David Bianculli

The off-beat funnyman retires this month after 33 years hosting late-night television. Fresh Air's David Bianculli says that David Letterman's humor "provided a new blueprint for the TV talk show."

The perfect example, says critic David Bianculli, is HBO's The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. Spread out over six weeks, the finale had the most chilling TV moment he's seen in years.

TV critic David Bianculli says that he's encouraged by how far TV has come. He picks The Good Wife as the best show of 2014, having "the deepest roster of really strong regulars and guest stars."

NBC is airing a live version of Peter Pan on Thursday, nearly 60 years after the first live telecast. Critic David Bianculli says the cast and the revival of the medium are genius.

As technology gets more complex, TV producers aim to take advantage of it, such as relying on phoned-in votes from viewers. The interactive talent show, it turns out, predates TV itself.

Netflix's women-in-prison series, based on a memoir by Piper Kerman, returns Friday. Fresh Air listens back to interviews with Kerman and series creator Jenji Kohan.

CBS announced Thursday that the spot held by David Letterman for 21 years will go to Stephen Colbert.

Critic David Bianculli remembers watching the original news coverage of Kennedy's assassination — four days of unprecedented television — when he was 10 years old. He recalls how from that point on, TV, not radio, was the dominant medium for breaking news.

The British musical private-eye drama, which first aired in 1986, starred Michael Gambon as a novelist hospitalized with a horrible skin condition who tries to write a Hollywood screenplay in his mind. David Bianculli explains why the miniseries is "TV's most polished, audacious masterpiece."

High-profile changes in returning shows --Two and a Half Men and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation — offer the most excitement in broadcast TV this fall. Critic David Bianculli says the new shows mostly disappoint, though you may be intrigued by Sarah Michelle Gellar in CW's Ringer.