TV Guide Magazine January 17, 2022

LISTEN UP On page 6 of TV GUIDE MAGA-ZINE’s January 3 issue, “How to… Hear Television Dialogue Better” is the most informative article ever! Thank you! I’ve always been leery to mess with settings on any TV, but just adjusting the bass and treble levels has made all the difference in the world! —Janet FOND FAREWELL Let’s have a group hug for the six Mary Tyler Moore Show figures we lost in 2021—Betty White, Ed Asner, Cloris Leachman, Gavin MacLeod, cocreator Allan Burns and director Jay Sandrich. They had long lives and great careers. —Ed BLOOD-Y GOOD I was a huge fan of Dexter, so when I heard there was a reboot, I was more than excited because the ending of the original did not sit well with me. I started watching Dexter: New Blood…

@TVGMMattRoush While I was happy that CBS renewed its CSI: Vegas reboot for a second season because it was always among my favorite procedurals, a lot of that had to do with the callbacks to the original CSI, especially the essential ingredient of William Petersen as Gil Grissom and his interplay with Jorja Fox as Sara. But now I see that when the show returns, it will be without Gil (and Sara is only a maybe), so what’s the point? The original CSI went downhill pretty fast after he left. I was just getting used to Mark Harmon leaving NCIS, and now this! —Carrie MATT ROUSH: True, this does take some of the juice out of the renewal, but it’s worth remembering that the original CSI managed to carry on for another…

Smart Watch If you have a half hour, check out this series When not tossing out brainteasing answers on Jeopardy!, Mayim Bialik serves up pastries in Call Me Kat as a professor turned café owner who has her own daily double in a pair of suitors. Thursdays, 9/8c, Fox If you have an hour, watch this series New show Good Sam has one of the best medical drama–family tension formulas this side of Grey’s Anatomy, with Sophia Bush and Jason Isaacs as dueling daughter-father surgeons. Wednesdays, 10/9c, CBS If you have a free evening, watch this movie The joys of watching mildmannered dad Bob Odenkirk reclaim his hidden life as a top assassin after someone steals his daughter’s kitty-cat bracelet in the action thriller Nobody? It’s all good, man! Saturday, Jan. 22, 8/7c,…

SHE’S FOREVER TV’S golden girl. Betty White’s life story mirrors the history of the medium she loved best, and which loved her right back—along with legions of fans who still delight in watching her side-splitting work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls. White, who passed away New Year’s Eve, a couple weeks shy of her 100th birthday, did it all in a career certified by Guinness World Records as the longest for a female entertainer: as producer, personality, lifelong animal advocate, sitcom star. She was there at TV’s infancy, starting in 1949 filling five-and-a-half hours of daily local chitchat on live show Hollywood on Television. This gig led in the 1950s to a nationally syndicated sitcom (Life With Eliza beth), which she coproduced, and a daily talk-variety show…

WHAT IT IS One of the oldest streamers, this former Sony property launched in 2004 and is now owned by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment. LIBRARY GEMS Classic television shows like Charlie’s Angels, 21 Jump Street (below) and The Greatest American Hero. As for originals, they have the auction house drama The Art of More, starring Dennis Quaid and Kate Bosworth, and Harry Potter alum Rupert Grint in heist drama Snatch. There is also an entire section for faith-based programming. WHERE TO WATCH Sign up for your account at crackle.com. Watch on your computer’s browser or hit “activate a device” at the top of the home page, which will prompt you for a code that you can get by downloading the Crackle app on your device. WHAT IT IS Instead of just…

@TVGMMattRoush At school or office, new workplace sitcoms bring laughs YOU THINK YOUR job leaves something to be desired? Try being a teacher at Philadelphia’s chronically underfunded Abbott Elementary, or putting out corporate dumpster fires in the mercenary executive offices of the Detroit-based American Auto. These workplace sitcoms (on ABC and NBC, respectively) couldn’t be more different socioeconomically, but as they confront adversity weekly, each shines humorous light on the human condition. Or inhuman, in the case of Auto. “How do we actually put a price on people dying?” wonders Jack (Tye White), an empathetic everyman impulsively promoted from the assembly line to the C-suite of hapless automaker Payne Motors by incompetent new CEO Katherine Hastings (the brilliantly brittle Ana Gasteyer). Jack’s working-class background casts him in sharp contrast to his egregiously inept…