Author Archive
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Shameless”

  SHAMELESS:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime John Wells comes from the broadcast network school of showrunning, where he kept ER going for 22 (or more) episodes per year for more than a decade, and barely missed a beat when Aaron...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “American Gothic”

  AMERICAN GOTHIC:  Wednesday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel Since even ABC is having trouble these days with its trademark soaps about melodrama, dark reveals and violence among close relations (The Family, Blood...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Scream Queens”

  SCREAM QUEENS was 13 consecutive hours of shrill campiness, and it was only fans of shrill camp who turned out for it–and they were far lower in number than FOX and the Ryan Murphy brain-trust had hoped.  As the M...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

COUNTING TO 10: Mean Machines

> As millions will be spending their holiday weekend watching marauding robots rip apart Chicago in TRANSFORMERS:  DARK OF THE MOON, it’s a fine time to salute some troubling machines of the past: 10.  HECTOR (S...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Hunters”

  HUNTERS:  Monday 10PM on Syfy – If Nothing Else Is On… HUNTERS has production values that suggest it’s intended as one of Syfy’s more A-level entries (it’s shot in Australia rather than Can...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere: “Aquarius”

  AQUARIUS:  Thursday 10PM on NBC Of all the puzzling decisions broadcast networks have made in these waning years of their reign, none may top NBC’s utterly inexplicable renewal of its 1960s cop saga/Charles Manson...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Survivor’s Remorse”

  Starz’s SURVIVOR’S REMORSE took some confident steps forward in its second season, even if that wasn’t reflected in the lackluster ratings.  Season 1 was mostly content with being a sports-driven Entou...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Of Kings and Prophets”

  OF KINGS AND PROPHETS:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel ABC’s biblical saga OF KINGS AND PROPHETS was a big swing for the network administration headed by Paul Lee, but the fact that he’s not ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Secrets & Lies”

  SECRETS & LIES – Sunday 9PM on ABC – Change the Channel Everything about the return of ABC’s SECRETS & LIES feels a bit off.  Even the scheduling of the quasi-anthology series (different storie...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Lethal Weapon”

  LETHAL WEAPON:  Wednesday 8PM on FOX – Change the Channel By the time the LETHAL WEAPON movie franchise reached its 4th installment, it was virtually a TV series anyway, so there’s no reason for moral outrag...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

HARRY POTTER: One Record Down

> The Hogwarts Express has started its journey:  last night’s midnight showings of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS (PART 2) blew past the previous midnight record of $30M (Twilight:  Eclipse) and grossed an...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

COUNTING TO 10: The Emmy Nominations

> The Emmys, of all show-business awards, lend themselves least to surprise.  That’s because they’re the only group that nominate and award continuing series, meaning that the same high-quality shows repeat yea...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Finale Review: “The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story”

  It’s easy enough to say that the phrase “stranger than fiction” would have had to be invented to describe the murder trial of OJ Simpson if it didn’t already exist, but still, the natural tendency...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Sleepy Hollow”

  SLEEPY HOLLOW has been trying very hard to justify its survival this season under new showrunner Clifton Campbell.  In addition to telling its core story arc about Pandora (Shannyn Sossamon) gathering sundry demons to s...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Fear the Walking Dead”

  FEAR THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC AMC’s eccentric decision to keep its Walking Dead assembly line going with a not-quite-prequel has become even more so in Season 2, which places the Season 1 survivors on ...
by Mitch Salem