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Television Review | '13 Fear Is Real': ‘Boo!’: Reality TV Puts on a Fright Wig

Posted: January 7th, 2009, 4:05am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

“13 Fear Is Real,” a fizzled effort at scaremongering that begins Wednesday on CW, reveals just how badly reality television can go astray when the casting fails to get creative.

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Television Review | 'The Real World': The Show That Put the ‘Real’ in Reality TV

Posted: January 7th, 2009, 3:53am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

“The Real World: Brooklyn” the latest version of the reality television progenitor that has aired on MTV for 17 years, places its young cast in a loft in Red Hook.

Television Review | 'Game Show in My Head': Humiliation for Sale, at New Low Prices

Posted: January 3rd, 2009, 4:31am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

“Game Show in My Head,” which starts Saturday on CBS, is a new adventure in self-abasement that comes to us from Ashton Kutcher.

Television Review | 'A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa': Trying to Join a Corporate Head and a Cloth Heart

Posted: December 17th, 2008, 4:33am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Disney has started to drench the market with Muppets, including “A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa,” a special being shown Wednesday on NBC.

Television Review | 'Top Chef': Trying to Stand the Heat in a Pressure Cooker

Posted: November 12th, 2008, 5:26am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

The “Top Chef” kitchen exquisitely mirrors a certain kind of creative workplace where the obsessively gifted flounder in the face of the coolly confident.

Television Review | 'Brotherhood': Mobster and Politician, Neither Rolling in Clover

Posted: October 31st, 2008, 4:16am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

“Brotherhood,” which begins its third exceptional season on Sunday, is yet another Showtime drama featuring main characters who rationalize self-interest as altruism.

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Television Review | 'Crusoe': A Castaway’s Lethal Bunch of Coconuts

Posted: October 17th, 2008, 4:49am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

NBC’s “Crusoe” is pure spectacle absent any allegorical ambition.

Television Review | 'Crash': Trafficking in Intimate Deceptions

Posted: October 17th, 2008, 3:49am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Spawned from the 2005 film of the same name, “Crash,” the first original drama series made for the Starz cable channel, isn’t the most original depiction of Los Angeles but it has a noirish appeal.

Television Review | 'The Chef Jeff Project': Amid Roasts and Recipes, Rehabilitation

Posted: October 11th, 2008, 4:28am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

“The Chef Jeff Project,” a new series beginning Sunday on the Food Network, feels like reality TV giving back and compensating for a hundred prior sins.

Television Review: English Lad, Welsh Lass and Cheeky Pals

Posted: August 26th, 2008, 2:40am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

“Gavin & Stacey,” which begins Tuesday on BBC America, became a hit in Britain resting on the rather simple premise that no two people come together alone.

Television: They Drink, They Drug, and You Are There

Posted: August 18th, 2008, 2:43am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Nothing on television matches the freaky calculus of exploitation and good will in A&E’s “Intervention,” which lures dope fiends and alcoholics into confrontations with their families.

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Television: ‘Swingtown’ and the Heyday of the Average

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 10:49pm GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

A period piece on CBS, “Swingtown” nears the end of its summer run with a dwindling audience despite all the elements that seemed to point to its potential for popularity.

TV Review | 'Primeval': Doomed, Again, by the Space-Time Continuum

Posted: August 8th, 2008, 2:20am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

BBC America continues its coverage of time travel with its campy science-fiction show, “Primeval,” which imagines an England threatened by lobster-like creatures.

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Television Review: On Reality Shows, Love’s Retreads Need Dates, Too

Posted: July 21st, 2008, 3:44am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

There is no good reason in the world to watch “Date My Ex,” and yet there is something vaguely redeeming in its economic chemistry.

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Television: Summer’s Reality: Odd Skills and Absurd Obstacles

Posted: July 8th, 2008, 4:56am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

In the current spate of reality series there is no one for whom we might feel sorry, no one to hate, but a whole lot about which we might feel very bad.

Television Review | 'The War of the World': A Revisionist View of a Century Dominated by War

Posted: June 30th, 2008, 4:06am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

“The War of the World” is a brash, copious, assured investigation of 20th-century global violence.

Television Review: Laughter From the Assembly Line

Posted: June 28th, 2008, 5:33am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

“Factory,” a new series beginning on Sunday, is the first original comedy from Spike TV, which makes no effort in expanding its brand.

Television Review | 'Weeds': Pot Dealers Washed Up in an Unchic Beach Town

Posted: June 16th, 2008, 3:38am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

For a long time it has been hard to know what “Weeds” actually stands for but too easy to see what it is against.

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Television Review: A Serial Killer’s Evolution as Seen From a Marriage

Posted: May 31st, 2008, 4:19am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Barbara Kopple’s latest film, an atonal if compact investigation into the life and criminal activities of John Allen Muhammad called “The D.C. Sniper’s Wife,” makes its debut on Saturday night.

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Television: Philosophy, Mystery, Anarchy: All Is ‘Lost’

Posted: May 29th, 2008, 3:48am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Among avid consumers of serial television, there is no more hubristic claim than to say that you know “Lost.”

Television Review: Spinsterhood Is Powerful (Until a Catch Shows Up)

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 3:31am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

PBS’s adaptation of “Cranford” sends a message that single life turns women into dithering twits.

Television Review | 'Sense and Sensibility': The Dashwood Quest for Civil Unions

Posted: March 29th, 2008, 4:27am GMT by By GINIA BELLAFANTE

The screenwriter Andrew Davies's latest adaptation of Jane Austen proves again that we should all suffer the misfortunes of real estate endured by the downgraded heroines of Austen’s tributes to love and property.