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TIME: JAN. 11-14, 9 p.m. on most stations, PBS...
...first thing a layman may be surprised to learn from The Prize, a new PBS series about the history of oil, is that the stuff wasn't always around. "Rock oil" was known in the early 19th century only as a medicine. It wasn't until 1859 that some Pennsylvania businessmen first extracted it from the ground and refined it into kerosene. For years, the substance was used mainly to light lamps. Only with the coming of the automobile did oil become the most sought-after fuel in the world. Since then it has been the impetus for great capitalist...
...subject of a four-night, eight-hour documentary series on PBS. Based on Daniel Yergin's Pulitzer-prizewinning book (with Yergin himself serving as principal commentator), the series uses all the familiar tricks of the TV historian's trade -- old photos and film clips, offscreen narration combined with onscreen talking heads -- to make the subject come alive. Which it does marvelously: The Prize is TV's equivalent of a great read...
SEBASTIAN VENABLE HAS DIED. BUT how? That is the question in SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, Tennessee Williams' 1958 hothouse melodrama about prefrontal lobotomy, closet homosexuality and cannibalism. If the subject matter no longer shocks, the play itself can still thrill, given the right actors. In PBS's Great Performances presentation, it has them, mostly. Maggie Smith, as Sebastian's aloof, vindictive mother, and especially Natasha Richardson, as his possibly insane cousin, who was with him when he died, are superb adversaries, both of them informing Williams' lyrical dialogue with the rich emotional life it must have. Only Rob Lowe fails, more...
...Hard Nut, which was seen on PBS last week, debuted in Brussels' Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in 1991. Thanks to Belgian government backing, Morris was able to mount a handsome production, with especially lavish costumes. The largesse makes it even more unfortunate that in the end the choreographer's imagination is defeated by Tchaikovsky. In the second act the music expands opulently, demanding matching grandeur onstage. But Morris wastes the grand pas de deux on a routine group number and sets the explosive coda as a small- scale duet for Marie, the heroine, and the Nutcracker Prince...