Robert Abele

BBC's Conviction

The Lives of Cops

Robert Abele
It’s going to be hard to tell you about Conviction — an excellent British cop drama airing in six parts on BBC America — without giving away a major piece of its dramatic engine, a horrific scene that occurs near the end of the first episode. But I can safely......

Return of the Shot Maker

Robert Abele
Every other sports fan might have been talking about the Steelers and the Seahawks making it to the Super Bowl this weekend, or Kobe’s history-making 81-point basketball game, but I’ve been tennis-obsessed lately. As the second week of the Australian Open kicked off, tennis’ Swiss superstars provided two of the......

Eeeek! Isaac!

Robert Abele
E! Entertainment Television debuted its new red-carpet squad Monday night for the Golden Globes, with Ryan Seacrest playing the pissy host, Debbie Matenopoulos on hand for erroneous info, Giuliana DePandi swooning over George Clooney and Isaac Mizrahi as the dirty uncle. The glitches were bad enough: Some actor would be......
Heather Graham gives you a grueling workout inEmilys Reasons

The Replacements

Robert Abele
January may be a dumping ground for the movie industry, quietly shoving out its most damaged goods while still trying to squeeze box-office gold out of the big year-end releases. For television it’s the other way around, a rerun patch in December — it’s assumed you’re either shopping or seeing......

Rolling With Venis Envy

Robert Abele
Watching the first installment of the A&E documentary series Rollergirls, about the lives of a handful of roller derby die-hards, I was struck by a feeling that you don’t see women like this much on TV: hard-working, hard-ass and sexy. They know how to waylay an opponent during a match,......
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10 Great Small Performances

Robert Abele
Screen time is precious when you’re an actor, and in 2005 these performers knew how to make a moment or two into something beautifully more. Scene stealing isn’t what I’m talking about: That connotes something desperate. We’re talking scene making here.1. Leslie Mann(The 40-Year-Old Virgin). You could read something psychologically......

TiVo Top 10

Robert Abele
I could easily fill this list with returning shows that continued to entertain us with quality TV — Deadwood, Veronica Mars, The Daily Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage, Ted Koppel’s last year at Nightline — but that would leave out all the new programs that grabbed my attention in 2005......

Exquisite Corpse

Robert Abele
A clever matchup between ruthless killer and dedicated cop is always cold-bloodedly entertaining. Which is why, in the television crime dramas of our current age, serial killers have become so prevalent they’ve practically earned their own check box on the next census form. The problem inherent in a series that......

Who Wants to Be a Ratings Millionaire?

Robert Abele
In search of that old must-see sparkle, NBC played the get-rich-quick game-show card last week with a five-nights-only airing of Deal or No Deal — already a ratings winner in 35 countries — in which a contestant picks one of 25 briefcases that might contain a million dollars, and deals......

War Torn

Robert Abele
What does an ex-anchor do with his time? Tom Brokaw spent the better part of this past year putting together a sobering report that aired Sunday on the Iraq war’s psychological ramifications. Called To War and Back, the hourlong special traced the battle scars of a close-knit group of seven......