Criminal Minds debuted in the fall of 2005, as CBS was riding a wave of popular procedurals. The first of these, of course, had been CSI: C...

I had occasion to meet producer Norman Lear in the spring of 1978, when I was a freshman in college. He was coming to our university to give...

How do you stand up for women in this day and age — ordinary women — without being overlooked or ignored? I keep hearing — in this #MeToo er...

Completing my alphabetical look back at the actors who’ve played companions on Doctor Who , and judging their best and worst performances. T...

Was there ever a great show that peaked for as short a time as Designing Women ? It’s undeniably a classic — beautifully acted, frequently w...

Continuing my alphabetical look back at the actors who’ve played companions on Doctor Who . This latest set turned out to be a bit of a love...

My annual year in review, following overviews of 2013 , 2014 , 2015 , 2016 , 2017 and 2018 . 2019 was a ridiculously good year for televis...

This entry began as The Mary Tyler Moore Show Season 3, but honestly, I’ve written so many long essays lately, I needed a change of pace, a...

In an essay in the summer of 2018 , I looked at the actors who've played the title role in Doctor Who , and judged their best and worst ...

I’d never seen an episode of Star Trek — in any of its incarnations — before last spring. At that time, BBC America typically ran eight-hou...