Changing Channels

Justice is blind, and hopefully deaf, too

As the the Miami Herald reported this morning, sobbing Broward judge Larry Seidlin -- who turned the Anna Nicole Smith hearing from a mere circus into a complete nuthouse -- has resigned from the bench. But Broward County's gain is America's loss: the industry journal Broadcasting & Cable is reporting that that Seidlin has signed a deal to produce a pilot for CBS Television Distribution, the same folks who syndicate Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown. Taping is set for July 2 and 3, according to Broadcasting & Cable, and American should lie in ruins within the month.

It's official: 'Sopranos' geeks are even more psychotic than Trekkies

Here's an analysis of the final episode of The Sopranos that purports to find evidence of Tony's whacking not only in old Steve Van Zandt records but the comic strip Garfield and even the antitrust breakup of AT&T. (Did you really think those pissants at the Justice Department would have dared to screw around with the phone company? David Chase's fingerprints were all over that one.) This piece was called to my attention by Herald film critic Rene Rodriguez, whose belief in it should explain to you why he's only allowed to write about Will Ferrell and not the fine arts like television.

The BBC continuously spouts left-wing drivel

Who says so? Well, the BBC's own internal investigation of institutional political bias.

Jon Stewart to NBC?

Remember all the speculation that Comedy Central's Jon Stewart would wind up with some kind of role on the CBS Evening News? Didn't happen. Now the industry journal Broadcasting & Cable is starting a whole new Stewart-is-moving rumor with a Monday report that Stewart and his agent had dinner with NBC boss Jeff Zucker and one of his new henchmen, Marc Graboff. Possibly dangled: Conan O'Brien's late-night host chair, which will be emptied soon -- O'Brien will either take over The Tonight Show, as he's been promised, or leave the network in a snit. Stay tuned.

Screens: TV the week of June 17

Frontline: Endgame (10 p.m. Tuesday, WPBT-PBS 2) -- Veteran producer Michael Kirk, whose four previous Frontline documentaries (The Lost Year in Iraq, The Dark Side, The Torture Question and Rumsfeld's War) have explored facets of the war in Iraq after the fact, is trying something new this time: analyzing a policy in advance. Through interviews with military and national security officials, Kirk explains the Bush administration's thinking in the troop "surge'' now underway, what it's supposed to accomplish and why it might or might not work. Not for fans of the Michael Moore school of filmmaking (no loony-tunes conspiracy theories or interviews with foreign-policy luminaries like Cher or Barbra Streisand), but a smart way to spend an hour if you're actually interested in why the war is unfolding the way it is. Read the full review here.

Flight of the Conchords (10:30 p.m. tonight, HBO) --New half-hour HBO sitcom stars Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie as themselves, a New Zealand musical duo whose ineptitude at romance (Jemaine gets dumped by a girl who confesses that "what I really want is an Australian'') is exceeded only by their haplessness as performers (the  group's manager fires Bret and replaces him with a cassette tape to save subway fare).  Read more of my review here.

The Trial of Tony Blair (8 p.m. tonight, BBC America) -- In this satirical TV movie,  President Hillary Clinton is running for a second term, George W. Bush is in rehab and the British prime minister is retiring and facing war-crimes charges. In other words, everything has changed except that the BBC is still a bloated left-wing tick sucking blood out of British taxpayers who wonder whatever happened to Benny Hill.

Ice Truckers (10 p.m. tonight, History Channel) -- A reality series about truck drivers  running cargo to and from diamond mines in the Arctic Circle. Little do they know a band of renegade elves has broken out of Santa's workshop and is planning to ambush them. Whoops, sentences like that one just slip out when I forget to take the meds. OK, forget the elves. But the truckers in the Arctic Circle, believe it or not, are real.

The Closer (9 p.m. Monday, TNT) -- Kyra Sedgwick is back for a third season as LAPD deputy  chief Brenda Johnson, kicking butts and taking names, sometimes of criminals but mostly within her own department.

Heartland (10 p.m. Monday, TNT) -- Treat Williams of Everwood and Kari Matchett of Invasion play a divorced couple who bicker about their kid and failed marriage while performing organ-transplant surgery in this new series. I give it three episodes before one of them gets mad enough to throw somebody's liver at the other.

Age Of Love (9 p.m. Monday, NBC) -- Tennis player Mark Philippousis tries to decide whether he wants to sleep with dumb young hotties or sly old hotties in this reality dating series. You wouldn't watch Kidnapped or Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip; now NBC is reduced to this. All are punished.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Forget Woodstock. A better movie -- about a better rock festival -- is D.A. Pennebaker's Monterey Pop, about the three-day blast that ushered in the Summer of Love. It's got a more musically diverse cast -- everybody from Otis Redding to Eric Burdon & The Animals to Janis Joplin. It's got Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire onstage; it's got Pete Townshend smashing his to pieces. Hard to believe the whole thing was 40 years ago this Saturday.

In honor of the anniversary, VH1 and VH1 Classic are airing a new documentary, Monterey 40, at 9 p.m. Saturday. It's got new interviews with a bunch of performers who were there or wish they were, including David Crosby, Pete Townshend, Grace Slick, Bob Weir, Micky Dolenz, Ravi Shankar, Paul Kantner and of course Michelle Phillips who with her Mamas & Papas husband, John, and record producer Lou Adler, organized the festival. Speaking of hard to believe, Michelle is the only living member of the Mamas & The Papas. California dreamin' gets harder every year.

The TV viewers most in need of an actual life

The folks at Nielsen Media Research, who now officially have the entire universe wired and can actually count how many times you gag during the average episode of CSI, have revealed that the viewers of The Office are the most inclined to watch commercials, even when they've got TiVo or another digital recorder. So apparently NBC has not only the smallest audience, but the dumbest.

The First Amendment is a beautiful thing

Here's a story that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about local television news in this country: A station in Tyler, Texas, has hired bikini model/pro wrestler Lauren Jones to anchor one of its newscasts. But let's not be snide; the station bosses value her for her acute journalistic insights, as you can clearly see from their website.

Warning: Not a single word about 'The Sopranos' in this post, though Dan Rather gets mentioned gratuitously

Blade: The Series, with Kirk "Sticky" Jones playing the laconic vampire hunter made famous in the movies by Wesley Snipes, had its share of fans during its run last summer on the cable channel Spike. Not enough of them, though, to bring it back -- the special-effects budget made that an extraordinarily expensive show for a fringe cable channel.

Well, if you've been missing Blade (or possibly the hot vampire chicks he was always trying to, um, penetrate), here's your chance to see him again. The bad news: The shows are just reruns. The good news: They're in high-def. HDNet has picked up the rights to the old shows and will start running them at 10 p.m. on Mondays beginning June 18. This makes Blade and Dan Rather, who has a weekly news-magazine show on HDNet, teammates of a sort.

Hey, I told you it was gratuitous. And I'll bet you didn't believe me about The Sopranos, either, did you?

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

Stretching the defninition of "classic television" to the breaking point, TV Land in August will start running old episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Toody and Muldoon (not to mention Dickens and Fenster, Arnold the Pig and Jonny Quest) must be rolling over in their graves.