Brendan Bernhard

Top 10 TV Events of 2002

Brendan Bernhard
01. Ronaldo scores second goal in Brazil's 2-0 victory over Germany in World Cup Final (Univision). 02. The Spanish TV commentator's ecstatic commentary on same (Univision). 03. Margaret Thatcher (!) visits the Gdansk shipyard on Commanding Heights (PBS) — electrifying footage of communism starting to crumble (PBS). 04. Female contestants......

Do Two Rights Make a Wrong?

Brendan Bernhard
Pat Buchanan is making trouble again. We‘re used to “Pitchfork Pat,” the barnstorming conservative contrarian ready to unleash his army on liberals and Mexicans, but the Pat Buchanan I’m talking to can sound disconcertingly like a liberal himself, if not yet like a guy who‘s ready to tear down the......

Minus 10

Brendan Bernhard
So how‘s 24 doing? We’re about a quarter of the way into this year‘s series, presuming it goes the distance, and we’ve known for six episodes already that a nuclear bomb is set to explode in Los Angeles unless crack government agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) can get to the......

The Road to Baghdad

Brendan Bernhard
And the making of CNN Live From Baghdad, which premieres Saturday, December 7, on HBO at 8 p.m., pits a hyperkinetic American news crew against the languid Orient and tells the story of how, in 1991, a little-known television channel called CNN hit journalistic gold and trounced its more established......

David and Golgotha

Brendan Bernhard
Photo by Ron Batzdorff LARRY DAVID IS THE PHILIP ROTH OF situation comedy, unafraid to reveal just how devious, petty, annoying, argumentative, selfish, boorish and insensitive he can be. Now that he has his own program, it's easy to see why he didn't cast himself as one of the characters......

As the World Turns

Brendan Bernhard
Naif that I am, I always assumed that the term ”news,“ as it pertains to television, suggested a series of reports carefully selected for their journalistic importance. Obviously, I was misinformed. Now the news is shown only for lack of something better, i.e., a Big Story like the Saga of......

New and Improv-ed

Brendan Bernhard
Photo by Danny Feld IT'S NOT OFTEN YOU SEE A PERFORMER REALLY have fun on a sitcom. But Second City alumnus Bonnie Hunt, who plays the host of a morning talk show on Life With Bonnie (ABC, Tuesdays, 9 p.m.), is obviously having a blast. And she should be, because,......

L.A. Reverential

Brendan Bernhard
ROBBERY HOMICIDE DIVISION (CBS, FRIDAY, 10 p.m.), which is produced by Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Heat, The Insider), brings in the big guns. This is a show that's in love with L.A., but the object of its desire is a far glitzier, slinkier model than the one known to the......

Sex & Beauty, Art & Kitsch

Brendan Bernhard
Photo by William Claxton GERMANY'S KING OF THE COFFEE TABLE LIES FLAT ON his back on a slab of cold porcelain tile and stares through dim, misty light at paint flaking from the ceiling. Naked but for a floppy wool sauna hat, he is drying off after a cooling dip......

From Requiem to Rave…

Brendan Bernhard
Photo by John Shard OF ALL THE BAND NAMES IN ROCK & ROLL HISTORY, Joy Division is perhaps the most evocatively sinister. (In Nazi Germany, the "joy divisions" were the "special sections" in which pureblooded Aryan women were kept to service Gestapo and SS officers, ostensibly in the interest of......