THE KNICK:  Friday 10PM on Cinemax – DVR Alert It’s yet another measure of where television is these days in relation to movies that Steven Soderbergh, the main figure behind Cinemax’s new historical medical drama THE KNICK, found his ambitions too big for the big screen.  Soderbergh is now “retired,” which has turned out […]

  SCANDAL:  Thursday 9PM on ABC Sheer addictiveness is SCANDAL’s stock in trade, and although the Season 4 premiere had an absence of the show’s jaw-dropping plot twists, it was already awash in adrenaline and its trademark high-voltage monologues. The premiere, written by series creator Shonda Rhimes herself and directed by Tom Verica, mostly served […]

  THE FLASH:  Tuesday 8PM on CW Previously… on THE FLASH:  Mild-mannered civilian police investigator Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) comes out of an encounter with a particle accelerator and a freak storm, and finds himself gifted with super-speed.  Other “metahumans,” though, are less heroic, and before long, Barry has donned a suit and become a superhero […]

  THE LIBRARIANS:  Sunday 8PM on TNT – If Nothing Else Is On… TNT’s THE LIBRARIANS is a reboot, of a sort.  It’s based on a trio of Indiana Jones-ian original movies the network aired starting in 2004 (when it was more currently a knock-off of the National Treasure franchise), toplining Noah Wyle as a […]

  BACKSTROM:  Thursday 9PM on FOX – Change the Channel BACKSTROM is literally FOX’s try at being CBS:  the project, based on a series of Swedish mystery novels, was originally developed for the silver-haired network and a pilot was ordered, but CBS ultimately passed.  FOX’s in-house studio was the show’s production company, and its creator is […]

  Often the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE cast needs to prop up its weekly hosts, who are frequently performers unversed in live comedy (or comedy at all, or even performing at all), but that was hardly the case tonight, as Taraji P. Henson all but blew most of the regulars away, playing even the most routine […]

  TURN: WASHINGTON’S SPIES:  Monday 10PM on AMC After its initial season concluded, the reruns of AMC’s Revolutionary War drama TURN acquired the subtitle WASHINGTON’S SPIES, presumably in recognition of the fact that the original title conveyed absolutely nothing about what the show was about.  There was the hope that this signaled a Season 2 […]

  THE WHISPERS:  Monday 10PM on ABC – If Nothing Else Is On… What would the horror genre do without its creepy children?  Whether possessed by some sinister entity, born to be supernatural embodiments of evil or simply homicidal, the mix of presumed innocence with wicked actions has always been a fundamental thriller trope, no […]