It was perfectly appropriate to dread the news that an athlete was hosting SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE–the show’s history abounds with deadly sports hosts like Michael Phelps and Tom Brady.  And in case that wasn’t enough pressure for tonight’s host Eli Manning, one of the rare exceptions to the rule was his own brother […]

  Season 4 of  JUSTIFIED may or may not have been its best so far–Margo Martindale’s Mags Bennett still towers over Season 2–but it was unquestionably the most thrillingly novelistic, true to the show’s original source in the writing of Elmore Leonard.  The series, created and run by Graham Yost (who’s also been supervising The Americans […]

> 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 […]

  THE MAGNIFICENT 7 (Village Roadshow/MGM/Columbia/Sony – Sept 23):  Cinema survived in 1960 when Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece The Seven Samurai was transformed into an American western, and it will survive this new adequate but uninspired remake of the remake.  Despite a script co-credited to True Detective‘s Nik Pizzolatto (with Richard Wenk), and a promising match-up […]

  FINAL DESTINATION 5 – Watch It At Home:  Death Takes No Holiday   There’s only one thing worth mentioning in FINAL DESTINATION 5… and it’s the one thing I can’t talk about.  Let’s just say that if you’ve been a follower of the series all along, the filmmakers (whether it was screenwriter Eric Heisserer […]

  THE GOODWIN GAMES probably should have been a movie.  Its extremely high-concept premise–three estranged siblings come back to their hometown after their father’s death, forced to solve a series of posthumous games and puzzles in order to get his multi-million dollar inheritance, and meanwhile bond together as a family and become better human beings–could […]

A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the 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) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

> The title “Best Drama On Network Television” used to mean a lot more than it does these days (what’s the competition?  Parenthood has lovely moments but also its share of contrivances; Fringe and The Vampire Diaries are terrific niche shows), but for whatever it’s still worth, THE GOOD WIFE continues to own the crown.   […]