MACGYVER:  Friday 8PM on CBS – Change the Channel CBS’s reboot of the 30-year old MACGYVER was the fall’s problem child.  After picking up the series, the network didn’t just dump the original pilot, it fired the showrunner and most of the cast, virtually starting from scratch.  (The original showrunner, Paul Downs Colaizzo, retains […]

  ELEMENTARY is a very classy, enjoyable network procedural that has the misfortune of existing at the same time as the altogether more dazzling BBC/PBS Sherlock, which has the same premise:  Sherlock Holmes as a modern-day detective.  Both the strengths and weaknesses of the CBS approach were evident in last night’s 2-hour season finale. What […]

  ELEMENTARY:  Thursday 10PM on CBS Nothing makes ELEMENTARY look better than the arrival of ABC’s Forever, an even more ersatz updated Sherlock Holmesisn procedural that features a fantastically knowledgeable British detective partnered with a more practical American (and adds a supernatural element, as Forever‘s hero is immortal).  Forever is simplistically sentimental and overly ingratiating, […]

  RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime On the occasion of its 6th season, Showtime’s RAY DONOVAN has relocated across the country to New York, and the surprise is that although the series has always been very LA-intensive, both in storylines and use of locations, there’s very little difference in the final product.  Ray (Liev […]

  Last week’s episode of NBC’s THIS IS US notched an impressive achievement:  in Live + 7 ratings, it moved past Empire to become the highest rated drama on broadcast TV.  Admittedly, L7 ratings aren’t the most meaningful metric for advertiser purposes, and being the highest rated broadcast drama isn’t the gala event it would […]

  It’s not paranoia if they really are after you, as the saying goes, and CBS’s PERSON OF INTEREST, a well-styled, relatively intelligent and ambitious action drama about mega-surveillance computer programs that trafficked in paranoia, in the end fell victim to a system larger than itself:  the new broadcast network ecosystem, in which it’s increasingly […]

  For this audience member, it was the day Toronto moved into high gear. MOONLIGHT (A24 – October 21):  Barry Jenkins’s second film, after his little-seen but much-praised Medicine For Melancholy, is a validation of film festival culture and a reminder of the power of film as personal expression.  (Although the source material is a […]

  HOMELAND:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime The obsessive charts are back up on Carrie Mathison’s living room wall, and while that may not be good news for Carrie, it’s great for the rest of us.  After a divisive second season that turned too much on 24-style action and Abu Nazir’s tortuous plan to make Nicholas […]