Tom Shales
Tom Shales
Thomas William "Tom" Shalesis an American critic of television programming and operations. He is best known as TV critic for The Washington Post; in 1988, Shales received the Pulitzer Prize. He also writes a column for the television news trade publication NewsPro, published by Crain Communications...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth3 November 1948
CountryUnited States of America
america people bars
In the realm of pop celebrity, the bar has been lowered so far that there is no bar. People can be famous for being famous, famous for being infamous, famous for having once been famous and, thanks largely to the Internet, famous for not being famous at all.
home simple people
People of a certain age look back on the Mayberry of 'The Andy Griffith Show' and become almost as homesick for that simple fictional hamlet as they do for their own home towns.
drama long people
Crime dramas will never go away as long as people turn to television for, among other things, reassurance and comfort.
home cities people
Gimmicks come and go; the cop show seems one genre that will never leave - not as long as people like to sit at home in the suburbs and see what awful things go on in the cities.
believable both dare dominated family flawed fully hilarious human marriage partners sitcom thus ways writers
ABC's intelligently hilarious sitcom 'Modern Family' depicts a gay-male marriage in which both partners are refreshingly dimensional, believable human beings. The writers dare to make them flawed and thus fully delineated, but they're not flawed in the silly, stereotypical ways that once dominated such portrayals.
brief brothers carol censored common death hour literally major music nbc prime richard shows stuffed talents time treasured tv variety
Making music on TV used to be as common as commercials. In the '60s and '70s, prime time was stuffed with variety shows headlined by such major and treasured talents as Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, the Smothers Brothers and Richard Pryor, who had a very brief comedy-variety hour on NBC that was censored literally to death.
ability amazing convincing details humor jerry life might modern seinfeld send
Jerry Seinfeld is amazing in many ways, not the least of them his ability to find humor, and convincing us to find it, too, in the million-and-two details about modern life that under different circumstances might send us into paroxysms of rage.
among belonged domestic genre love wacky
'I Love Lucy,' the first classic, really belonged more to the Wacky Woman genre than the domestic sitcom; 'My Little Margie' and 'I Married Joan' were among the shrill, coarse imitations.
maybe
Maybe it's the hair. Maybe it's the teeth. Maybe it's the intellect. No, it's the hair.
fill replica saw tom tv
Tom Snyder was big enough to fill the night with talk and his own persona. The Snyder we saw on TV was not a replica of the real guy; it was the real guy.
cannot discourse larry maybe norms survive thrive
Maybe Larry Kings cannot thrive or even survive in a world where the norms for discourse are rage, vehemence and character assassination. King wanted to be liked, not feared; admired, not loathed.
humane larry
Larry King's show got to be an increasingly lonely outpost of humane civility in a mephitic menagerie of hotheads, saber rattlers, cretins and crackpots.
almost begins given guest heard musical
You know you're getting older when - well, first off, when you read almost any story that begins 'You know you're getting older when.' But you also know it when you not only never heard of the musical guest on a given 'Saturday Night Live' but never heard of the host, either.
critic encouragement endlessly hard leaving offered receptive several since
Your humble critic confesses that he has been wrestling with 'weight issues' since leaving college lo these, uh, several years ago, so it's hard to be receptive to the moralistic scolding and patronizing encouragement offered endlessly by the allegedly well-meaning.