MADAM SECRETARY:  Sunday 8PM on CBS Previously… on MADAM SECRETARY:  Elizabeth McCord (Tea Leoni), a college professor and prior to that a crack CIA analyst, is asked by her former CIA boss, now President of the United States Conrad Dalton (recurring guest star Keith Carradine) to become his Secretary of State after the death […]

  ONCE UPON A TIME:  Sunday 8PM on ABC As everyone knows by now, Season 4 of ONCE UPON A TIME is aiming for a grand slam of corporate synergy, combining its Disney-owned network and Disney-owned TV series with Disney Animation’s biggest mega-buster in decades, the $1.3 Billion (and that’s just for ticket sales in […]

  For fans of his remarkable Battlestar Galactica reboot, it’s still strange to see series creator Ronald D. Moore switch to Starz’s much more old-fashioned OUTLANDER.  (Some of the abruptness of that switch was accidental:  Moore was attached to other, more BSG-like shows in the interim, but they weren’t picked up to series.)  Nevertheless, on […]

  It’s Year 40 for SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, and like many prosperous middle-aged citizens, SNL has no interest at all in shaking up its comfortable life.  Tonight’s season premiere could, with a few cast adjustments, have been the premiere of any season over the past decade.  Even though there were only two franchise sketches on […]

  PARENTHOOD:  Thursday 10PM on NBC It’s something of a miracle that PARENTHOOD, with its marginal-or-worse ratings, low concept and large, expensive cast, even survived to a 6th season on NBC.  Much of its luck had more to do with the collapse of the network’s schedule around it than Parenthood itself–its audience, while small, was loyal, and […]

  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 […]

  GREY’S ANATOMY:  Thursday 8PM on ABC The occasional misguided NY Times profile aside, it’s a good time to be Shonda Rhimes.  With an entire night of ABC’s primetime real estate put into her care, she’s achieved a level of renown and celebrity few TV writer/producers have had–not even her fellow 3-series moguls, Dick Wolf […]

  HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER:  Thursday 10PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert PLAYERS:  Executive Producer Shonda Rhimes–and you can repeat that name several more times without overstating her importance.  The actual series creator, Peter Nowalk (a Scandal/Grey’s Anatomy alumnus).  A cast headed by the estimable Viola Davis, and with an assortment of […]