Your computer is probably seeing it as a second monitor, which means that the menu bar and dock are still on your laptop. If you want them to be on the OTHER display, you need to go into the System Preferences -> displays, and drag the little menu-bar icon to the other display.
If you're currently mirroring, or you've already done that, and you still don't see the dock and menu bar, then that means your TV has overscan, kindof an outdated thing, IMHO. There are ways around this though, such as selecting "underscan" under the same preference.
I have a Macbook and when I hook it up to a 26 in. TV with the VGA cable (I bought the adapter) it will show the wallpaper, but not the dock, or the bar across the top of the computer. It also wont show the mouse movement. It works fine with the Toshiba PC. Is there something I need to do to the Mac. I am a little new to the Macs. Help. Thanks. 
