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Television

  • Sandra Oh is The Chair on Netflix

    Cancel Culture on Campus

    By: Charles Giuliano - Aug 27th, 2021

    Sandra Oh stars as The Chair in a six episode comedy on Netflix. Set on small college Pembroke it is a broad and hilarious satire of cancel culture on campus. While played for laughs the hit comedy has evoked a dialogue about its uncanny, over the top, accuracy. It's the truth that makes this hilarious series sad and all too compelling.

  • PBS Louisa May Alcott

    More Than Little Women

    By: Edward Rubin - Dec 27th, 2020

    Writing to his 'possums" New York critic Fast Eddy was gobsmacked by the PBS documentary of author Louisa May Alcott. "This beautifully acted documentary (Elizabeth Marvel Plays The Mature Louisa) brings back Louisa, her times, her family and her good friends - both gods in my pantheon -  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)."

  • Pen/Man/Ship by Christina Anderson

    Moliere in the Park Streams Its First Contemporary Play

    By: Susan Hall - Dec 27th, 2020

    Moliere in the Park, with their streaming team Andy Carluccio and Liminal Entertainment Technologies, LLC are presenting Christina Anderson’s pen/man/ship free through January 4th.  It is a powerful play set on a boat passage that reverses the more familiar journey of black Africans.

  • Prototype Festival Opens OnLine

    Modulation Startles and Stuns

    By: Susan Hall - Jan 09th, 2021

    Undaunted by the constraints of COVID, the Prototype Festival launched its 7th annual event on January 8th. Modulation opened the week of new, streaming works. While the trailer and prologue look like the Hollywood Hills striped with waving geological lines, the three florescent doorways invite entrance to an interior. The inventive work, made up of 13 parts, is divided into three acts, Isolation, Fear and Identity.

  • Network for New Music Presents Extraordinary Measures

    Composer Portrait of Richard Wernick

    By: Susan Hall - Jan 11th, 2021

    Network for New Music gives us a delightful composer portrait of Pulitzer-prize winner Richard Wernick, a native Bostonian. He has studied at Tanglewood, and with Leonard Bernstein. Can you imagine a "Sunken Synagogue" replacing the Ys' cathedral of Debussy?

  • Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher

    Boston Lyric Opera Streaming Philip Glass

    By: Doug Hall - Jan 28th, 2021

    Boston Lyric Opera has boldly re-adapted Poe’s famous gothic horror story “The Fall of the House of Usher” with music of Philip Glass. It streams on operabox.tv for seven days starting on January 29/

  • New Federal Theatre Celebrates Women's History Month

    Riverting Production of Pearl Cleag's Hospice

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 13th, 2021

    New Federal Theatre has always promoted the inclusion of women artists as part of its mission. It is no surprise that they are offering works by and with women for Women’s History Month. They appeal to everyone. Petronia Paley and Margaret Odette are featured in the two-hander, Hospice by Pearl Cleage. Billed as a reading, the performances are full characterizations by actors.

  • The Irish Repertory Theatre Presents The Aran Islands

    Synge's Language Captured Brilliantly by Brendon Conroy

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 18th, 2021

    The Irish Repertory Theatre has given ten streamed performances, or arranged for them, during the time of Covid. Each one has added immensely to our pleasure. The latest comes straight from Dublin. It is a one man performance on stage by the actor Brendan Conroy. His lilting voice, describing the bleak Aran Islands and the lives of its inhabitants draws us in. We quickly understand that the man who wrote the words, J. M. Synge, was a musician. As words roll in Conroy's mouth, we hear musical phrases, dips and crescendos, textured takes on vowels and consonants.

  • Hemingway on PBS

    An Enigma Wrapped in Mystery

    By: Jack Lyons - Apr 18th, 2021

    Hemingway was an enigma wrapped in a mystery that could always get away with things that ordinary people could or word never do. He relished his celebrity status to the hilt and he was a party-going   charmer when he needed to be.  He was envied by men, and was desired by women from afar.  In his twenties he had matinee idol looks, and worked them to his advantaged.

  • Oslo on HBO a Riveting Drama

    Secret Israeli and Palestinian Negotiations

    By: Jack Lyons - Jun 07th, 2021

    Savvy heavyweight Hollywood movers and shakers like Steven Spielberg, Marc Platt, Kristie Macosko Krieger, producer Mark Taylor, and director Bartlett Sher lend their considerable talents and heft into a timely remake of the 2017 Tony-winning stage production “Oslo”.  The Oslo movie version of 2021 is also written by J.T. Rogers from his eponymous stage play, along with new inputs as a way of sharpening and updating the dialogue by Rogers and others.  

  • Hit and Run Sequel to Fauda on Netflix

    Binged but Fauda-geddahboutit

    By: Charles Giuliano - Aug 08th, 2021

    The two season Israeli series "Fauda" was a boffo smash on Netflix. Accordingly I binged on its more or less sequel "Hit and Run." The creative team jumped the pond to create an Israeli/ American production in English and Hebrew. In seeking a wider and American audience the team lost its Sabra base and churned out yet another mediocre action thriller. If you are a 'Fauda" fan this will be a major disappointment.

  • Experiments in Opera Delivers A Podcast Series

    Aqua Net and Funyums

    By: Susan Hall - Dec 09th, 2020

    Experiments in Opera (EIO) is the company that gives most hope for the future of the form. They are fleet, inclusive and steeped in the history of the opera. Most importantly, they have extended the camp story-telling which characterizes the form. For all the beauty of classic operas, let’s face it: they are camp. A new podcast series has just been released by the group.

  • Scenes from a Marriage on HBO

    Remake of Ingmar Bergman Film

    By: Jack Lyons - Oct 06th, 2021

    Israeli filmmaker Hagai Levi decided he wanted to do a more modern updated version of Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 seminal film “Scenes from a Marriage” that originally starred Liv Ullman, Erland Joseph, Bibi Andersson, Jan Malmsjo, and Gunnel Lindblom.  However, writer/adaptor/director Levi trimmed several characters for his 2021 version.

  • What’s on Netflix and Amazon.

    Good, Bad and Ugly

    By: Charles Giuliano - Dec 28th, 2021

    In the dead of winter baby it's cold outside. It's time to curl up on the couch and hunker down with Netflix and Amazon. Here is a cheat sheet of what we've been watching.

  • Vienna Blood on PBS

    Freudian Detective Team

    By: Jack Lyons - Jan 24th, 2022

    Max Liebermann, rivetingly played by English actor Matthew Beard, is a young brilliant former student of Sigmund Freud, who now helps the Viennese police department and Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt (Jurgen Maurer), investigate a series of gruesome and violent murders that are terrorizing Vienna.

  • Will the Real Julia Garner Please Stand Up

    From Ozark to Inventing Anna

    By: Charles Giuliano - Feb 13th, 2022

    Julia Garner's Ruth in the series Ozark could not be more different that Anna in the Shonda Rhimes series Inventing Anna. At 27, with one Emmy under her belt, she's on the prowl for more. Currently I am bingeing her shows on Netflix.

  • Garden Fit on PBS

    Combines Gardening and Muscle Mindfulness

    By: PBS - Feb 15th, 2022

    A new public television series premiering March 2022 presents the opportunity for people to take care of their bodies, while taking care of their gardens. ‘GardenFit’ is the first television show to help gardeners lead a healthier lifestyle through mindful movements they can use in the garden—and beyond. An episode was shot in the Berkshires.

  • Experiments in Opera Celebrates Tenth Anniversary

    Everything for Dawn TV Series Format

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 06th, 2022

    Experiments in Opera is celebrating its tenth anniversary. The statistics for artistic involvement are impressive. EiO has commissioned 85 new works from 55 composers collaborating with over three hundred performers, designers, and directors from the New York City artists community. Now they present opera in TV series format on All Arts.

  • Pie in the Sky on Acorn

    Must See TV

    By: Charles Giuliano - Nov 04th, 2022

    In every sense Richard Thomas Griffiths OBE (31 July 1947 – 28 March 2013) was a larger than life actor. We subscribe to Acorn through Amazon Prime. It offers a menu of British, Australian and New Zeland programs. Lately we have been binge watching Griffiths in five seasons as chef detective Henry Crabbe in "Pie in the Sky." You might also know him from appearances in Harry Potter films. On stage he won numerous awards including a Tony and Laurence Olivier Award.

  • Sanctuary on Netflix

    SumoThrows Its Weight Around

    By: Charles Giuliano - Nov 24th, 2023

    I was seduced into binge watching Sanctuary, an eight episode Japanese series on Netflix. It focuses on sumo wrestling, the national sport that is unique to Japan. Obesity is essential to success in the sport resulting in disease and premature death. While I had no prior knowledge of the sport I am now a fan.

  • Cuisine of the Gilded Age

    Eating Well Is the Best Revenge

    By: Charles Giuliano - Dec 04th, 2023

    Americans are fascinated by the filthy rich. Audiences lapped up five seasons of Downton Abbey. Now Julian Fellowes has moved the franchise from PBS to HBO. We follow the robber barons and their social climbing wives on the sumptuous but smarmy Gilded Age. This grand but shallow soap opera is lavish and entertaining. It is worth watching for costumes and spectacle. We are enthralled by a sit down dinner for 60 set in a Newport Cottage. We recommend Becky Libourel Diamond's cook book with recipes to emulate the fine dining seen in the series.

  • Kev Berry at The Tank

    A Hefty, Engaging Monologue

    By: Susan Hall - Nov 19th, 2020

    Kev Berry is an award-winning playwright and a superb monologist.  In Harsh Cacophonies I and II,, he is directed by his usual collaborator, Alex Tobey. The monologue was created in three separate pieces, which can be performed as stand alones.  The three are joined for this production and work well together.  Two hours fly by, in part because Berry is in a manic state. His speech and stories are always clear, but often rush.  This locates us in the urgent terrain from which his stories grow.

  • Hamilton on PBS

    Making of a Musical Masterpiece

    By: PBS - Jan 18th, 2016

    HAMILTON’S AMERICA is produced by Academy Award® and Emmy®-Winning producers RadicalMedia (What Happened Miss Simone?, Keith Richards: Under The Influence, In the Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams for PBS). The documentary combines interviews with experts and prominent personalities, new footage of the production in New York, and cast-led expeditions to DC, Philadelphia and New York.

  • PBS Announces Programming

    Maintaining Quality Television

    By: PBS - Jan 18th, 2016

    PBS announces new programs and initiatives launching in 2016.

  • The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon

    Won Two Golden Globe Awards

    By: Nancy Bishop - Jan 10th, 2018

    “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” an Amazon Studios series, won two Golden Globes Sunday night—one for best TV comedy series and one for best actress in a comedy series for Brosnahan, who grew up in Highland Park. It’s a hilarious look at a life among the wealthy and the lovably wacky flavor of Greenwich Village before Bob Dylan arrived.

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