Biography (TV series)
Biography is a
documentary television program. Originally produced by
CBS and hosted by
Mike Wallace, the
A&E Network later re-ran it and has produced new episodes since
1987. The series has featured biographies on such people as
Elvis Presley,
Plácido Domingo,
Pope John Paul II,
Enrico Caruso,
Diego Rivera,
Mao Zedong, and
Queen Elizabeth II, and fictional characters like
The Phantom. The program ended up profiling enough figures, that in
1999 A&E spun the program off into an entire network,
The Biography Channel.
Initially, most of the episodes featured the life stories of historical figures or present political or social leaders. After a few years, however, the show began producing episodes on figures from
pop culture. This move away from purely intellectual subject matter has been criticized by some.
At one point, the show aired up to six times weekly in primetime, but recently has been cut back to only once a week, usually on Friday nights. A&E will cancel
Biography after August 2006, making the show exclusively available on The Biography Channel. [
1]
Biography has been hosted by
Peter Graves,
Jack Perkins,
Karen Hughes, and
Harry Smith. Since Smith's departure in
2003, the show has been done in
voice-over by
Neal Ross.
The
Canadian television comedy series
Liocracy was a parody of
Biography. That program, in fact, was originally titled
Liography until the producers of
Biography threatened an
intellectual property infringement lawsuit.
