Eric Deggans

It was 50 years ago today (Friday, Sept. 26) that the world was introduced to what may have been the oddest idea around for a TV comedy until Hogan's Heroes cracked jokes in a German prisoner of war camp a year later.

Yes, Hollywood wanted to make America laugh about ...

This season a dozen new network TV shows feature non-white characters as leads or co-leads. The shows aren't just notable for their casting diversity, but for how they talk about race and culture.

This is what happens when voices that have normally been pushed to the background take center stage.

That's the reaction I usually offer these days whenever someone asks me about a race-based media firestorm — this time, in reference to the nuclear-sized backlash against New York Times TV critic Alessandra ...

It's the TV's critics' version of the Super Bowl; or perhaps the Thunderdome.

More than 25 new shows will debut on network, cable TV and online this fall, starting this week. And if past results are any indication, very few of them will survive to a second season.

The very ...

On the anniversary of the iconic series, NPR's Eric Deggans talks with the author of a new Bill Cosby biography about how the show and the comedian have shaped perceptions of black families.

Network TV's fall season formally starts next week, when most networks unveil their new shows, and Nielsen starts counting ratings for the season. Which shows will succeed and which will fail?

It seems some TV networks have gotten the message on late-night diversity and others have not.

Friday's news — that Saturday Night Live hired comic Michael Che to join Colin Jost behind the anchor desk on its popular "Weekend Update" segment — shows NBC's venerated late night comedy franchise may, ...

[Note: This post discusses plot points and story lines from previous seasons.]

The first episode of the final season for FX's biker drama Sons of Anarchy begins with a familiar scene: gang leader/hero Jackson "Jax" Teller brutalizing a man in jail, interspersed with images of his gang and family living ...

The View just made history in naming Rosie Perez as a new co-host of ABC's daytime chat show.

ABC revealed Wednesday that Perez would join former GOP strategist Nicolle Wallace, teaming with stars Rosie O'Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg when The View's new season debuts Sept. 15.

In hiring Perez, a ...

On Sept. 11, CBS and the NFL will debut Thursday Night Football games. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says it's a sure bet that two of the world's biggest corporations have a lot riding on.

When it comes to original TV series, it's tough to understand exactly where Amazon is going.

At first, its strategy seemed simple: It went where big-ticket competitors like Netflix and HBO didn't, greenlighting comedies like Garry Trudeau's political satire Alpha House and the Silicon Valley series Betas, along with a ...

For TV critics, last night's Emmy Awards show was a bit like seeing an old flame promise to treat you better, only to slide right back into the same old disappointing behavior.

After nominating a slate of performers and shows that were among the most groundbreaking, diverse and different seen ...

Plenty of statuettes were handed out Monday night at the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. ABC's Modern Family won for best comedy series and AMC's Breaking Bad won best drama series.

Matthew McConaughey or Brian Cranston? Orange Is the New Black or Modern Family? The questions about which actors and shows will emerge at the top of the TV industry get answered Monday night.

The BBC will soon air its first Doctor Who episode with Peter Capaldi as the show's hero, The Doctor. Capaldi says the 50-year-old series inspired him to become an actor.

In keeping with its recent tradition of drawn-out, publicly humiliating anchor switches, NBC has finally admitted it is replacing Meet the Press host David Gregory with the network's political director, Chuck Todd, on Sept. 7.

The switch had been rumored for months, as it became increasingly obvious that the Gregory-led ...

As part of All Things Considered's series on Men in America, NPR's Eric Deggans considers the way television fatherhood has changed over the past five decades, from Ward Cleaver to Walter White.

For many years, Robin Williams seemed like a talent who had no off switch.

From his standup comedy work to TV roles to talk show appearances to Oscar-caliber movies and performances on Broadway, Williams was a dervish of comedy — tossing off one-liners, biting asides and sidesplitting routines in a ...

Cinemax's The Knick is an amazing bit of TV filmmaking: a gritty look at a turn of the century hospital, with explicit scenes showing how brutal early discoveries in surgery and medicine must have been in the year 1900.

But as much as I savored director Steven Soderbergh's innovative way ...