LOW WINTER SUN:  Sunday 10PM on AMC Previously… on LOW WINTER SUN:  Detroit Detective Frank Agnew (Mark Strong), along with fellow Detective Joe Geddes (Lennie James), have murdered Geddes’s partner, a third Detective named McCann.  Geddes convinced Agnew that McCann had brutally killed Agnew’s girlfriend Katya, sawing off her head, hands and feet, but […]

  RECKLESS:  Sunday 9PM on CBS – If Nothing Else Is On… In the Charleston of CBS’s summer potboiler RECKLESS, it seems like just about everyone is sleeping with everyone else, or wants to.  That absurdly overheated quality is the most likable thing about what’s otherwise a fairly conventional legal procedural, which comes from a […]

  HOSTAGES:  Monday 10PM on CBS Previously… on HOSTAGES:  Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette) is a surgeon scheduled to operate on the President of the United States (James Naughton).  The night before the surgery, her home is invaded by a group that threatens to murder her family–husband Brian (Tate Donovan), daughter Morgan (Quinn Shephard) and son […]

  THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC Devouring its showrunners much as zombie walkers do unwary or unlucky humans, THE WALKING DEAD returned tonight under the helm of its third leader, Scott M. Gimple, who’s been a writer/producer on the show since Season 2.  Based on the Season 4 premiere, which Gimple wrote, his […]

  Today’s CW announcement that in March, THE TOMORROW PEOPLE will move to Monday nights, swapping the hit Arrow for the untested Star-Crossed as its lead in, probably starts the clock ticking on the show’s remaining time to prove itself.  The series has made a few steps to improve since its underwhelming pilot, but it’s […]

  THE SPOILS OF BABYLON:  Thursday 10PM on IFC – Change the Channel A lot of talent has been harnessed for IFC’s miniseries parody THE SPOILS OF BABYLON, starting with performer/producers Will Ferrell (whose Funny Or Die studio is behind the project), Tobey Maguire and Kristen Wiig, and including cast members Michael Sheen, Jessica Alba, […]

  The consensus is that the 2014 Sundance Film Festival was a solid but unexciting one.  To an extent that’s a business judgment: whatever its leaders may say publicly, Sundance gave itself up long ago to being as much an acquisition showcase as an artistic one, and this year, while quite a few films at […]

  THE AMERICANS:  Wednesday 10PM on FX THE AMERICANS thrives on complications–moral, political, ethical and sexual–and it starts Season 2 with a nifty one.  In the Reagan era, when the show is set, the fundamentalist Afghan mujahideen that deep-cover KGB agent Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) betrays and kills were mortal enemies of the Soviets backed […]