Free Republic

For a program broadcast on a taxpayer-funded network, much of its contents seemed one-sided, even for PBS. It also ignores underlying political currentsA recent PBS special on end-of-life care raises important policy and philosophical questions about a subject many Americans avoid. But the special, entitled “When My Time Comes” and hosted by former NPR host Diane Rehm — who wrote a book with the same title last year — offers a troubling set of answers.Rehm came to the end-of-life issue from personal experience. Her first husband, John Rehm, died in 2014 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. The...

If Americans want to see people trying to look intelligent while arguing, cable news already provides numerous showcases of Smart People Behaving Badly. At this point, 2020 seems like the awful Thanksgiving dinner-turned-shouting-match that just won’t stop. On top of a COVID lockdown-induced recession, our culture has become coarser and more vitriolic than ever. Riots and protests have broken out in dozens of cities as both political parties hurl invective at each other.So, what did NBC decide to return to the airwaves in the middle of this blazing-hot zeitgeist? A remake of an insult-filled show.It seems sadly ironic that the...

Dismissed by some critics as a needless origin story, HBO's 'Perry Mason' reboot is exactly the type of high-minded storytelling we need today. This article contains spoilers. The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. — Franz Kafka, “Before The Law” Franz Kafka hated the draconian bureaucracies...

The show thinks it's subversive and daring with its humor, but the only shock is how relentlessly dull it is, regardless of themes and imagery. For those who shudder at historical inaccuracies in biopics, stay far away from Hulu’s “The Great.” The show does not even pretend to care about historical accuracy, opening each episode with the caveat, “an occasionally true story.” The show loosely tells the story of the early days of Catherine the Great’s (Elle Fanning) marriage to Emperor Peter III of Russia (Nicholas Hoult) as she plots a coup to kill her incompetent and cruel husband to...

At the end of the day, 'Hollywood' doesn't care about telling a compelling story about interesting people, but is intent on demonstrating the importance of representation in media. There are two excellent stories at the center of “Hollywood,” Ryan Murphy’s alt-history saga of old Hollywood. An intrepid group of friends attempt to make a big studio romance starring a talented black actress in 1947. An aspiring actor must negotiate his desire for fame with his morals, in the backdrop of a sexually exploitive agent and the omnipresent risk of his homosexuality becoming discovered.Both of these stories are technically covered in...

They don't make television comedies like they used to, and few were ever made as brilliantly as "Reno 911." They don’t make television comedies like they used to, and few were ever made as brilliantly as “Reno 911,” the jewel of Comedy Central’s glorious mid-aughts lineup. But it’s back, and better than pretty much every new comedy on air right now, despite clocking in around seven minutes an episode. In these trying times, happiness is an elusive sensation. The unbridled joy I felt one minute into the reboot’s premiere, having realized “Reno 911” is returning to us in fine form,...