Television Review

An epic love story, like a good horror movie, relies more on possibility than actuality. Surprise and anticipation, of what is to come and what it might mean, are what draw viewers in, binding them in fetters of pleasure and pain. Subtlety and nuance create the space between word and glance, between shadow and revelation, where imagination digs in and magnificence blooms. None of which happens, in any way, shape or form, during Lifetime's television event "Liz & Dick," a wildly graceless biopic that careens through the decades-long relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton with more petulance than passion, knocking down gin bottles and rumpling silk sheets for no better reason than that's what it says to do in the script.

In a welcome break from the traditionally saccharine holiday programming, ABC is airing "a version" of Spike Lee's documentary "Michael Jackson: Bad 25," which had its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival before having a short theatrical release. Lee trimmed almost an hour for the television version, but "Bad 25" is still something to be thankful for, a hypnotic homage to the performer's gift and, more important, his dedication. Wielding an impressive collection of behind-the-scenes clips as well as interviews with a disparate array of colleagues (including Martin Scorsese and Sheryl Crow)

There have always been people getting ready for the end of the world, or the end of the world "as we know it. " But lately it has become A Thing, with a name - a cute name, "prepping," like scrapbooking, or birding. Often it is a family activity, and an Internet-facilitated community has grown up among people who, though their specific fears vary - whether they see the apocalypse coming by flood or by fire, by disease or disaster, human attack or ecological meltdown - all share an interest in staying alive.

The folks at History are nothing if not ambitious. Two years ago, In "America: The Story of Us," the basic cable network reduced the history of the United States to a 12-hour miniseries, its lavish and entailed reenactments punctuated by commentary from citizens as diverse as Colin Powell, Michael Douglas and Donald Trump. Now History turns its attention to a wider palette. The entire palette, actually. "Mankind: The Story of All of Us," was created by Nutopia, the production company behind "Story of Us," and uses a similar construct and time frame - 12 hours - in which to review the evolution of human civilization.

Anthony Bourdain has never been one to shy away from speaking his mind, and he's not changing a thing as he makes the transition from Travel Channel, his home for the last seven years. That includes tearing into his former bosses when he feels they deserve it. As Bourdain rings down the curtain on the final season of his long-running show, "No Reservations," he ripped the channel's executives in a particularly hostile post on his personal Tumblr page. The source of his anger is a decision to insert post-production product placement of a Cadillac into one of the final episodes of "No Reservations" without consulting the writer and chef first, making it appear that Bourdain was endorsing the car by riding around in one. " After the first airing of the commercial, I let the network know of my extreme displeasure," Bourdain wrote.

Some fuss was recently made over the role President Obama plays in "SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden," a docu-drama premiering on National Geographic Channel on Sunday. There were accusations that the timing - days before the election - and the late-hour insertion of additional footage of the president, including a voice-over describing the decision-making process, were designed to boost Obama's reelection bid. Despite subsequent protests from the network and the filmmakers, the partisan kerfuffle can work only to their advantage; no doubt more people will watch "SEAL Team Six" in light of the mild controversy.

Dick Wolf, the man behind the globally successful "Law & Order" family of television shows, has fared less well when straying from his practically patented formula (and, for that matter, from New York City as a background). But when you are known for doing one thing well, it is always tempting to prove yourself capable of doing another. In "Chicago Fire," Wolf tries on a new city and a new setting. Created by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas ("2 Fast 2 Furious") and premiering Wednesday on NBC, the "Law & Order" network, it is set in a Chicago firehouse - with a nice skyline view from the driveway - where various factions cooperate and compete and get together for a beer at the end of the day. It begins, as is often the case with such stories, with a teammate's death.

When an Oscar-winning screenwriter makes a show for network television, people take notice. When she decides to situate it in the world of country music and enlists the aid of a legendary (and Oscar-winning) country songwriter, musician and producer T Bone Burnett (who also happens to be her husband), well, now pretty much everyone's looking. So by the time she up and casts one of television's most currently beloved stars, a woman of apparently boundless heart and versatility, Full Critical Attention has been achieved.

I suppose it is not especially strange that in the centenary year of the sailing and the sinking of the Titanic we would see two miniseries on the subject. The first, written by "Downton Abbey" scribe Julian Fellowes, played here in April on ABC, its final episode timed to air 100 years to the night the ship went down; my fellow critic Mary McNamara called it "ill-paced, sanctimonious and overly stuffed. " "Titanic: Blood and Steel," which begins Monday on Encore, is the second and, I feel safe in saying, the last such miniseries we will see this year, or soon.

In 2008, five years after the close of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer," four years after the end of "Angel," and the year before "Dollhouse," their creator Joss Whedon took it upon himself to make a short series for the Web, the three-act musical tragicomedy, "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. " Widely available these four years online and on home video, it finally comes to television Tuesday, as Whedon may have hoped all along - it is conveniently about the length of an hour of television, with the commercials taken out - on the CW, the network that undoubtedly would have been the home of "Buffy" and "Angel" had it existed when those shows were on, or those shows existed now. But let me return from that parallel universe.