[Televisionary]

In the Harry Potter universe as created by J.K. Rowling, the sport of Quidditch plays an important and exciting role. On college campuses around the country, a generation of young adults who grew up reading about the exploits of Harry and his friends, have transformed the fictional sport into reality. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled, "From J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels to Real Life: The Sport of Quidditch Takes Flight." While it's off my usual beat, I decided to delve into the real-world sport of Quidditch and attend the Western Cup last weekend (along with a practice or two with the UCLA Quidditch team beforehand) and write about this cult phenomenon, a blend of rugby, basketball, and dodgeball. (And, yes, a little bit of tag as well.) There's also a gallery-based second feature that includes photography from the tournament , as well as more details about the rules, players, and world of "Muggle Quidditch." The bone-cr

After a few missteps at the beginning of the season, Season Three of CBS' The Good Wife has settled into its groove. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " The Good Wife Gets Back on Track," in which I sit down with the show’s husband-and-wife creators, Robert and Michelle King, and discuss the highs and lows of the season, the Alicia/Kalinda dynamic, the handling of various romances, Will, Cary, Wendy Scott-Carr, Caitlin, renewal prospects, and what’s to come. (Along with much more, including the answer to "What ever happened to Imani?") Coming off of a taut and provocative second season, CBS’s The Good Wife reset itself in many ways when Season 3 began in September: pushing together prim Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies)—who had struggled to remain faithful to her husband, Peter (Chris Noth)—with her boss and former flame, Will Gardner (Josh Charles), while creating a chasm in what might be the drama’s most central dynamic, the f

ABC’s hit nighttime soap Revenge is not only winking noir, it’s a retribution fantasy for the 99 percent. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature , in which I visit the set of Revenge and talk to its creator, Mike Kelley, and cast members--including Emily VanCamp, Madeleine Stowe, and Gabriel Mann--about the show’s popularity. It’s difficult to escape the narrative lure that ABC’s nighttime soap Revenge —equal parts vengeance fantasy, noir-tinged thriller, and sprawling character-based soap—casts in its wake. The drama (Wednesdays at 10 p.m), inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo , has been featured everywhere from the cover of Entertainment Weekly to a sumptuous Oscar-night promo. Every one of its deliriously unexpected plot twists is voraciously dissected on Twitter by the Revenge faithful, captivated by the show’s premise: a young woman, Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp), returns to the Hamptons to wreak havoc on those who destroyed her fam

At The Daily Beast, Community ’s female stars—and one of its writers—sit down for a roundtable discussion about being a woman in comedy, the show’s legacy, slut shaming, and more. Tears are shed! You can read my latest feature, entitled "The Women of Community ," in which I visit the set of NBC's Community on the final night of shooting Season 3 to sit down with Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Gillian Jacobs, and writer Megan Ganz to discuss being a woman in comedy, the “dark night of the soul” ahead, and the Bridesmaids effect, among other topics. Fans of NBC’s Community —the wildly inventive yet criminally unwatched critical darling, now in its third season—were shocked when the network unceremoniously placed it on an indeterminate hiatus. Those same loyal viewers turned to Twitter hashtags, flash mobs, and original pieces of artwork (depicting the Greendale gang alternately as Batman villains, X-Men, Star Wars characters, and even Calvin and Hobbes), all in an

At The Daily Beast, my colleague Maria Elena Fernandez and I examine how PBS got cool: the massive success of Downton Abbey has brought PBS an increase in donations, funding for Masterpiece , a boost in ratings for other programs, and an unlikely place in the zeitgeist. (Plus, RuPaul on Downton 's appeal.) You can read my latest feature, entitled " Downton Abbey : How PBS Got Cool," in which Fernandez and I talk to Rebecca Eaton, RuPaul, PBS SoCal, WNET, and PBS executives, and The Soup producer Matthew Carney, among others. Patton Oswalt obsessively live tweets it from his weekly viewing parties. Katy Perry is using it to distract herself from her marital woes. Roger Ebert has stepped outside the movie realm to praise it in his blog. Saturday Night Live spoofed it. Mob Wives star Big Ang Raiola recited favorite quips for Us Weekly. The Onion equated watching one episode with reading a book. And Wednesday night The Soup will celebrate it with a special parody starr

And now for something different. I'm definitely not within ABC Family's target demographic, but I've fallen head over heels in love with the cable network's drama Switched at Birth , which is a profound and reflective exploration of communication, identity, and self-expression. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled " Switched at Birth : ABC Family’s Groundbreaking Deaf/Hearing Drama," in which I take a look at the teen soap, which explores self-expression and the communication gulf between the hearing and deaf communities, and talk to creator Lizzy Weiss and stars Katie Leclerc, Sean Berdy, and Marlee Matlin. When Marlee Matlin walked away with an Academy Award for her heart-wrenching turn as a deaf custodian in 1986’s romantic drama Children of a Lesser God, it seemed as though film had finally encountered a definitive depiction of a deaf individual and the often tenuous relationship between the hearing and the deaf worlds. Tel

Happy birthday, Mr. Dickens. Over at The Daily Beast, we're celebrating Charles Dickens’s 200th birthday. You can read my latest feature, entitled "Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens! Lost, NCIS, Big Love, Veep Writers on His Legacy," in which I talk to TV auteurs including Lost 's Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, The Thick of It and Veep creator Armando Iannucci, NCIS 's Gary Glasberg, and others as they reflect on how Dickens’s work has influenced storytelling on television. Today marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens (1812–1870), but the popularity of the writer of such novels as Great Expectations, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and David Copperfield—to name but a few of his immortal works—hasn’t diminished in the time since his death. In the pantheon of great English-language novelists, Dickens reigns supreme for a number of reasons. He was a master storyteller who created unforgettable characters—a menagerie that included th

Over at The Daily Beast, I talk with Anjelica Huston about her husband’s death, her formidable character on Smash , and the “cult of murder” on television today. You can read my latest feature, entitled " Smash 's Scene Stealer," here. It is impossible to miss Anjelica Huston when she walks into a room. In this case, the room was the bar at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, California, a few hours before Huston was set to take the stage before a ballroom of television critics at the TCA Winter Press Tour to answer questions for her new show, the Broadway-set drama Smash , which premieres Monday on NBC. With her raven Cleopatra cut, an armful of gently clanging bracelets, and her impressive height, Huston is unlikely to get lost in a crowd, but her considerable talents as an actress render that an impossibility. As she slinked into a club chair on a gray January morning, she exuded a sense of serenity and warmth that is deeply at odds with the troubled characters she

Fifty years after her death, the mention of Marilyn Monroe conjures up familiar imagery: that whispery voice, the platinum hair, her vulnerability. From Michelle Williams’s recent embodiment to yet another reissue of Monroe’s last photo shoot, she’s still inescapable, and always exerting a gravitational pull on popular imagination. In this week's issue of Newsweek, you can read my latest feature, " Smash 's Big Broadway Bet," which looks at NBC's musical-drama Smash , launching February 6th, through the prism of both Marilyn Monroe's cultural impact and the stakes that the show faces ahead. Will this end up being The West Wing with music or Cop Rock ? I talk to creator/executive producer Theresa Rebeck, Anjelica Huston, and NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt. On The Daily Beast, the piece gets a companion story in "11 Secrets of Smash ," in which I take a look at several questions surrounding the show including: What would the Showti

There is no room for argument: Showtime’s provocative and gut-wrenching psychological thriller Homeland is the best new show of the season. Revolving around two very unreliable narrators engaged in a series of riveting mind games, Homeland explores an America 10 years after 9/11, surveying the damage done to both the national psyche and the central protagonists. Claire Danes plays Carrie Mathison, a CIA operative with both a mental illness and a troubling sense of personal guilt that she missed crucial intelligence prior to the Sept. 11 attacks; Damian Lewis (Life) plays soldier Nicholas Brody, a prisoner of war who returns home to a family that long thought him dead, and who may or may not have been turned into an enemy of the state during his eight-year captivity in Iraq. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Showtime's Homeland : The Best New Show of the Season," in which I talk to the show's co-creators Alex Gansa and Howard Gor

In NBC’s Parenthood , the show’s teens--including Mae Whitman, Sarah Ramos, and Miles Heizer--often walk away with the most heartbreaking and emotional storylines. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "TV's Most Talented Teens" (formerly known as "The Teens of Parenthood "), in which I sit down with Whitman, Ramos, and Heizer to discuss their characters, on-set camaraderie, and, yes, the haircut that launched a thousand tweets. Parenthood returns with new episodes tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on NBC.

HBO’s Boardwalk Empire revolves around mob feuds, illegal bootlegging, and the corruption and venality that accompanied Prohibition. But beneath the surface, the show is about grasping at the American dream. That quest for happiness has never been more vivid—nor more painfully realized—than in Boardwalk Empire ’s Richard Harrow, a Great War sniper who now kills for profit, wearing a tin half-mask. Jack Huston, the grandson of legendary director John Huston (and nephew to Anjelica and Danny Huston), is stealing nearly every scene of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire , where he plays disfigured sniper turned hitman Richard Harrow. At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Boardwalk Empire 's Scene-Stealer," in which I talk to Huston about this week’s episode, wearing the mask, and whether Richard still has a soul.

At 66 and four-feet-nine, Linda Hunt is an unlikely action heroine. But as the enigmatic Hetty Lange on NCIS: LA , Oscar winner Hunt (who won for her staggering performance as a male Indonesian-Australian dwarf in Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously ) has become a Teen Choice Award recipient and the show’s breakout character. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "The Cult of Linda Hunt," in which I sit down with the Oscar (and Teen Choice Award!) winner Hunt to discuss NCIS: Los Angeles' Hetty, The Year of Living Dangerously , water from the moon, and what the future holds. (I also talk to creator Shane Brennan and Chris O'Donnell about the remarkable Hunt and her character.) NCIS: Los Angeles airs Tuesday evenings at 9 pm ET/PT on CBS.

Jennifer Ehle, best known for playing Elizabeth Bennet in BBC’s Pride & Prejudice , co-stars in a new CBS drama, A Gifted Man . Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " A Gifted Man 's Leading Lady," in which I sit down with Jennifer Ehle to discuss ghost sex, Game of Thrones, A Gifted Man, Pride & Prejudice , attachment parenting, Mr. Darcy, and more. A Gifted Man begins tonight at 8 pm ET/PT on CBS.

There is an emergency session underway within the writers’ room of CBS’s critically acclaimed drama, The Good Wife , which returns for its third season on Sunday, Sept. 25. With 48 hours to go, the writers—overseen by husband-and-wife creators Robert and Michelle King—must rewrite the latest script and untangle a Gordian knot to come up with a new procedural case for hotshot lawyer Alicia Florrick (recent Emmy Award winner Julianna Margulies) and the firm to tackle. In the second season of the critical and ratings hit, the personal loomed large for all of the show’s characters. Alicia gave into temptation and slept with her boss, Will (Josh Charles), after years of having bad timing. Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) went to great lengths to conceal a long-buried secret—that she had, years before, slept with Alicia’s husband, Peter (Chris Noth)—in a storyline that involved baseball bats, smashed-out windows, and assaulting rival investigator Blake (Scott Porter). With its deft plotting an

It's no secret that I love NBC's Parks and Recreation . Over at The Daily Beast, I have not one but two features on the Pawnee-set comedy today, which returns later this week for a fourth season. In Part One of my Parks and Recreation feature at The Daily Beast, in which I visit the set of Parks and Recreation and spend time with Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Adam Scott, Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, and showrunner Mike Schur, exploring what Offerman deems "the comedy of hope" that the show taps into, and the intelligence and spirit of Parks and Rec . In Part Two , I offer some mild spoilers for Season 4, exploring what's ahead for Leslie, April and Andy, Ron Swanson, Ann Perkins, Mark Brendanawicz, and The End? Season Four of Parks and Recreation begins this Thursday at 8:30 pm ET/PT on NBC.

Mad Men 's fourth season episode "The Suitcase" was instantly deemed a classic hour of TV. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Mad Men Up Close," in which series creator Matthew Weiner and star Jon Hamm offer an oral history of the gut-wrenching, Emmy-nominated episode "The Suitcase." Weiner and Hamm dissect six of the most powerful and indelible sequences from “The Suitcase,” the relationship between Don and Peggy, and Hamm’s performance, which Weiner called “magical.” Get your handkerchiefs ready. Season Five of Mad Men is slated to begin March 2012 on AMC.

Hungry for some Game of Thrones scoop? (I know I am.) Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Game of Thrones ' Creative Gurus," in which I catch up with Game of Thrones writer/executive producers Dan Weiss and David Benioff to discuss the show's numerous Emmy nominations (and Emilia Clarke's snub), the casting of Carice van Houten and Hannah Murray (as Melisandre and Gilly, respectively), "sexposition," and what's to come in Season Two of the HBO fantasy drama. All together now: "HODOR!" Season Two of Game of Thrones will launch in 2012.

Yes, Downton Abbey adherents, I've got a bit of a treat for you: not just one, but TWO, features about the hit British period drama today. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Brits' Surprising Emmy Hit," Part One of Two of my Downton Abbey features today, this time an Emmys feature on the British drama, recognized with 11 nominations this year, including Outstanding Made-for-TV-Movie or Miniseries. I talk with creator Julian Fellowes and the cast about Emmy nominations, the show’s insane popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, and what’s coming up on Season Two. If that's not enough period goodness for you, there's my second feature, entitled "Inside Downton Abbey Season Two," in which Julian Fellowes and the cast of Downton Abbey (including Dan Stevens, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, and Siobhan Finneran) provide me with some clues about what's coming up on the second season of the period drama, begin

Nominee Margo Martindale, in the running for outstanding supporting actress, may not be prepping an Emmy acceptance speech--but she should be, especially after her magnificently malevolent turn as Mags Bennett on FX's Justified this year. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Emmy’s Stealth Frontrunner," in which I sit down with Martindale to discuss playing Justified ’s Mags Bennett, how she won’t be wasted on CBS’s A Gifted Man , and why she believes in ghosts. Justified returns for a third season in 2012.