Television

TV's most charming serial killer is back for a third season on Showtime. With new murders, new dangers and new characters, TV critic David Bianculli says the new season is a real thrill.

On Sept. 21, the AMC series Mad Men became the first basic cable program to win an Emmy Award for outstanding drama. Executive producer Matthew Weiner and actors Jon Hamm and John Slattery discuss the madness of Madison Avenue circa 1960.

NBC's 30 Rock cleaned up the major comedy prizes, but the big drama awards went to basic-cable breakouts like AMC's Mad Men and FX's Damages. TV critic David Bianculli recaps the evening.

In the ABC series, Pushing Daises, co-executive producers Barry Sonnenfeld and Bryan Fuller combine romance, fantasy and mystery to tell the story of a man who can bring the dead back to life. The first season of the show is now out on DVD.

First he created Six Feet Under, the HBO series about a family that runs a funeral home and is steeped in death. Now he's created an HBO series about the undead: True Blood, about vampires who've emerged from the shadows.

Lost creator J.J. Abrams discusses his latest television show, Fringe. The show, which Abrams describes as having a "a slight 'Twilight Zone' vibe," focuses on the unnatural occurrences in the world of a brilliant but mentally-unstable research scientist.

The new HBO series centers on a vampire clan living in a small Louisiana town. It's by Alan Ball, creator of the hit series Six Feet Under, and based on a series of novels by Charlaine Harris. Anna Paquin stars.

TV critic David Bianculli considers the impact of the FX drama series The Shield, which begins its seventh and final season.

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.

The television show Weeds returns for a new season, and creator Jenji Kohan has major changes in store for its drug-dealing soccer mom protagonist.

Jenna Fischer, who's perhaps best known as Pam the receptionist on NBC's The Office, stars in The Promotion, a new comedy about two midlevel supermarket employees bucking for a manager's job.

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.

Kyle Chandler plays Coach Eric Taylor on Friday Night Lights, the NBC-TV series about the big drama of small-town Texas high-school football. The third season of the series will be shown on DirecTV before airing on NBC in 2009.

British comedienne and actress Tracy Ullman returns to American television Sunday with the debut of her new Showtime series, Tracy Ullman's State of the Union. Ullman plays fictional characters as well as a host of notable personalities, including Cameron Diaz, David Beckham and Nancy Pelosi.