Robert Abele

One of the lunatic joys of the comedy year debuts on IFC on Tuesday. Called The IT Crowd, it’s a deliriously funny workplace sitcom that’s been imported from Britain, and, more specifically, from the fertile, oddball mind of Irish writer-director Graham Linehan. Fans of Linehan’s other series — Father Ted,......

With The Dark Knight becoming the second-highest-grossing film of all time, and closing in on Titanic’s No. 1 spot, it’s not a bad time to take a look at the 85-year history of the studio that made the film. Written, produced and directed by film critic Richard Schickel and narrated......

The new Fox series Fringe premiered Tuesday following a cyclone of hype, and then proceeded to play out as if it were still in hard-sell mode. I wanted to like it more, but the pilot was like an eager date rattling off a list of attributes — “I can do......

British television personality Vivienne Vyle is a scalpel-tongued ice queen of a talk-show host who regularly baits her wretched, working-class guests — their lives are reduced to crawl titles like “My Son Calls the Wrong Man Daddy!” — until one of them punches her in the face on camera, and......

Either Steven Bochco’s new legal drama Raising the Bar is a coup for TNT (big-time Emmy show-runner brings his dramatic expertise to basic cable!) or a coup for Bochco (ratings-hot channel allows a fading broadcast-network stalwart to revive himself!). Whichever way you see it, the show (which debuts Monday night)......

In the world of agitative comedy, Margaret Cho’s gifts are many, and her ability to triumph as an avowedly leftist, feminist, Korean-American, bisexual and profanely funny woman (with weight issues, even) is — ironically, considering her blistering jokes about this country’s flaws — like some weird and wonderful check in......

I watched a good deal of the sweat, struggle and crushing loss over the weekend. The badminton players who lunge, swat and dink with a surprising ferocity. The beach-volleyball players who have mastered the vertical arts: strategically falling down and leaping straight into the air. NBA stars so unencumbered by......