This summer, TNT is airing an ambitious slate of original programming, including the final season of its signature series The Closer, the launches of spinoff Major Crimes and new procedural Perception, a reboot of Dallas, new seasons of the elaborate Steven Spielberg production Falling Skies as well as Leverage and Rizzoli […]

  HBO has been airing a spiffy HD edition of James L. Brooks’ 1987 BROADCAST NEWS  in its recent rotation (it’s next scheduled for July 20 and 24), and that makes sense, since the Brooks film is one of the acknowledged inspirations for HBO’s current Aaron Sorkin series THE NEWSROOM.  I’m not sure how much […]

  With the exception of those shows that don’t know they’re about to be canceled, rarely has a long-running series come to less of a conclusion than tonight’s last episode of THE CLOSER.  And with good reason, of course–the episode was less an ending than a brief interruption, with the spin-off Major Crimes literally premiering […]

  One of the things that happens at film festivals is that as you see many films in back-to-back proximity, mini-trends start to emerge, at least in the mind, and pictures that were made entirely separately, and which may well end up released months apart from each other, seem to be in direct competition.  So […]

  BONES:  Monday 8PM on FOX WHERE WE WERE:  Watching Brennan drive away, baby Christine in tow.  Temperance (Emily Deschanel) had been framed by cyberpath Christopher Pelant (Andrew Leeds) for the murder of an old friend, and rather than be arrested, she fled with the help of ex-con dad Max (Ryan O’Neal), leaving Booth (David […]

  DEXTER:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime WHERE WE WERE:  In a frozen instant of time, as Detective Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) watched her adopted brother Dexter (Michael C. Hall), a blood spatter expert on her own forensic investigative team, murder a man in cold blood. WHERE WE ARE:  That same moment.  And there was reason […]

  HUNTED:  Friday 10PM on Cinemax – Potential DVR Alert On the same night that coincidentally brought the season premiere of Nikita, we have a new series that treads similar ground, both centering on gorgeous, betrayed spies, although the tones of the two shows are very different.  In HUNTED, set and produced in Britain but […]

  ABC’s NASHVILLE has reached the midpoint of its season as one of the better dramas on network television, and also one of the more frustrating.  Particularly galling is that it seems to falter worst at the things other, less interesting shows do with much less effort. Plotting, for example.  Within the show’s mostly parallel […]