Tom Shales, the witty and biting longtime TV critic for The Washington Post and puckish NPR film critic for a stretch has died.

He was 79. And he will be missed, as many of us have missed his cutting, Pulitzer Prize-winning TV criticism since his retirement.

In critic as entertainer terms NPR, if one is honest, hasn’t heard the likes of him since he hung up his headphones many years back. His dry, droll sing-songy delivery — reminiscent of CBS TV’s fey and funny Dennis Cunningham — was unforgettable in its time, ascerbic reviews performed like iambic pentameter — repetitive for effect — on “Morning Edition” with Bob Edwards.

I swapped a few emails with him in the years after he put away his fangs, and never ceased to be tickled at how he he’d prioritized entertainment value — sometimes in cudgeling tones — over stuffy authority and the perfectly buttressed argument.

As a film critic, he was a bit out of his depth — in the bag for trash that had TV or TV stars as its origin. But he wanted to do film reviews for NPR because he knew that TV, and TV criticism, has far less of a shelf life.

I’ll never forget sitting on the phone with his “Morning Edition” editor (I worked in public radio during the peak Shales NPR years) explaining that Tom’s nationally broadcast evisceration of rocker/actress Debby Harry’s performance in “Copland” was way out of bounds. Because she wasn’t in the movie. He was criticizing the wonderful Cathy Moriarty, “wrong on both counts,” I laughed.

Shales chuckled at being reminded of that. We all screw up, and few opinions, like few movies or TV shows, truly stand the test of time, in any event.

But rare was the Friday AM when I didn’t laugh out loud at something Shales said, even when he was unfairly abusing his nemesis, Alan Alda, or giving Woody Allen a harder time than most were because in this medium, in his prime, he was as funny as Allen’s most pretentious pontificator.

RIP, Mr. T.

Here’s an NPR rebroadcast of Shales’ “Star Wars” review. Enjoy. Enjoy. Enjoy.