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"I realize that 'hire qualified women!' is the sort of outraged demand that's often met with a sigh. No one disagrees and yet gender inequality in high-paying positions extends to all professions." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If you say the year "1968" to anyone who lived through it, it will automatically prompt a sequence of memory flashes: Martin Luther King, protests, riots, the Chicago Democratic National Convention, the election of Richard M. Nixon, and of course, the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy after he won the California Democratic primary and seemed all but anointed as the next president of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Soup of the day is actually a full meal and then some. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"The Handmaid's Tale" is not easy to watch. And it's certainly not fun to watch either. It is unrelentingly oppressive and dark, even more so in its second season, whose first two episodes premiere Wednesday, April 25, on Hulu. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Don't blame Harry Styles if the hour-long special "Harry Styles at the BBC" doesn't begin to do him justice. Airing on BBC America on Friday, April 20, the show has enough Styles to satisfy the One Direction singer's legions of fans, but there are plenty of times you want to say, "Shut up and let him sing." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The image is permanently emblazoned on our culture: The white jumpsuit, high-collared, caped, bejeweled and fringed, the ink-black hair flopping over his sweat-dotted forehead, oversize sideburns, the trademark lip curl and, of course, the voice. Elvis was the King of Rock 'n' Roll and remains so for many today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"Lost in Space" is a barely adequate space drama with an unfortunate title. Why? Because some viewers would expect at least more links to the classic 1965 show of the same name than merely borrowing the basic setup and leaving the campy fun of the original on the shelf. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We all want job satisfaction, right? To go home at night, put our feet up and feel we've accomplished something at work that day? So is it really wrong for a young woman to take pleasure in her job, even if her job is killing random strangers for a price? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The great Ella Fitzgerald would have turned 100 a year ago this month. But while she's gone, her influence on other singers remains and, of course, her recordings are timeless. Among her most devoted acolytes is Bay Area singer Amanda King, who celebrates Fitzgerald's early years in concert on Thursday, April 5, in Orinda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"Only connect." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It makes sense that Tracy Morgan's new TBS comedy is about a comeback, but unlike Morgan's long road back from the 2014 traffic accident that killed one of his best friends, the comeback at the center of "The Last O.G." is played mostly for laughs. The comedy premieres on Tuesday, April 3. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Martin Luther King Jr. was about to leave his home in Atlanta for a quick trip to Memphis, where sanitation workers had gone on strike. King's children were used to his short visits home between constant travels throughout the country to preach civil rights and nonviolence. This time, the kids crowded around their dad, urging him not to go. He told them it was just a quick trip. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The catch of the day is the final season launch of "The Americans" on FX at 10 p.m. I'm missing it already. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's always wonderful to see and hear a veteran singer. We sit and listen for traces of what we remember from their glory days and delight in how they still seem to enjoy delivering a song. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How would you react if your child disappeared? No one can truly know unless it happens to them, but we think we know by the way actors react in hundreds of TV shows and films about missing children. A missing child is one of the most effective plot devices in literature, because even the most ham-fisted novel or TV show can get us to identify with the parent of a lost child. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The late Garry Shandling was an enigma. His death two years ago at 66 only deepened the mystery of who he was beneath the brilliant and complicated humor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

So far this year, we've had a docuseries on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, a new docuseries on "The Kennedys," a limited series on the assassination of Gianni Versace and on Sunday, March 25, the premiere of "Trust," a dramtic series whose first season dramatizes the 1973 kidnapping of J. Paul Getty III. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Remember being told that it's always good to have something to fall back on if your career choice hits the skids? Barry Berkman never thought about that until the hit man stumbles into an acting class in Los Angeles taught by Henry Winkler in the very funny HBO comedy "Barry," starring Bill Hader. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a very slow moving prequel to "Superman," called "Krypton," premiering on the SyFy Channel on Wednesday, March 21. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Greg Berlanti's movie about a teenager's coming out is nothing if not sincere. More to the point, it's not very much except sincere. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are gritty police procedurals, and there are the "pretty" variety, for lack of a better word that doesn't conveniently rhyme. "The Wire" was gritty. "Murder, She Wrote" was pretty. So is "Instinct," a procedural premiering on CBS on Sunday, March 18, starring Alan Cumming as a former CIA operative lured back to law enforcement by the New York Police Department. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Critics complain more about cliches than the viewing public, and there's a reason for that beyond the obvious one that a critic's job is occasionally to complain. Critics don't like cliches because they believe the scriptwriter has borrowed an old idea rather than thinking up something on his or her own. The public doesn't complain about cliches because they are familiar: No matter what else may be happening in a film or TV show, cliches offer a kind of grounding. They can be a comfort to viewers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sometimes ABC looks at series creation as if it's assembling Mr. Potato Head, especially when whipping up one of its dramatic potboilers like "Revenge," "Conviction" and the latest, "Deception," premiering Sunday, March 11. These shows may vary in quality - "Revenge" was sweet until it got tiresome - but they are assembled from the same box of time-tested pieces. And "Deception" feels not only time-tested, but timeworn. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mindy Kaling has not left the building. In fact, she's barely had time for a short walk in the fresh air between the end of "The Mindy Project" and the launch of "Champions," a pretty irresistible comedy she created with Charlie Grandy, premiering on NBC on Thursday, March 8. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There's a new yardstick in town, a significant change in the way we measure how insufferably self-indulgent and scripted to within an inch of its three-hour life a TV awards show can be. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Among the many brilliant elements of "Atlanta's" first season was that creator and star Donald Glover broke the rules so often, the audience was constantly thrown off guard. That made us vulnerable but also willing to take chances as viewers. Rule-breaking didn't mean Glover was literally taking chances, though: He created and wrote with uncanny confidence, based on certainty that the old rules were restrictive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rowan Atkinson isn't the first comic actor to move into a dramatic role, but the leap is especially large as he tackles the part of the great French police detective created by Georges Simenon, Chief Inspector Jules Maigret, in four TV films making their U.S. premiere on Wednesday, Feb. 28, on the streaming service BritBox. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The drumbeat leading up to 9/11 is the subject of the crisply engaging Hulu thriller, "The Looming Tower," premiering on Wednesday, Feb. 28. What makes it engaging isn't the turgid bureaucratic infighting between the CIA and the FBI in the days before and after the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa, but, rather, our knowledge of what will happen in New York, Pennsylvania and Arlington, Va., three years hence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"The Voice" kicks off season 14 with the audition phase on NBC at 8 p.m. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Acorn TV puts a new spin on the high school series, by adding a contemporary spin that sets "Ackley Bridge" apart from, say, "Heathers" or "DeGrassi." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"Good Girls" is pretty good, or, to put it another way, the show's co-stars are pretty good at being pretty bad. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Television's continuing fascination with analyzing a crime from several sides has produced great series that remind us that there are degrees of morality beyond absolute guilt or innocence in any human story. The genre isn't new, but shows like "American Crime Story" and "Law & Order: True Crime" have come a long way from the cops-and-lawyers setup of the original "Law & Order" series. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

USA only slightly exaggerates when it calls the killings of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. "the two most famous unsolved cases of all time." But hype aside, no one can dispute the questions that remain unanswered about the 1996 drive-by shooting of Pac and the slaying of Biggie Smalls six months later. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Coco: Pixar's new Dia de los Muertos-themed animated movie crams the first sequences with exposition, and then takes a colorful yet light spin through the land of the dead. But everything is leading up to a powerhouse finish. The success of this final act, and the way it transforms the entire film, is remarkable. A strong second movie from "Toy Story 3" director Lee Unkrich is one of Pixar's better productions. Rated PG. 105 minutes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I have to admit, if anyone had told me I'd be reviewing the fourth season of "Mozart in the Jungle," I would have suggested psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"This Close" is a groundbreaking series, but that's not why you should watch it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"Atomic Homefront," airing at 8 p.m. on HBO, is an eye-opening documentary about how radioactive waste was illegally dumped from the Manhattan Project in North County, Mo., and how residents are fighting to protect their families from its impact on their lives and health. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The title of the film "A Fantastic Woman" only means what you first think it does once you get to know its heroine, a transgender singer named Marina Vidal, who is dismissed, denigrated and worse for living what others believe is a "fantasy" existence in Santiago, Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If you've been wishing you were in New York to catch recent hit revivals of "Hello, Dolly!" and "Falsettos," those shows, other revivals and national tours of Broadway hits are on the horizon as part of the SHN 2018 season, announced Tuesday, Feb. 6. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Justin Timberlake was upstaged by an artfully arranged lighting effect and a video of a revered musician as he performed at the Super Bowl LII halftime show Sunday in Minneapolis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Not everyone who does a podcast is ready for prime time but, in the case of Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson, they're not only ready, they deserve an actual prime-time slot on HBO and immediate extension beyond the four episodes you get to see starting Friday, Feb. 2. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To get the most out of the dense and deeply unsettling cyberpunk masterpiece "Altered Carbon," buckle yourself in, prepare to be frequently confused about what is going on, who's who, not to mention who's what, and have faith that your willingness to suspend disbelief will pay off. Because it will. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Far-fetched isn't necessarily a bad thing for a TV show. It all depends on how far you have to go to fetch that all important suspension of disbelief. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nicole Kidman could have been talking about the stars of the superb British drama "Girlfriends" when she pointed out the importance of allowing women over 40 to tell their stories in film and television at the recent Screen Actors Guild Awards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]