Television

TV critic David Bianculli reviews Mad Men, the drama about advertising execs during the Kennedy years. Season two of the Emmy-nominated series begins on Sunday night on AMC.

Fresh Air's TV critic has a look at the new HBO miniseries, created by The Wire's David Simon and Ed Burns. Generation Kill focuses on a unit of Marines during the first 40 days of the Iraq war.

Narcotics busts and daring rescues are just ordinary parts of John Rebus' work. Critic John Powers talks about the fictional British detective, protagonist of Ian Rankin's novels and an eponymous TV show.

Martinis, misogyny and men behaving badly: AMC's drama series remembers an era's excesses in stunning style. The setting: a Manhattan ad agency, circa 1960. The first season has just been released on DVD.

Hopkins, which premieres tonight, is the sequel to a 2000 ABC documentary series that told intimate, very real stories about medical staff and patients at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University. Fresh Air's TV critic has a review.

With the end of the writer's strike, live programming returned to network television this weekend in a big way. TV critic David Bianculli reviews last night's 80th Annual Academy Awards telecast, as well as the weekend's new episode of Saturday Night Live, starring Tina Fey.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli reviews DVD collections of British TV shows, including a few series that have never before been televised in the U.S.

In the Japanese anime series Death Note, high school student Light Yagami is in possession of a super-powered notebook that allows him to kill anyone, simply by writing down the victim's name. Critic-at-large John Powers offers a commentary.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli previews season two of the FX series The Riches, staring Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli reviews HBO's new series John Adams, produced by Tom Hanks.