Television

Said it before, saying it again: The so-called awards season is really about a sequence of frock-operas and not much more. The ratings for every awards show this past year have shown a major decline in interest, and I’ll bet that’s because the red-carpet coverage has essentially been eliminated.Like many...

This will come as news to many who watched the televised trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, but the trial was never supposed to be on TV. In Minnesota, cameras are not allowed in courtrooms.What happened in this instance was rare and made so by the COVID pandemic....

There’s an awful lot going on in Made for Love (streams Amazon Prime Video). Perhaps too much, with its dystopian take on technology and its central figure being a woman unleashed after a strange kind of bondage, but in the end its message is simple – if you want to...

One recent night Hunter Biden was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Biden was there to promote his memoir Beautiful Things. Kimmel was in good form and eloquently expressed his astonishment that Biden was alive to tell the tale told in the book – a story of alcohol and drug...

You might not think there's much overlap between Amy Winehouse and the work of playwright Terence Rattigan, chronicler of upper-crust British stiff upper lips.But the troubled diva is one of the influences behind Helen McCrory's searing performance in Rattigan's play "The Deep Blue Sea " as a well-off woman who...

British actor Helen McCrory, who starred in the television show “Peaky Blinders” and the “Harry Potter” movies, has died, her husband said Friday. She was 52 and had been suffering from cancer.Her husband, fellow actor Damian Lewis, said McCrory died “peacefully at home” after a “heroic battle with cancer.”“She died...

The story that gripped the Canadian television world last week seems to have a happy ending. But for the LGBTQ2S+ community, it’s barely a beginning – one that exposed bleak truths about how far we haven’t come in representing queer Canadians.It started April 5 with a good-news story in Toronto’s...

It was a particularly strong first quarter on the TV front. Multiple notable new series, some brilliant and some original and eccentric. What unfolds this weekend is another little masterpiece of storytelling. It features a grandmother as the central figure; she’s a police detective in small-town America, but it is...

There are many rooms in the house of Irish culture. It’s an eclectic, ever-changing place. Some rooms are cozy and others are refined. And then there are the rooms of utter chaos, where brawling takes place, the talk is always bawdy and the energy is destructive, a bit demented, and...

A breathless press release arrived in the inbox on Tuesday. It announced that in May there will be a televised concert, broadcast all over the world and hosted by Selena Gomez, aiming to “inspire vaccine confidence worldwide and help get the COVID-19 vaccines to everyone, everywhere.” It’s called VAX LIVE:...

It is often hard to feel genuinely sorry for people who work in television. There is always a lot of nonsensical and insincere talk wafting about in that arena.Yet there is a truly tragic undertow to season five, episode 13 of Kim’s Convenience (Tuesday, CBC 8 p.m. and CBC Gem)....

Well, there’s no use looking at me. I can’t make Doug Ford and Jason Kenney see sense. I can’t make the movie theatres reopen and the new James Bond movie magically appear. I can’t explain why, when Ontario hospitals are facing an apocalyptic scenario, people take to social media to...

Step right up, step right up. Ladies and gentlemen, or whatever you call yourselves, you are invited to witness a glorious mess, a mash-up of fantasy, Victorian flim-flammery, fabulous supernatural afflictions and much style, all baked into a witty tale of gifted women battling crusty old men.The Nevers (starts Sunday,...

Zach Davidson is a writer and editor in New York whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Brooklyn Railand NOON, among other publications. Mark Kingwell is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto whose latest book is The Ethics of Architecture.The pandemic’s public-health...

You didn’t ask me, but I’m here anyway so I’ll tell you what I think: As soon they can, a lot of people will return to wearing real, stylish clothes and abandon the pandemic habit of existing in glorified toddlers’ outfits that are a small step up from pyjamas.The other...

There hasn’t been a series like this in some time. Or perhaps, ever.Chad (starts Tuesday, CTV Comedy Network, 10:30 p.m.) is so packed with awkward, cringe-inducing humour that it stands alone. It is also divisive. Before it had even aired on TBS in the United States last week – heavily...

Most major literary figures are subject to re-examination about every 20 years or so. Sometimes the writer and work are rescued from the fads and fashions of what is taught in universities. Sometimes the work is condemned and sometimes the writer is rescued. Ernest Hemingway’s work has been going in...

The Screen Actors Guild Awards will have a host for the first time next year.Executive producer Kathy Connell said Monday that actress Kristen Bell will preside over the 24th annual ceremony in January.Bell said in a statement that she's "a little nervous" about being the show's first host but glad...

A list of the nominees for the 24th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, announced Wednesday in West Hollywood, California:MOVIESActor: Timothee Chalamet, "Call Me By Your Name," James Franco, "The Disaster Artist," Daniel Kaluuya, "Get Out," Gary Oldman, "Darkest Hour" and Denzel Washington, "Roman J. Israel, ESQ."Actress: Judi Dench, "Victoria &...

Donald Trump has resigned from the Screen Actors Guild after the union threatened to expel him for his role in the Capitol riot in January.In a letter dated Thursday and addressed to SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris, Trump said he was resigning from the union that he had been a member...