David Bianculli
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Most recently, there's the short but powerful Netflix documentary All the Empty Rooms about a TV feature reporter and photographer who visit the families of children killed during school shootings to memorialize the children's empty but still intact bedrooms.
It's as tough to watch as adolescence, and oddly, touches on a similar subject.
TV reporter Steve Hartman talks about the power of visiting these bedroom shrines, trapped in time and saying so much with their silence.
The whole point of this is to not have to say much.
Other great documentaries this year included Sunday Best, a new Netflix program about Ed Sullivan's contributions to popularizing black entertainers, PBS's The American Revolution, the latest and perhaps greatest epic history lesson from Ken Burns and Company, and the new installment of The Beatles Anthology, presented by Disney+.
On talk shows, I loved the feisty, topical spirit invoked by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver, and especially the well-aimed irreverence of the current season of Comedy Central's South Park.
Many of these shows were attacked or censored by their corporate owners in well-publicized clashes that exposed and fought against the interference.
The CBS Late Show franchise is being retired from the schedule, but most of the time this year, the comics and their programs persevered.
Finally, my favorite TV moment of 2025 came courtesy of CNN.
Not for a news bulletin, but for televising, live from Broadway, a production of Good Night and Good Luck, starring George Clooney as veteran CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow.
At the end of the play, Clooney recites Murrow's actual speech to news and TV executives from 1958, urging them to use TV wisely.
In the year 2025, the best of television, from the American Revolution to adolescence, is living up to Ed Murrow's inspirational ideals.
We all just have to find the best that's out there.
This is Fresh Air.
I'm David Bianculli.
John Le Carre wrote spy novels that transcended the genre.
Philip Roth called Le Carre's 1986 novel, A Perfect Spy, the best English novel since the war.
The author's most beloved character was George Smiley, the physically unassuming but brilliant British spymaster.