David Bianculli

Dorothy's Toto and Elle's Bruiser have a friend in common: animal trainer Bill Berloni. Berloni has been training stage animals for over 30 years. His new book is Broadway Tails: Heartfelt Stories of Rescued Dogs Who Became Showbiz Superstars.

Fresh Air's TV critic has a look at the new HBO miniseries, created by The Wire's David Simon and Ed Burns. Generation Kill focuses on a unit of Marines during the first 40 days of the Iraq war.

Martinis, misogyny and men behaving badly: AMC's drama series remembers an era's excesses in stunning style. The setting: a Manhattan ad agency, circa 1960. The first season has just been released on DVD.

It's taken actor Jason Bateman a while to achieve real big-screen presence, but now the former child actor seems to be inescapable. In the past year, Bateman has appeared in Juno, The Kingdom, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Now, he's co-starring alongside Will Smith in the movie Hancock, which opens tomorrow. In Hancock, Bateman plays a PR executive who is rescued by a cocky superhero who leaves destruction in his wake.

Hopkins, which premieres tonight, is the sequel to a 2000 ABC documentary series that told intimate, very real stories about medical staff and patients at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University. Fresh Air's TV critic has a review.

With the end of the writer's strike, live programming returned to network television this weekend in a big way. TV critic David Bianculli reviews last night's 80th Annual Academy Awards telecast, as well as the weekend's new episode of Saturday Night Live, starring Tina Fey.

David Bianculli discusses some of the TV tributes to Tim Russert, who died last Friday, and offers one of his own.

Fresh Air's TV critic reviews HBO's Recount, about the uncertain and still-controversial aftermath of the U.S. presidential election. The movie stars Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern and Tom Wilkinson.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli reviews DVD collections of British TV shows, including a few series that have never before been televised in the U.S.

Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli previews season two of the FX series The Riches, staring Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard.