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Love it or hate it, "Sanford and Son" is one of the most groundbreaking American sitcoms of all time. The NBC series about a widowed get-rich-quick schemer (Redd Foxx) living in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood with his adult son (Demond Wilson) was an undeniable hit during its run. It ushered in a Golden Age of Black family sitcoms thanks to dynamic performances, frank dialogue written from a working-class Black perspective, and its often uproarious scripts. It was such a ratings juggernaut that it's often credited for killing off its much more sanitized competition, "The Brady Bunch."

"It was a groundbreaking series," Eric Deggans wrote in a series retrospective for the official Emmys website, noting that "Before 'Good Times' and 'The Jeffersons' would make TV history with powerful stories focused on Black families, 'Sanford and Son' would explore the prickly relationship between a middle-aged Black man and his son.

With New Hollywood influences and the freedom to shoot beyond the limitations of a soundstage, "M*A*S*H" is one of the most visually interesting sitcoms of the '70s. The show's filmmakers often made intriguing creative decisions, shooting entire episodes from the point-of-view of a documentary camera crew or a patient stuck in a hospital bed. With writer, director, and star Alan Alda counted among its directing team -- not to mention filmmakers like Alan Rafkin, James Sheldon, Charles Dubin, and more -- the show's visual flair stands in sharp contrast to many multicam sitcoms of its era.

Still, "M*A*S*H" sometimes relied on standard shots and techniques to get by, including a penchant for filming characters from the waist up in a classic medium-distance shot. While this seems like a decision filmmakers might have used for simplicity's sake, or perhaps to keep the camera focused on the emotion on the faces of each actor,...

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Depending on whom you ask, career aptitude tests can be perceived as valuable psychological tools or dressed-up BuzzFeed quizzes. In Richard Feldstein’s case, it doesn’t matter which is true, just that the one he took decades ago at the Uc Berkeley career center happened to be right.

“My father passed away when I was 11. So by the time I was entering college, I was pretty much self-sufficient financially,” Feldstein recalls, adding that he knew he’d have to find a well-paying job after graduation for that to continue. He wasn’t sure exactly what that was, though, so he took the test. “They said, ‘Oh, you’d make a pretty good accountant.’ That kind of popped off the screen to them.”

These days, Feldstein is much more than a pretty good accountant. He’s a veteran business manager of nearly 50 years,...

Classic horror film lovers get excited, as Turner Classic Movies just unveiled its movie lineup for the Halloween season. I’d run through and list all the classics that will be popping up throughout the month, but there’s just too many to list. This is Turner Classic Movies after all. Check out the full lineup below, and let us know if you’re excited for any of these! (via Bloody Disgusting)

Wednesday October 3, 2018

8:00 Pm The Unknown (1927) Dir: Tod Browning

9:00 Pm The Phantom of the Opera (1925) Dir: Rupert Julian

10:45 Pm The Monster (1925) Dir: Roland West

Thursday October 4, 2018

12:30 Am The Penalty (1920) Dir: Wallace Worsley

2:15 Am The Unholy Three (1925) Dir: Tod Browning.

4:00 Am He Who Gets Slapped (1924) Dir: Victor Seastrom

Saturday October 6, 2018

2:00 Am Deadly Friend (1986) Dir: Wes Craven

3:45 Am Demon Seed (1977) Dir. Donald Cammell

Sunday October 7, 2018

8:00 Pm The Mummy’s Hand (1940) Dir: Christy...

Wesley Mead Dec 20, 2016

Looking for some TV to fill you with festive cheer? Here are the next 20 episodes in our list of the top 100 Xmas TV episodes ever...

This article first appeared in December 2015. Read entries 100 - 81 on this list, here.

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Since the medium’s infancy, viewers have enjoyed sharing holidays with their favourite television characters. We grow invested in our friends on screen over the years; spending Christmas with them is a rite of passage, a chance for us to share tradition from our world with the fictional ones we see on screen. Some shows embrace the season wholeheartedly, characters in good spirits and enjoying the trappings of the season; others skew a little darker, bringing the more oppressive, burdensome side of the holidays to life. Either way, Christmas episodes tend to demonstrate the strengths of our favourite series,...

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Looking for some TV to fill you with festive cheer? Here are the next 20 episodes in our list of the top 100 Xmas TV episodes ever...

Read entries 100 - 81 on this list, here.

Since the medium’s infancy, viewers have enjoyed sharing holidays with their favourite television characters. We grow invested in our friends on screen over the years; spending Christmas with them is a rite of passage, a chance for us to share tradition from our world with the fictional ones we see on screen. Some shows embrace the season wholeheartedly, characters in good spirits and enjoying the trappings of the season; others skew a little darker, bringing the more oppressive, burdensome side of the holidays to life. Either way, Christmas episodes tend to demonstrate the strengths of our favourite series, and it’s long been a festive ritual of mine to wheel out old DVD sets...

Batgirl Yvonne Craig. Batgirl Yvonne Craig dead at 78: Also featured in 'Star Trek' episode, Elvis Presley movies Yvonne Craig, best known as Batgirl in the 1960s television series Batman, died of complications from breast cancer on Monday, Aug. 17, '15, at her home in Pacific Palisades, in the Los Angeles Westside. Craig (born May 16, 1937, in Taylorville, Illinois), who had been undergoing chemotherapy for two years, was 78. Beginning (and ending) in the final season of Batman (1967-1968), Yvonne Craig played both Commissioner Gordon's librarian daughter Barbara Gordon and her alter ego, the spunky Batgirl – armed with a laser-beaming electric make-up kit “which will destroy anything.” Unlike semi-villainess Catwoman (Julie Newmar), Batgirl was wholly on the side of Righteousness, infusing new blood into the series' increasingly anemic Dynamic Duo: Batman aka Bruce Wayne (Adam West) and Boy Wonder Robin aka Bruce Wayne's beloved pal Dick Grayson (Burt Ward). “They chose...