Cheers: Always Glad You Came

Photo: NBC When I became old enough not to be thrown out of bars, I had this silly idea that I might find my own “Cheers”. You know, a place…

Falcon Crest: Wine, Women and Power

Photo: CBS At first they all seem to have had realism in mind, the primetime soaps of the 1980s. The first episodes of Falcon Crest showed a middle-class family moving…

Friends: Could It Be More Beloved?

Photo: NBC 3rd Rock From the Sun was funnier. Mad About You sweeter. Will & Grace was smarter. Seinfeld was funnier, smarter and… well, not so much sweeter. But Friends…

Hart to Hart 

Not unexpectedly, it was novelist Sidney Sheldon who created this entertaining rip-off of the Thin Man movies. Jonathan and Jennifer (Robert Wagner, Stefanie Powers) were wealthy, gorgeous and always giving…

Home Improvement 

In this likable family sitcom, stand-up comedian Tim Allen was the clumsy host of “Tool Time”, a do-it-yourself TV show. All too often “the Toolman” was injured in his work…

Rear Window 

Jason Kemp (Christopher Reeve), a paralyzed architect, spends his nights spying on the apartment building across the yard and suddenly thinks he saw a murder... A few years after the…

A Christmas Carol 

Charles Dickens’s ghost story would probably survive even the most slapdash filmization, but this TV movie is not one of those. It is a distinguished version where the filmmakers succeed…

RKO 281 

The story of how a lauded theater man called Orson Welles got the chance to direct a movie, but his choice to make Citizen Kane damn near killed his career. Why? Because…