Television

John Langley, the reality television pioneer who created the long-running television series Cops, has died at the age of 78. The producer died of an apparent heart attack in Baja, Mexico, Langley’s reps confirmed to Variety. Deadline adds that, at the time of the heart attack, Langley was competing in an off-road car race. Considered one of the founding programs of the reality TV genre, Cops ran for 32 seasons, including a run on Fox from 1989 to 2013. Langley first had the idea to bring a cinema verite-style to...

Will 2021 be known as the year TV binges went bust? Halfway through the year in television, the majority of the best, most talked-about shows haven’t been the ones that just dropped all of their episodes on a Friday, but ones that conjured up the old TV pleasure of getting one installment per week, or maybe two. Some of this reflected a resurgence from traditional linear cable channels like HBO, but a lot was simply the fact that the newer streaming services seem more willing to experiment with release models:...

Alex Trebek and Larry King, two longtime television legends that died in the past year, both posthumously won awards at the Daytime Emmys ceremony Friday. Trebek, who died in November 2020 following a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer, was awarded Outstanding Game Show Host, the seventh time the Jeopardy! host received that Daytime Emmy; Trebek’s final season at the helm of Jeopardy! also won Outstanding Game Show. Trebek’s adult children Matt and Emily accepted the award on behalf of their father with a speech recorded standing by Trebek’s old podium...

Conan O’Brien closed out his nearly 30-year run on late-night television Thursday with a farewell episode featuring guests Jack Black, Will Ferrell (virtually) and Homer Simpson. Black, who O’Brien requested be his final guest, came onstage with a cane and walking boot after rolling his ankle after actually hurting himself while rehearsing a bit where he was going to pretend to injure himself on the show. “Let me start off by saying I love you Conan. I’ve always loved you, since the year 2000,” Black sang, a nod to O’Brien’s...

This piece originally appeared as part of Rolling Stone’s annual Hot List, in the July/August issue of the magazine. Hello, Upper East Siders! You know you missed them. The hotly anticipated Gossip Girl sequel — a fresh take on the debauched YA series-turned-CW megahit — is finally here. Premiering July 8th on HBO Max, the show is set in the same world of über-privileged and über-troubled Manhattan prep-school teens as the OG iteration, only this time there’s a notably diverse cast and, as showrunner Joshua Safran promised on Twitter, none...

When last we saw David (Akili McDowell), the hero of the gorgeous drama series David Makes Man, he was 14 years old, nearing the end of his time in middle school, and still very much an anxious kid hoping to one day feel comfortable in any of the disparate social worlds in which he traveled. As Season Two begins this week on OWN, the show’s title has been literalized. David is now in his thirties (and played by Kwame Patterson) with a flourishing white-collar career, living in a luxury apartment...

“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me!” Jessie declares upon realizing that Tom, the man she just slept with, is a movie star. On the one hand, this is Jessie being overly dramatic and narcissistic, as she is prone to do. On the other, her off-kilter way of looking at the world lands on an important truth: Dating a movie star is much more complicated than if Tom was just a random guy she really liked. This is the central tension of Starstruck, an immensely likable Britcom...

Seven years ago, Lisa Hanawalt published a comic on Hazlitt Magazine’s website depicting an anthropomorphic, topless toucan belly-up on the floor of her apartment trimming her toenails, clippings flying into the air. “This is Tuca. She’s a toucan. She lives in the city,” the first panel reads. It was the germ of an idea that would become Tuca & Bertie, Hanawalt’s joyously surreal yet painfully real cartoon about female friendship, getting by in the big city, overcoming trauma, and, yes, bird people. “I was a woman living in New York...

A review of this week’s Loki, “Lamentis,” coming up just as soon as l maintain a serious relationship with a postman whilst running across time from one apocalypse to another… What, exactly, is the advantage of serialized television over movies? Is it just to elongate stories, and get viewers excited about what happens next, and what happens after that, for months or years on end? Or is it the opportunity to really get to know the characters in these stories, so that what happens to them next matters more emotionally...

Conan O’Brien’s TBS talk show Conan is coming to an end this week, and it wouldn’t be a proper send-off without a final rendition of what is arguably the show’s most iconic bit: Paul Rudd’s Mac and Me prank. O’Brien was interviewing Bill Hader on the Monday night show when the conversation turned to a never-aired Saturday Night Live sketch that Hader did with Rudd. In the middle of the interview, Rudd showed up from behind the curtain and told O’Brien that he had a clip from the sketch’s dress rehearsal. Sure...

Netflix has shared a full trailer for the upcoming second season of Tim Robinson’s celebrated sketch series, I Think You Should Leave, arriving July 6th. The clip features snippets of sketches populated by the same kind of overzealous weirdos that defined Season One. Among the characters Robinson plays are a guy who manages to get a hot dog stuck in his throat, one who demands someone hold the door for him in the most threatening voice imaginable, and a third who uses an excessive amount of profanity to inquire about...

The Television Academy will recognize nonbinary performers in the Emmy competition, the organization announced on Monday, as Variety reports. Performer category winners or nominees may now request that their nomination certificate and engraving on an Emmy statue carry the term “performer” in place of “actor” or “actress.” The Television Academy will still use actor, actress, supporting actor and supporting actress in its categories, but it will now allow each individual to choose how they wish to be identified, including the new non-gendered “performer” label. The organization’s decision comes after Billions...

James Michael Tyler, who portrayed Central Perk coffee shop employee Gunther on Friends, revealed his Stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis on Monday’s Today. The 59-year-old actor explained that he had first been diagnosed in September 2018, after the cancer had already spread to his bones. “It’s stage 4. Late stage cancer,” he said. “So eventually, you know, it’s gonna probably get me.” Actor James Michael Tyler (@slate_michael) played Gunther on “Friends” for 10 years, but he was unable to attend the recent cast reunion in person because he’s been battling a serious...