Bernie Mac

The funniest bit in the crude but diverting "Soul Men" really makes you miss Bernie Mac, who died in August, a few months after completing the picture. Mac plays one half of the Real Deal, the Pips-like backup duo for a charismatic singer (John Legend) who eventually goes solo, leaving his former partners to languish. We're prepped by a brisk prologue and then, present day: Mac's character, Floyd, is being put out to suburban, manicured pasture by his nephew-manager, while Samuel L.

The Nielsens may not always show it (as if they can be trusted), but this has been a fine season for TV comedies that are still wobbling on toddler legs. I wheezed myself into an asthmatic fit Wednesday night in front of "The Bernie Mac Show" on Fox. I began the evening watching the Winter Olympics but couldn't take the slapstick. Instead, I opted for prime-time newcomer Bernie Mac, a stand-up comic turned-sitcom star who is almost criminally funny. NBC's new "Scrubs" still has juice, meanwhile.

Larry Wilmore, creator and executive producer of "The Bernie Mac Show" and the winner of an Emmy for outstanding comedy writing last year for the series pilot, has left the Fox comedy. Fox Television declined to renew Wilmore's contract, which was about to expire. Insiders said the decision was prompted by the show's declining ratings and its creative direction during its second season.

"Guess Who," with dueling lead characters played by Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac, took in an estimated $21 million in its opening weekend, Sony Pictures Entertainment reported Sunday. In a very loose reinterpretation of 1967's "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," Kutcher plays the nervous fiance of the suspicious Mac's daughter Zoe Saldana.

Comedian Bernie Mac encountered some heckling and a campaign rebuke during a surprise appearance Friday night at a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Toward the end of a 10-minute stand-up routine at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Chicago, the 50-year-old star of "The Bernie Mac Show" joked about menopause, sexual infidelity and promiscuity, and occasionally used crude language.

Fox has scheduled another of its "Magic's Secrets Finally Revealed" specials to run during May, explaining how magician David Blaine pulled off the stunt in which he buried himself in ice. What the network's executives might want to uncover, while they're at it, is who cast the spell that put a chill on their ratings.

The Hollywood studio "courtroom" of "Judge Judy" Sheindlin may seem inviting enough, but Hugo Escobedo Jr. looked like someone discovering a moment too late that he was in the lion's den and the head lion was about to bite his head off. During a taping, Escobedo, 18, was trying to persuade Sheindlin that he was not responsible for an accident in Houston that caused considerable damage to a car driven by 19-year-old Angelique Trump, who had filed...

Steven Knight and Tony Kushner won $25,000 each Thursday at the annual Humanitas Prizes, given to movie and TV writers whose scripts "entertain and enrich the viewing public." Knight won for the feature film "Dirty Pretty Things"; Kushner was honored for HBO's "Angels in America." Other winners included Barbara Hall for the pilot episode of CBS' "Joan of Arcadia" and JacQui Clay for an installment of Fox's "The Bernie Mac Show."

Fans of "Glee" have long suspected that there was something special going on between Santana and Brittany, the show's mean girl/dim girl cheerleading duo. There were the goo-goo eyes and the intertwined pinkies, the back rubs and flirty duets. The relationship might have been just another inside joke on a show full of inside jokes, but fans wanted more. They dubbed the pair "Brittana," and tweeted and blogged endlessly about how great it would be if the two became a real couple. Of course, fans known as "shippers" have fantasized for years about imaginary trysts between their favorite characters.