> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full TV pilot reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content […]

  WYNONNA EARP:  Friday 10PM on Syfy – Change the Channel Syfy has recently been trying to burnish its schlocky image with some more ambitious projects, most notably the time-travel thriller 12 Monkeys and The Magicians, a show with plenty of flaws but also lots of imagination.  The network’s economics, though, probably demand that a […]

>SHOWBUZZDAILY will be at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and today TIFF announced the first group of movies being screened (there are plenty more to come over the next few weeks).  Here’s the full list, and some titles worthy of initial enthusiasm: GALAS ALBERT NOBBS:  Oscar Bait Alert, with Glenn Close as a […]

> A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and production of episodes for the regular season:  a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover in the off-season) give plenty of notes, both helpful and otherwise, and […]

  42:  Watch It At Home – The Hallmark Baseball Hall of Fame It may well be that 42 is the Jackie Robinson movie audiences want.  It’s a straightforward, handsomely-produced, inspirational telling of a genuinely uplifting story, the 1946-47 baseball seasons when Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) broke the color line in American baseball, first in the […]

  When people say that an original film or television series has the feel of a novel, it’s usually meant as a high compliment.  (The Wire is probably the definitive example of this in television.)  But Sundance Channel’s first scripted series RECTIFY was a reminder that not all novels, however earnest and well-meant, are worth […]

  HOUDINI & DOYLE:  Monday 9PM on FOX – Change the Channel Paranormal procedurals have been fertile ground for FOX since at least The X-Files, recently with Lucifer and Sleepy Hollow (and the rebooted X-Files).  The network’s early-arrival summer series HOUDINI & DOYLE, though, is a plodding, uninspired miss in the subgenre. As the rules […]

  SUITS:  Wednesday 9PM on USA 7 seasons ago, Aaron Korsh’s SUITS was introduced by USA Network as the story of a young con man with a photographic memory named Mike Ross, hired by flashy New York lawyer Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) to be his mentee, sidekick and quasi-little brother.  Along the way, Mike became […]