Posts Tagged ‘historical drama’
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “Darkest Hour” & “Mudbound”

  DARKEST HOUR (Focus/Universal – Nov. 22):  A shameless piece of rabble-rousing Hollywood biography, directed by Joe Wright and written by Anthony McCarten, and served hot on a platter to Oscar voters.  The subjec...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SEASON PREMIERE REVIEW: “The Borgias”

  THE BORGIAS:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Showtime must have a great co-production deal on THE BORGIAS.  Despite what is evidently a handsome budget–certainly far more expensive than what shows like House of Lies or ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Manhattan”

  Audiences of TV drama have the luxury these days of being spoiled, and that raises the question:  what separates a great series from one that’s merely very good?  WGN America’s MANHATTAN had an original, in...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Black Sails”

  From the viewpoint of its newly-concluded third season, the first 2 years of Starz’s BLACK SAILS feel like a very long and somewhat misguided prologue to where the series is now.  With Michael Bay as its leading E...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Downton Abbey”

  DOWNTON ABBEY – Sunday 9PM on PBS When it started airing 5 years ago, DOWNTON ABBEY was an artifact of nostalgia for a vanished era of British society, one Americans for all our proud egalitarianism have always eat...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

AFI FEST Film Review: “Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom”

  MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM:  Watch It At Home – More Like a Trudge The movies haven’t figured out what to do with Idris Elba.  The powerful, fiery actor has been spectacular on TV, first on The Wire and ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Turn”

  TURN seemed to have its finger on a fascinating footnote to American history, telling the story of colonial undercover spies during the Revolutionary War under the direction of George Washington, but it’s never suc...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Mad Men”

  MAD MEN:  Sunday 10PM on AMC Fresh episodes of MAD MEN will likely still be airing more than a year from now, so all the obituaries for the series that have been appearing lately run the risk of sounding like “Gen...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Mob City”

  Frank Darabont has had a busy couple of weeks, although not necessarily in a good way.  He launched TNT’s MOB CITY, his first project since being thrown off AMC’s The Walking Dead after less than two seasons...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Masters of Sex”

  MASTERS OF SEX:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime MASTERS OF SEX was one of television’s best surprises last season.  Despite a title and premise–the groundbreaking study of human sexuality by Dr. William Masters an...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “Penny Dreadful”

  PENNY DREADFUL:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Previously… on PENNY DREADFUL:  In 1890s London, a mysterious set of figures exist in a world where literature’s classic horror characters are as real as Jack the Ri...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

AFI FEST Film Review: “Lone Survivor”

  LONE SURVIVOR:  Buy A Ticket – A Powerfully Visceral Tale of War Peter Berg’s LONE SURVIVOR, which was shown at the AFI Film Festival tonight in advance of its release late next month, is a docudrama in the ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Mercy Street”

  MERCY STREET:  Sunday 10PM on (many) PBS stations – Potential DVR Alert PBS isn’t accustomed to acting like a conventional “network,” and so it took the service until the very last episodes of Do...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “Manhattan”

  MANHATTAN:  Sunday 10PM on WGN America Previously… on MANHATTAN:  Starting in 1943, the New Mexico desert housed a mysterious, ultra-secret military and scientific operation code-named The Manhattan Project, its ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Rush”

  The writer Peter Morgan is a whiz at boring into little-remembered (and in the US, sometimes little-known) crannies of recent history and scooping out the rich drama inside, with scripts like The Deal, Frost/Nixon and Th...
by Mitch Salem