most recent movies were critical stinkers that fared poorly at the box office.

Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffp. That’s the sound of the air rushing out of the Falcons’ balloon. Atlanta’s NFL team has not merely staged an epic fail. The Falcons are, in every way, the Epic Fails.

“Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country?” Donald Trump tweeted last week, using German-style capitalization. Trump may have been thinking of the NFL’s headquarters tax exemption which, applying to the league’s New York City…

The trailer for the new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is just weird. For one thing, Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot, trim and blond, looks very little like Christie’s rotund, black-haired sleuth. He overdoes the mustache, adorning his face with an enormous, Chester Alan…

Michael Tolkin is one of America's greatest living novelists—and way too underappreciated, perhaps because of his successes in other genres. He's directed movies, including the 1991 film The Rapture, starring David Duchovny and Mimi Rogers; written screenplays, including The Player, based on his…

The WEEKLY SUBSTANDARD Podcast where Jonathan V. Last and Victorino Matus reveal their guilty pleasure TV shows while Sonny Bunch pretends he watches nothing of the sort. Plus Jonathan gives us his take on "cruising," Sonny complains about germ-carrying children, and Vic pleads for moderation—all…

Aziz Ansari, for those of you recently emerged from your post-Obama-reelection survival bunkers, is a very funny comedian, known mainly as Tom Haverford on NBC's now defunct Parks and Recreation, as well as approximately 17,000 stand up specials. His new series Master of None, a half hour "dramedy"…

President Obama will appear on the Daily Show With Jon Stewart. The appearance will be next week in New York City. Stewart's last scheduled show is August 6.

Fox News and SiriusXM announced today the launch of a new news channel.

Vice President Joe Biden appeared to be the butt of a joke on tonight's Parks and Recreation, when a character on the show pulled out the (sadly) nonexistent Biden the Rails: 1001 Poems Inspired by My Travels Through Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, by Joe Biden:

A top of advisor to President Barack Obama is in Los Angeles to try to get Obamacare written into scripts of TV shows and movies. Valerie Jarrett explained in an appearance on Top That! on PopSugar.com:

According to a local CBS Arizona affiliate, President Obama and his team have 3 tactics to make sure reporters stick to the 4 minutes the White House has allotted them to interview the leader of the world: a countdown clock, a looming aide, and they have to conduct the interview with the president…

The federal agency that oversees the Voice of America is seeking someone to produce a TV entertainment show to be broadcast in Iran in the Farsi language that includes "Hollywood news" and "other interesting aspects of life on the West Coast of the United States." The Broadcasting Board of…

The last of the unsold tickets to the playoff game between the Cincinnati Bengals and San Diego Chargers were bought up on Friday, mostly by Proctor and Gamble.  Call it a reverse corporate bailout.  If P&G had not come to the rescue, Bengals fans who live in Cincinnati and its environs would have…

Matthew Continetti, writing at the Washington Free Beacon:

The Cincinnati Bengals won their division and made it to the playoffs but are having difficulty selling enough tickets to this weekend's game against the San Diego Chargers to avoid a local television blackout.

Al Jazeera America has launched. Here are the opening minutes, featuring cameos by Hillary Clinton and John McCain, and a brief explanation of the new network:

President Obama tells comedian Jay Leno that "We don’t have a domestic spying program." He made the comment during a taping of Leno's TV show.

Louisiana’s showing up a lot on cable TV these days. There’s the History Channel’s Swamp People, a hit series documenting the lives of Cajun alligator hunters in the swamps of coastal Louisiana. Over on A&E, you can watch Duck Dynasty, which features a self-professed family of rednecks who turned…

In a press release, USA Network announces that is has "[Launched] Characters Unite Month to Combat Hate, Intolerance & Discrimination."

The Washington Post reports:

In an interview with the Huffington Post, MSNBC president Phil Griffin tries to push back against the notion that his channel has become a mouth-piece for President Barack Obama.

What to watch tonight?  There is the debate, of course, upon which hangs the fate of the nation if not the world.  That's important.  And, then, there is the seventh game of the National League playoffs, with the winner going to the World Series.  And, on Monday Night Football we have the Chicago…

Seven days ago, President Obama led Mitt Romney by 3.1 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polling.  One week (and one debate) later, Romney now leads Obama by 1.1 points — a swing of 4.2 points in Romney’s favor.  Now the Wall Street Journal reports that, for the first…

President Obama has released a new two-minute ad that will serve as a closing argument of sorts as early voters begin to go to the polls in several states.

Rock 'n' roll may be here to stay, but the impresarios who brought it to us are only human. Bill Graham of Fillmore fame was killed in a helicopter crash in 1991. The two Dons, Kirshner of Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and Cornelius of Soul Train, died recently in their mid-seventies. Now, the…

What a week for headlines: An oceanliner keels, Rick Perry quits the race, Newt Gingrich's ex-wife talks about open marriage, and Rick Santorum wins Iowa. But the biggest news of the week is without doubt Beverly Kim's elimination from Top Chef: Texas. Yes, I'm joking, but as Beverly said over the…

In two television interviews taped for Monday evening, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain denied any wrongdoing as he tried to clarify his story about the allegations he was accused of sexual harassment while serving as president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association in the late…

A recent scene on Iraqi television, via Bad Rachel: 

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal ran a special section reporting on the paper’s recent conference entitled “Women in the Economy: An Executive Task Force.” One of the taskforce members was Geena Davis, the Academy Award winning actress and more recently founder of the Geena Davis Institute on…