[Televisionary]

Confession: I couldn't bring myself to rewatch last night's episode of True Blood . This hasn't happened to date. Typically, I watch the series via press screener a few weeks ahead of broadcast and then sit down on Sunday night to rewatch the week's latest installment in order to have it fresh in my mind so I can write my review. This was not what happened this week. In fact, I was so turned off by Sunday's episode ("Let's Get Out of Here"), written by Brian Buckner and directed by Romeo Tirone, that I couldn't actually force myself to sit through it again. Which is saying something, I think. Perhaps it was the overabundance of Emma (shudder), the hostage standoff/ Ghost Whisperer plot of Lafayette (double shudder), Sookie's intensely unerotic dream, or the irritating showdown at the Vampire Rights rally (yawn), this episode just got under my skin in the worst possible way. I've been able to rationalize a lot with True Blood and fin

The British drama The Hour , launching on Wednesday, Aug. 17, on BBC America, arrives at an inauspicious time for British journalists currently mired in a phone-hacking scandal and charges of police bribery that has closed newspapers and brought media moguls in front of Parliament. Those involved with such illicit and illegal wiretapping bear little resemblance to the journalist-heroes of The Hour , set in and around a BBC newsroom in 1956, where the truth was the most important principle. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The British Mad Men ?" in which I sit down with The Hour 's creator Abi Morgan to discuss the journalist-heroes of the six-part series, comparisons to AMC’s ‘Mad Men,’ and Morgan’s upcoming Margaret Thatcher biopic, The Iron Lady . The Hour premieres tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on BBC America.

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." - Freddie Lyon CBS' newsmagazine 60 Minutes represents something tangible and honest to most Americans: an hour of news and opinion that cuts through the news cycle clutter to offer insight and context about the issues of the day. In England, the show's analogue would have been something like Panorama or Tonight , but British journalists at the moment are widely tarnished by a phone hacking and police bribery grand scandal that has to date closed a newspaper, saw the departure of longtime Rupert Murdoch confidante Rebekah Brooks, and brought the media mogul himself before Parliament to answer for the grievous charges against the tabloid newspaper he owned. In other words: it's not a good time to be a British journalist, with the world watching and waiting. In a quite prescient move, creator Abi Morgan's intoxicating and atmospheric British drama, The Hour , harkens back to the journalist-heroes

"She has a warrior's heart." - Eric Upfront: I haven't read the Sookie Stackhouse novels, so I approach HBO's True Blood from a very different vantage point than I do, say, Game of Thrones , where I'm familiar with the novels, the characters, and where the story is going several seasons down the road. Not so with True Blood , which means that I'm not approaching the material with any degree of anticipation of future events, seminal moments, or the infamous shower scene, which--as promised by yours truly several weeks ago--did play out this week, albeit in a vastly different fashion than many of Charlaine Harris' fans expected. They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but the reverse is also true: familiarity can breed passionate love, particularly where adaptation is involved. Knowledge of the source material can color one's perceptions of an adaptation, especially one which strays from the established for the new. I say this with no judgmen

Michael Voltaggio, the swaggering winner of Top Chef prepares to open two Los Angeles eateries, ink. and ink.sack (opening this week!) in West Hollywood. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "A Top Chef’s Next Act," in which I sit down at the restaurant with the chef to discuss sandwiches, his future, his personal regrets, and how The New York Times insulted him. ink. is set to open in September in Los Angeles, while lucky Angelenos can get a taste of ink.sack's amazing sandwiches this week.

Yes, I ate my way through the menu at ink.sack last night. ink.sack, of course, being the top secret sandwich shop overseen by Top Chef Season 6 winner Michael Voltaggio, which the chef unveiled last night at a press event held at his upscale boite ink., which is slated to open on West Hollywood's Melrose Avenue next month. (For more on both restaurants, you can read my feature over at The Daily Beast, " "A Top Chef’s Next Act," because of which I had to keep mum about ink.sack for several weeks now.) After a champagne-fueled question-and-answer session in the dining room of ink., Voltaggio took us two doors over to the newly unveiled ink.sack, which has a soft opening today (Wednesday) and will be fully operational tomorrow. This is not a restaurant, per se, but a small sandwich shop with no seats, no alcoholic beverages, and no tables whatsoever. (It's intended as a takeaway shop, though there are narrow counters for those of you who want to stand and e

The fall of 2004 kicked off a television season that brought us some of the biggest hits of the last decade, launching Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy , and House . Seven years later, those supernovas are either burning out or dead altogether, victims of audience fatigue or oversight, as their once-huge numbers dwindled year after year. ABC announced on Sunday that Desperate Housewives will end its run in May—-the demise of the once powerful drama signals a death knell for serialized storytelling at the broadcast networks. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, " Desperate Times for TV Networks," in which I examine the death of massively popular scripted TV, with the announcement that long-running drama Desperate Housewives is to end. Have the days of 2004-05 season--and those massive ratings--gone for good? Does Terra Nova have a chance in hell? Head to the comments section to discuss and debate.