Entertainment

In depth
A tournament of their own

Reporter Shaun Hittle and photographer Kevin Anderson followed the Douglas ...

Unleash the dog show!
February 13, 2012
Forget Valentine’s Day. Tonight we celebrate our greatest, most enduring and generally least complicated love affair. That between people and dogs.
Cruise ship wreck ready for prime time
February 12, 2012
“Italian Cruise Ship Disaster: The Untold Stories” (6 p.m., National Geographic) offers the first, moment-by-moment documentary look at the seemingly preventable mishap, including extensive interviews with survivors who were having the time of their lives right up to the moment disaster struck.
Network fare is rehashed
February 11, 2012
NBC offers viewers a second glance at the pilot of “Smash” (9 p.m.). The show had a healthy audience last Monday, so look for the network to offer viewers plenty of chances to get hooked. It’s certainly spent enough (reported to be more than $25 million) promoting this extravaganza, so it behooves the network to give as many folks as possible the chance to see what all the fuss is about.
Netflix and Hulu air new scripted originals
February 10, 2012
Within just over a week, Netflix and Hulu are both debuting their first stabs at original scripted programming.
TV treads a narrow path
February 10, 2012
There’s ratings gold in them there gold shows! Two weeks back, “Bering Sea Gold” (10 p.m., Discovery) was the highest-rated series debut in that network’s history. And last week, its cable ratings got even higher, reaching more than 3.5 million total viewers. There was a time when that would have been considered a paltry network audience. But those were in the days before every show had to compete with hundreds of other choices.
Love, money … it’s Valentine’s
February 9, 2012
Valentine’s Day approaches, and with it, obligatory holiday episodes.
Back to future for CBS News
February 8, 2012
CBS News takes a page from the distant past and reintroduces the special “Person to Person” (7 p.m.) to a new generation.
‘River’ may pull you in
February 7, 2012
Tonight brings us the premiere of “The River” (8 p.m., ABC). It’s a stab at “Lost” by way of “Paranormal Activity” and “The Blair Witch Project.”
NBC puts on a really big show
February 6, 2012
There’s nothing particularly wrong with “Smash” (9 p.m., NBC), except that nothing about it feels quite right.
A few choices beyond the Super Bowl
February 5, 2012
Sequels tend to pile up when you’re not watching. I’m still not sure how many movies “Leprechaun” has spawned.
Do ’tweens still want to know ‘how to rock’?
February 4, 2012
The new tween musical-fantasy sitcom “How to Rock” (7:30 p.m., Nickelodeon) proves that some stories and themes never go out of style. Mean girls just need a nudge to become nice, and ugly ducklings just have to get past freshman year to become swans.
Sheen finds affirmation in his rebel roots
February 3, 2012
The celebrity genealogy series “Who Do You Think You Are?” (7 p.m., NBC) returns with a glance at a few of the gnarled branches in Martin Sheen’s family tree.
‘Union’ a curious dance of collaboration, rehabilitation
February 2, 2012
Directed by Cameron Crowe, the 2011 documentary “The Union” (8 p.m., HBO) chronicles the making of Elton John and Leon Russell’s collaborative album of the same name.
A woolly mystery long in the tooth
12:00 a.m., February 1, 2012 Updated 12:00 a.m.
Talk about a cold case! “NOVA” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) presents “Ice Age Death Trap,” a tale of mass tragedy and forensic sleuthing spanning millennia. As on any “CSI” episode, we begin with a curious discovery. A construction worker in Colorado unearths something odd: a tooth so large it has to be held in two hands.
‘Key & Peele’ deals with race and little else
January 31, 2012
Way back in another century, President Bill Clinton was called “the first black president.” And it was Clinton who suggested that America needed to have a “conversation about race.” The new sketch comedy series “Key & Peele” (9:30 p.m., Comedy Central) presents a nonstop conversation about race, racism and biracial identity.
Is reality TV a horror, or merely horrible?
January 30, 2012
Whenever reality TV shows bore me — and that’s practically all the time — I like to reimagine them as grade-Z horror movies in the making.
iPhone, iPad app rewards being a couch potato
January 30, 2012
Want to earn stuff by watching TV? A free app for that debuted Wednesday.
HBO presses its ‘Luck’
January 29, 2012
The new series “Luck” (8 p.m., HBO) is the New York Yankees of television dramas, an enterprise so laden with talent, it inspires both awe and resentment.
‘Namath’ profiles NFL game-changer
January 28, 2012
A divisive pop culture icon, cautionary tale and sports star all rolled into one, quarterback Joe Namath inspires a 90-minute film to match his multifaceted legend in “Namath” (7 p.m., HBO).
‘Bering Sea Gold’ goes to extremes
January 27, 2012
Cable has become a place where men and women go to get away from each other. Every night, there are millions of women watching marathons of shows about cakes, weddings and dresses, while guys wallow in macho daydreams like “Gold Rush” (8 p.m., Discovery) or its more extreme and ridiculous incarnation, “Bering Sea Gold” (9 p.m., Discovery).
Damage control runs amok on ‘30 Rock’
January 26, 2012
It’s probably never a good idea to call your audience a bunch of idiots. That’s the problem facing Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) on “30 Rock” (7 p.m., NBC), continuing a theme from last week.
A world without hugs and a plot full of holes
January 25, 2012
Kiefer Sutherland returns to the Fox lineup in “Touch” (8 p.m.). He’s not Jack Bauer, but Martin Bohm, a sorely overextended single dad whose wife died on Sept. 11. His 11-year-old son, Jake (David Mazouz), has never uttered a word. He refuses to be hugged or even touched. Experts say he’s autistic, but Martin believes that Jake’s fascination with numbers may be more than a retreat to an inner world. It could be his advanced way of communicating.
Scorsese’s ‘Hugo’ leads Oscars with 11 nominations
January 24, 2012
Martin Scorsese’s Paris adventure “Hugo” leads the Academy Awards with 11 nominations, among them best picture and the latest director slot for the Oscar-winning filmmaker.
State of the Union: long on drama and decorum
January 24, 2012
Look for network and cable schedules to make way for the State of the Union address (8 p.m. on CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, MSNBC, Fox News). It’s not a TV show, but it is filled with drama.
Gross-out factor diminishes host
January 23, 2012
“Bizarre Foods America” (9 p.m., Travel) returns for a season of domestic consumption. Culinary adventurer Andrew Zimmern explores the 50 states to sample unusual entrees like smoked raccoon and guinea pig.
Fox has final football game of season
January 22, 2012
Fox doesn’t get to broadcast the Super Bowl this year, so it’s treating Sunday night’s NFC Championship Game between the Giants and 49ers (5:30 p.m.) as the next best thing.
Rob Lowe’s a mad, bad cad!
January 21, 2012
It’s Rob Lowe as you’ve never seen him! Who knew that a modified Mike Ditka hairdo and the Brawny Paper Towel man’s mustache would do so much for the too-pretty star of “The West Wing” and “St. Elmo’s Fire”?
CSI’ star prepares for departure
January 18, 2012
Twelve years on television is an eternity. Marg Helgenberger will leave “CSI” (9 p.m., CBS) after two more episodes, beginning tonight. Her character, Catherine Willows, has been part of the forensics series since it debuted in 2000, outlasting male leads William Petersen and Laurence Fishburne.
‘Remodeled’ has narrow audience
January 17, 2012
If television is to be believed, half of the American economy is devoted to fashion. Into this fairy-tale universe comes “Remodeled” (8 p.m., CW), an odd choice for a network show, as it seems too small and niche-marketed even for Bravo.
Cops, ghosts mingle on ‘Alcatraz’ and ‘Lost Girl’
January 16, 2012
So there’s this island where strange things happen and people who should be very old or dead show up unchanged nearly half a century later. And there’s an underground lair filled with computers that may or may not be the source of the weirdness. And it stars Jorge Garcia, and it’s created by J.J. Abrams. Only Garcia’s character is no Hurley and “Alcatraz” (7 p.m., Fox) is no “Lost.”

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