Robert Abele

Uh-oh. Now that VH-1’s Breaking Bonaduce has reached the forgiveness-and-healing phase, I’m worried that my love for this show has been all about the base pleasures of watching a fuck-up at his most fucked-up-est. For weeks I’ve been watching the ex-Partridge Family actor turned steroid-fueled, jealous, alcoholic cur with a......

Watching the six-part miniseries Viva Blackpool on BBC America, I couldn’t help but look at this genre bender — about an ambitious, overconfident smalltime arcade owner with visions of casino-hotel riches — and think of the cable channel’s own wish to transform from boutique house to the big leagues of......

The first tickle of a new obsession being formed is a powerful thing, and it happened to me this past week when I happened to catch The Mighty Boosh on BBC America’s late-night comedy lineup. It’s an unpredictably absurd pop culture comedy concerning two zookeepers named Vince Noir, a sweetly......

My anticipation for season two of the high school shamus series Veronica Mars was almost mirthful, an emotion admittedly paradoxical to the reality of teenagers having to face another school year of homework, peer ostracization and crazy authority figures. But I was wary in one regard: Would UPN take obvious......

In the wake of ABC’s Lost, the show that not only stranded characters on a mysteriously inhabited island but also rescued a lonely network from its own marooned ratings exile, a newfound thirst for post–X-Files otherworldly insinuation has developed in programming land. Hence, CBS has Threshold, NBC has Surface, and......

Photo by BurmistonIf the nervy British humiliation-comedy classic The Office was about delusional power in the land of the quotidian, then the HBO-BBC co-production Extras — the newest series from The Office co-creator and star Ricky Gervais — is, in some ways, the opposite. It finds humor in the dreary,......

Martha Stewart unveiled her equivalent to “You’re fired” last week on her own version of The Apprentice, and it’s . . . poisonous etiquette. Brilliant! Bald, bespectacled control freak Jeffrey made some creative misjudgments writing a children’s book in the first task, and got the ax from Stewart, who glumly......

Every so often, a channel switch acts as a cosmically trenchant edit. Last week I caught PBS’s repeat of Fatal Flood, an American Experience documentary from 2001 about the devastating Mississippi flood of 1927. Among the program’s blistering details about the fate of the thousands of displaced African-Americans in Greenville,......

Photo by Carl PoseyDuring U.S. Open coverage the other week, USA Network commentator Ted Robinson, remarking on one tennis pro’s up-and-down life, said, “It could be a reality show.” Co-analyst John McEnroe shot back, “We don’t need any more reality shows.”Now, I’m a rapt listener when you deconstruct a wicked......

There were so many confessionals, looks of shock, tears shed and declarations of insecurity/independence/can-do-it optimism on the debut of Tyra Banks’ new motivational talk show that I felt I’d entered the makeover equivalent of Toontown. And this was just from Tyra herself. No dispassionate daytime diva will this leggy supermodel......