Robert Abele

The hospital setting of the demented new BBC America comedy Green Wing — debuting next Thursday — is as necessary to the show’s aims as the future business health of Donald Trump’s empire is to who gets hired on The Apprentice. In the case of both programs, just show us......

Photo by Paul DrinkwaterWhen they click, sitcoms can exert a grip on the TV-viewing consciousness that hourlong dramas just don’t have. It’s not as much fun to relive an ER in syndication as it is to come upon an old Seinfeld. You don’t even have to watch a whole episode......

Female comic actresses have forever mined dizzy humor: There’s a pretty clear line from Gracie Allen to Megan Mullally. But Britain’s Catherine Tate, a Royal Shakespeare Company member with standup chops, is more likely to take recognizable stereotypes and send them into loonyland the way Dan Aykroyd or Will Ferrell......

Photos by Richard J. CartwrightThe new HBO series Unscripted is not about the nobility of acting. It's about the preposterous things actors need to do daily to make it. Consider a scene from a recent episode in which acting teacher Goddard Fulton (Frank Langella) asks a scrawny, nervous but charming......

It’s tempting to play marketer and describe the new UPN show Veronica Mars as Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Raymond Chandler. But in this smart, engaging series about a former popular girl turned crime-solving high school outcast, the hard-boiled dialogue comes from its teen protagonist’s mouth in a way that......

If you haven't seen HBO's crime-drama series The Wire yet, you probably aren't feeling the exclusionary shame that greets those who confess they don't watch The Sopranos or Six Feet Under. Frankly, it just isn't as popular or Zeitgeisty or Emmy-loved. Instead, when you come across a Wire fan, you're......

Photo courtesy Universal The first season of Columbo, the famed NBC series starring Peter Falk as the rumpled, pestering L.A. cop with the deceptively brilliant mind, was released by Universal this week on DVD, and it’s a bare-bones affair without a scrap of bonus footage or commentary on it. No......

Photo courtesy BBC Worldwide My sister and I share a love for British television comedy that lately has put her in the driver’s seat because she actually lives in London. She raved about The Office, for example, before it was even a culty must-see among the natives. When her favorites......