Season 4 of ONCE UPON A TIME was a rather misshapen one.  The Fall cycle was a tie-in to Disney’s blockbuster Frozen (creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz swore it was their idea and not a corporate mandate), and although it didn’t bring out the best in the series, it delivered in the ratings.  […]

  Like many visitors to the Hamptons, REVENGE stayed too long at the party, and what had once been an amusingly twisted soap eventually became repetitious and silly.  The series would have been better served as an American Horror Story/True Detective type anthology that told its story and rebooted the next season.  As it was, […]

  It would have been nice if Reese Witherspoon had shown triumphant comic chops on tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, in the face of her terrible new movie comedy Hot Pursuit, but although she was a poised and enthusiastic host, it was just another uneven SNL. Witherspoon was mostly an observer for the funniest bit of […]

  If the word “edgy” can be applied to a CBS procedural, for a while that described PERSON OF INTEREST, which added a high-tech, slightly sci-fi touch to its crime-of-the-week storylines.  The episodic plots were doled out by an ambiguous super-powerful top-secret surveillance system, a concept that could hardly be more topical, and it was […]

  FX probably shouldn’t hold its breath for THE AMERICANS to become a wider popular success than it is. The series, for all its excellence, was more grim in its 3rd season than ever–the sun barely even seemed to shine on its distressed, and distressing, characters.  There was intense drama, to be sure, and outbursts of shocking violence […]

  The first season of BROADCHURCH was a phenomenon in the UK, one that prompted the ill-fated FOX US remake Gracepoint, and also, back in England, the somewhat controversial decision to renew the series beyond its seemingly self-contained initial season.  Against the odds, though, in Broadchurch Season 2, writer/creator Chris Chibnall wove a more inventively plotted, less monotonously paced […]

  It’s a little odd to think of a CBS procedural as a “guilty pleasure,” but the deeply silly SCORPION has been one this season.  It’s Mission: Impossible meets Bones, with more than a touch of McGyver, as each week its troupe of socially awkward (and proud of it) geniuses launch daredevil heists, cons and rescues, most of […]

  ORPHAN BLACK:  Saturday 9PM on BBCAmerica In the first season of ORPHAN BLACK, it was more than enough that the series introduced us to the incredible Tatiana Maslany, a previously almost unknown actress who delivered a jaw-dropping series of performances as clones who each had separate backgrounds and personalities (from suburban soccer mom to […]