Television

Musician and television composer Mike Post.

We pay tribute to Professor and filmmaker Marlon Riggs, who died Tuesday. His film about gay black sexuality, "Tongues Untied," unleashed a storm of controversy for its graphic content; it was used by Senator Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina), to argue against government grants to the arts. Another RIGGS film was "Color Adjustment," a critique of prime time TV's myths and messages on American race relations. RIGGS was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. (Rebroadcast of 7/11/1991)

Today it was announced that scientists had unearthed in Ethiopia the first nearly complete skull of the earliest recognized human ancestors. It's that of a male who lived three million years ago, giving a face to the species first identified in 1974 with the discovery of the skeleton named "Lucy." Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson discovered Lucy and was part of the team to make this new discovery. The discovery could settle the debate of whether various fossils from this time period were from a single species, Australopithecus afarensis, or from different species.

Classical Music critic Lloyd Schwartz has a review of the Metropolitan Opera's televised version of Verdi's fourth opera, "I Lombardi", starring Luciano Pavarotti and bass Samuel Ramey. It airs tonight on most PBS stations.

Television executive and first time novelist, Eugene Stein. Stein's novel is "Straightjacket & Tie" (Ticknor & Fields) a coming of age story about a teenager beginning to understand his sexuality and his newly schizophrenic older brother. He is helped along by a family of wisecracking space aliens visible only to a small segment of the population, including "Jewish lefties with a family history of mental illness". Stein is a Vice President for Comedy at ABC Productions, and a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the Academy Awards presentation, which aired last night on ABC.

TV critic David Bianculli previews a telemovie sequel called "The Birds II: Land's End." Its predecessor is "The Birds," made by Hitchcock 31 years ago. The TV follow-up will be aired this Saturday night on the Showtime cable network.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the premiere of TNT's screen adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."

TV critic David Bianculli reviews two new TV series: ABC's "The Byrds of Paradise" and CBS's "The Road Home." He says both are products of this year's trend--Family Values on TV.

TV critic David Bianculli will review the television coverage of the Olympic skating showdown.