David Bianculli

HBO's new TV special is part biography, part music-appreciation lesson and part performance piece. Critic David Bianculli says it's a superbly compiled work, overseen by two of the people most intimately familiar with the composer himself.

Critic David Bianculli remembers watching the original news coverage of Kennedy's assassination — four days of unprecedented television — when he was 10 years old. He recalls how from that point on, TV, not radio, was the dominant medium for breaking news.

Bill Berloni has more than 30 years of experience training dogs, pigs, rats, cats and lambs for Broadway productions and Hollywood films. Fresh Air listens back to an interview with him from 2008.

This interview was originally broadcast on Fresh Air on July 18, 2008.

Set in London in the early 1930s, the five-part miniseries is about a black jazz band trying to crack the dance halls and radio playlists. Critic David Bianculli says this music-centered show features full, unpredictable characters and some exceptionally intriguing performances.

A new made-for-TV movie from BBC America dramatizes one particular period in the intertwined lives of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Critic David Bianculli says less is more, and the film's narrow biographic focus is one of its strengths.

TV critic David Bianculli points to Brooklyn Nine-Nine, starring Andy Samberg, and The Blacklist, starring James Spader, as shows to watch this season. Other debuts, like The Michael J. Fox Show and The Crazy Ones, show plenty of potential.

In a 1996 interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross, Leno recalled his rocky Tonight Show debut: "I got heckled my first show ... but luckily I had worked a lot of clubs so I could deal with it, and Johnny [Carson] seemed to like that."

Fresh Air kicks off its late night TV theme week with a 1981 David Letterman interview, in which the host describes how late night TV changed the comedy business, and a 1988 interview with one-time Tonight Show executive producer Fred de Cordova.

The stack of recent DVD releases of old TV series keeps getting higher. Fresh Air critic David Bianculli picks four that he believes are the TV equivalent of a fun summer read.