Television

TV critic David Bianculli reviews "The Sopranos" - which begins its fifth season on HBO Sunday.

He created the HBO hit series The Sopranos. The show begins its fifth season this Sunday and picks up where it left off with the separation of Tony Soprano and his wife Carmela.

TV critic David Bianculli looks at The Apprentice, the NBC reality show. After all other contestants are eliminated, the winner gets to work as a corporate president for Donald Trump.

TV critic David Bianculli previews the final episode of HBO's Sex and the City.

Saturday, Feb. 7 marks the 40th anniversary of the Beatles arrival in the United States. We celebrate on the show: TV critic David Bianculli remembers their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, 40 years ago.

Critic David Bianculli reviews "Tanner '88" — the fake documentary series about a fictional candidate for president rubbing elbows with actual candidates. It was created 16 years ago for HBO by director Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury. The 11-part series will be rebroadcast on Tuesday nights, beginning today, on the Sundance Channel.

TV critic David Bianculli pays tribute to the original late night talk show host, Jack Paar, who died earlier this week.

Former standup comic Tom Kenny is the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants, the star of his own animated series on Nickelodeon. SquarePants lives under the sea in the city of Bikini Bottom where he works as a fry cook at a greasy spoon called the Krusty Krab. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie opens nationwide Nov. 19.

Cowell is one of the judges on the talent show American Idol, a spin-off of the show he co-created in Britain, Pop Idol. The show has made him famous for his brutally frank criticism. Cowell has spent 25 years in the music industry, and is currently with BMG. His new book is Simon Cowell: I Don't Mean to Be Rude, But...

Rock, pop, jazz and Bart Simpson. We talk with writer and cartoonist Matt Groening. Before The Simpsons, Futurama and Life in Hell, he was a rock critic. Now he's edited an anthology collecting 2003's best music writing.

Fresh Air's TV critic looks at DVDs to keep in mind during the holiday gift-buying season.

Kushner adapted his epic Tony-award winning play Angels in America into a screenplay for HBO (broadcast this month in two three-hour parts). The play is set in New York in the mid-1980s during the midst of the AIDS epidemic. The HBO film is directed by Mike Nichols and stars Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson. Kushner also has a new semi-autobiographical musical Caroline, or Change at the Public Theater in New York.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the HBO production of Angels in America.

Triumph, a regular on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, is a puppet and the creation of Robert Smigel. Smigel also created the animated short TV Funhouse on Saturday Night Live. Triumph has a new CD, Come Poop With Me, featuring such tracks as "Underage Bichon" and "Lick Myself." He's appeared on Hollywood Squares and on the MTV Video Music Awards, where he almost came to blows with rapper Eminem.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews some of the network specials marking the 40th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. They include the PBS documentary JFK: Breaking the News, about how local media covered the assassination, and Court TV’s Forensic Files: The JFK Assassination: Investigation Reopened, (both on tonight). ABC also presents a special on the subject, Peter Jennings Reporting: The Kennedy Assassination — Beyond Conspiracy.

Mike Lazzo is senior vice president for the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim –- a three-hour block of cartoons targeted to adults. It includes original and acquired animation. Lazzo co-created the network’s first original series in 1995, Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Another Adult Swim series is Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, which borrows Hanna Barbera cartoon characters from the '60s, including the obscure Birdman, a masked crusader with wings who defends cartoon characters like Fred Flintstone and Scooby Doo.

His career got a jumpstart with his role as a bail bondsman in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown. He's starred in Mulholland Dr., Me, Myself & Irene and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. He plays Marshall Sisco in the new ABC series Karen Sisco.

The Oscar-nominated actor, who died Oct. 11, often played police officers and private eyes. "These guys are straight shooters," he said in 2003. "I take the mantle of that and pretend it's me."

TV critic David Bianculli previews the season premiere of 24 on Fox.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new film The Singing Detective, starring Robert Downey Jr. Bianculli was a fan of the BBC miniseries it was based on.