AMC

At the September 21st Emmy Awards AMC cleaned up: Mad Men became the first basic cable series to win best drama (and won for writing, too), and Bryan Cranston had a surprise win in the best actor category for Breaking Bad. And the network is not stopping there.  read more »

Just how historically accurate is AMC's critically acclaimed series Mad Men? Very.

In June, The New York Times Magazine's Alex Witchell called the show's art direction "almost fetishistically accurate." New York Magazine's Logan Hill actually went so far as to examine the books behind one character's desk on the magazine's Vulture blog.

But it's not just the sets that are period perfect. Last night's episode featured a plot point (spoiler alert?) about an American Airlines crash in Jamaica Bay. Here's how The New York Times's Peter Kihss described that crash, on March 1, 1962, in the March 2nd edition of the paper:

Nintety-five persons were killed yesterday in a jet airliner crash in Jamaica Bay.  read more »

The Television Critics Association awards took place on Saturday night in Beverly Hills and one show, predictably, came out on top: AMC's Mad Men.

The TCA awards usually offer a little preview of what to expect from the Emmy's. Mad Men has 16 nominations for that awards show. On Saturday night, the association gave AMC's first nominated show program of the year as well as honors for new program and drama, according to Variety.

Mad Men follows the larger-than-life ad men of the alluring golden age of advertising: "three-martini (sometimes four- or five-) lunches, smoking in the offices, lots of extramarital affairs. (Of course, it was an alluring world largely for men; women were almost entirely confined to the typing pool and the beds of their bosses)," wrote Doree Shafrir for the Observer.

A show that was snubbed by the Emmy's, The Wire, received the Heritage Award, which recognizes a longstanding program that has had a lasting cultural or social impact. David Simon did his song and dance about awards and how newspapers often compromise ethics standards to receive them. But then he joked: “I was completely wrong. It is all about the awards.”

He went on to say that if not for critics’ support, HBO might’ve canceled the series after the third and fourth season.

Here is a full list of TCA's winners, courtesy of the association's website:  read more »

MONDAY

With all the local hype over The Real Housewives of New York City, we'd almost forgotten about their west coast predecessors and sister show, The Real Housewives of Orange County, which taught us everything we'd ever wanted to know about plastic surgery, Southern California Republicans and bad parenting. But now that summer's here, it's time to revisit Silicone Valley. Bravo's airing a Real Housewives mini-marathon starting at 5 p.m., followed by a sneak preview at 10 of the new reality series Date My Ex: Jo & Slade, in which twentysomething former Real Housewife Jo De La Rosa tries to find a new man with the help of her much older, career-advancing ex-boyfriend, Slade Smiley.  read more »

For Bryan Cranston, one of the most fun things about starring in the new AMC television series Breaking Bad is getting to blow stuff up on set.

“I’m doing several things with gun play and chemicals and explosions. So I really enjoy that, being a badass,” he said, speaking by phone yesterday afternoon from his dressing room at The Rachael Ray Show, where he was scheduled to appear. “It’s like being a boy again.”

It seems ironic considering that Mr. Cranston, 51, is most well known for playing a father. He was the goofy, fumbling dad on Fox’s Emmy-winning sitcom Malcolm In the Middle (now you can picture him!), and as the high school chemistry teacher turned drug dealer, Walter White, he’s taken on another paternal role, albeit a dark and twisted one, in Breaking Bad.  read more »

Bryan Cranston is transitioning from playing one dad you wouldn’t want to have, to the next. The 51-year-old actor, best known for his fumbling father role on the Emmy-winning family sitcom Malcolm In the Middle, has taken on another paternal character, albeit a far more depressing one, in the new AMC drama Breaking Bad, according to the LA Times. Mr. Cranston plays a chemistry professor with both financial woes and inoperable lung cancer who starts selling crystal meth to make a quick buck. It’s not his usual happy-go-lucky role but at least, for Mr. Cranston, it’s a leading one.