DEAD OF SUMMER:  Tuesday 9PM on Freeform – If Nothing Else Is On… Freeform’s DEAD OF SUMMER arrives with A-list auspices.  Two of its co-creators, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, are also the creators of Once Upon A Time (the remaining co-creator and series showrunner, Ian Goldberg, is a former Once writer/producer), and Horowitz […]

  FOX’s PITCH, co-creator Dan Fogelman’s (with Rick Singer) “other” fall series–he also has a little project called This Is Us–is a modestly engaging drama that deserves another, you know, at bat.  Unfortunately, “modest” also describes its ratings–and that’s being kind–so fill in your further baseball analogies here about tonight’s season finale being two outs […]

  The ratings for ABC’s AGENTS OF SHIELD have never been worse, and the show has been demoted for next season, reduced to serving as the Agent Carter for Marvel’s new Inhumans series and filling in during its post-fall hiatus.  The truth, though, is that these past two seasons were creatively probably the best SHIELD […]

  THE GOOD DOCTOR:  Monday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel ABC’s THE GOOD DOCTOR arrives with some pedigree, being a medical series from David Shore, the creator of House, and starring Freddie Highmore, fresh off his remarkable turn on Bates Motel.  The pilot, though, suggests that there’s very little of note here. The […]

  Coming off its acclaimed, Emmy-winning production of Grease, FOX had the holiday live TV musical market cornered this year, NBC having opted out of its planned Bye Bye Birdie in favor of a Spring 2018 Jesus Christ Superstar.  FOX zigged a bit from past practices, choosing the recent (and short-lived) Broadway musical adaptation of […]

  DECEPTION:  Sunday 10PM on ABC – In the Queue For its newest trick, the House of Greg Berlanti presents a crime procedural so insubstantial it seems to disappear before your very eyes.  DECEPTION, created by Chris Fedak (co-creator of NBC’s vintage Chuck) mixes together tropes like a summer camp magic show:  the smug amateur […]

  THE SUNLIT NIGHT (no distrib):  The last thing one would have expected from the director of the genuinely scabrous Wetlands was a follow-up that seems to trying to meld NY Jewish comedy with the kind of enchanted romcom spirit of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero.  But that’s what David Wnendt has given us, and the […]

  Showtime’s BILLIONS has cultivated one of the most recognizable signatures on television, from its rudely epigrammatic dialogue, to its love/hate relationship with its ruthless, narcissistic characters, to its very narrative devices.  Tonight’s Season 4 finale, written by series co-creators David Levien and Brian Koppelman and directed by experienced Billions hand Colin Bucksey, was precisely […]