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Doctor Who Is the Greatest Jew on TV
There are few undertakings more daunting for a writer interested in popular culture than to attempt to write, coherently and elegantly, about Doctor Who. For one thing, the sheer size of the monumental...
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Why TV Shows Will Never Be as Good as Great Novels
America, someone once said, is a nation where first-rate minds spend their time discussing second-rate movies. That person should’ve seen Netflix. Ever since the video-on-demand service, and others...
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ABC’s New Sit-Com ‘The Goldbergs’ Isn't a Remake
In 1929, the great American radio-listening public was first introduced to The Goldbergs. The brainchild of the actress and writer Gertrude Berg—who starred as the clan’s beloved yiddische mama,...
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Fox’s New Animated Strip Marks the End of TV’s Golden Era
Almost everything worth knowing I learned from TV. I taught myself English by rewinding and replaying old, scratched-up VHS tapes of The Honeymooners. When my own childhood was derailed by a string of...
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‘Homeland’ and ‘24’ Creator Howard Gordon on Terror, Tyranny and TV as Art
The most surprising thing about meeting Howard Gordon in person is how calm he is—you would expect the writer and producer behind such shows as 24 and Homeland to radiate just a touch of the...
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To Make His TV Show ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ Better, Andy Samberg Should Learn...
Andy Samberg is having the best week ever. His new sitcom, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, was picked up for an entire season last Friday, a vote of confidence Fox followed up with an even bigger Valentine: An...
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Sarah Silverman, Potty-Mouthed Queen of the Jewish People, Does Something...
In the first chapter of her 2010 memoir, The Bedwetter—a book as unrelentingly winsome as its author—comedian Sarah Silverman recalls how as a 4-year-old she broke up a room by telling her grandmother,...
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Fox's Hit New Show 'Sleepy Hollow' Gets a Golem
Add one more to the ever-growing list of golems co-opted by American pop culture creatures. TV’s biggest new hit is an insane mash-up of colonial history, otherworldly monsters and romance-novel...
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Friday Review of Books: 'Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to...
One of the central tragedies of our lives is that there are more books out there than we’d ever have time to read. But we’re not going gently into that good night: Each Friday, Liel Leibovitz will be...
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The Deep Jewish Roots of Television’s Sid Caesar
There was nothing conspicuously Jewish about Your Show of Shows. There were no Jewish jokes or Jewish characters, as there were, say, on The Goldbergs (at least the original Goldbergs). Only...
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Sherwood Schwartz: The Med-School Reject Who Created ‘Gilligan’s Island’
Sherwood Schwartz, a well-regarded young television writer in the early 1960s, had pitched a show about seven desert-island castaways trapped together to his longtime agent in Hollywood and got an...
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Anti-Semitic Elmo Inspires 'The Good Wife' Cameo
Last night was Bill de Blasio’s much-awaited cameo on The Good Wife last night, which came in the form of a Taxi TV PSA that Nathan Lane can’t figure out how to mute. But viewers of the political...
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Simon Schama's ‘The Story of the Jews’ Is the Most Important TV Documentary...
On March 25, PBS will begin showing the most important TV documentary about Jewish history since Abba Eban’s famous Heritage series aired in 1984. The Story of the Jews, created and hosted by historian...
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The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Face Off Over Jewish Stars
Gwyneth Paltrow is getting divorced. This is obviously an enormous piece of information to process, and I haven’t figured out exactly how I feel about it yet. So, I’m going to focus instead on some...
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Feminist Jewish Novel 'The Red Tent' To Become a Lifetime Miniseries
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant’s New York Times bestselling novel which tells the story of Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob, is headed for television. Deadline reports that the novel, a fictionalized...
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Showtime Nabs TV Series About Ultra-Orthodox Comedian
Showtime has nabbed a new comedy series about a Jewish comedian. But not just any Seinfeld or Samberg—this time it’s an ultra-Orthodox aspiring stand-up who steps outside his close-knit Williamsburg...
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Subtitle Writers Strike Creates Mixed Messages on Israeli TV
In season five of The Wire, Baltimore cop-turned high school teacher Roland Pryzbylewski stares at his class and asks a bizarre question. “Which ass should I stick a rat into?”Continue reading...
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Television's Most Alluring Antihero is a Fictional Jewish Woman
It’s an image you’ve seen a hundred times before: A score of gorgeous, perfectly-groomed young women in evening gowns standing nervously by the edge of an underwater-lit, electric blue swimming pool....
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Egyptian TV Show Depicting Cairo's Jewish Quarter in 1948 Is a Hit in the...
A breakthrough seems to have occurred in the eternally stonewalled Israeli/Arab conflict, and yet not a shot was fired, a curfew lifted, or an olive branch extended—and neither Barack nor Bibi made the...
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Shalom, Jon Stewart: The Liberal Lion Steps Down From 'The Daily Show' After...
We’ve covered Jon Stewart quite a lot over the years—mostly because of his run as host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, which comes to a close on Thursday night, while keeping in mind his...
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