Actors dream of landing that one signature role that can make their careers and pad their retirement accounts, but that brand of fame often comes with an asterisk.

Try being Bob Denver and walking into an audition.

“Hey, Gilligan!” “Where’s Thurston Howell, heh heh.”

Kelsey Grammer may have found the role to make us forget, if for a moment, his superlative work as the stuffy, cerebral Dr. Frasier Crane on both ‘Cheers’ and his eponymous sitcom.

Grammer’s new series ‘Boss,’ debuting at 10 p.m. tonight on Starz, is getting the kind of reviews the actor’s mother might pen. The latest rave comes courtesy of Politico,

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Television is often treated like the unloved step-child of the arts.  It’s been called a vast wasteland and worse.  And vast it certainly is.  It’s on all the time and on hundreds of channels, so it’s no surprise that most of it is just awful.  The surprise is how much of it is worthwhile, and I’m not just referring to the artsy-fartsy stuff that shows up on Masterpiece Theatre. 

Of course everyone’s list is going to seem eccentric to other people.  My own is no exception.  For one thing, there have been very popular shows that I never even tuned in.  I’m thinking of “Beverly Hillbillies,” “Bonanza,” “Green Acres,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “Dallas,” “Dynasty,” “Knott’s Landing,” “Peyton Place,” “L.A. Law,” “Six Feet Under,” “ER,” “Chicago Hope,” “CSI,” “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” “Ally McBeal” and “Sex and the City.”  There were a few I watched once or twice to see what all the fuss was about, but I didn’t care for “Star Trek,” “Picket Fences,” “The X Files,” “Boston Legal,” “Touched By An Angel,” “Monty Python” or “N.Y.P.D. Blue.”  (more…)