This was the first season of GAME OF THRONES A.N. (Ahead of the Novels), and we can’t know at this point how much series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were informed by what they know about the work novelist George R. R. Martin hasn’t yet published.  But Martin will be hard-pressed to come […]

> 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 most tantalizing question of the Summer 2018 TV season is whether Jesse Armstrong, the creator of HBO’s slow-boil triumph SUCCESSION, knew what he was doing all along, or if the first 3-4 episodes were as uncertain as they seemed at the time.  In that beginning phase, Succession felt like Billions for The Gang […]

  NANNY (no distrib):  Think Netflix’s Maid, but as a (sort of) horror movie.  Aisha (Anna Diop) is an undocumented Senegalese immigrant in New York who works as a nanny for the daughter of a well-off couple, Amy (Michelle Monaghan) and Adam (Morgan Spector), in order to earn money she can send to her young […]

  Donald Glover’s ATLANTA would have been unimaginable on a mainstream television outlet just a few years ago–let alone as a show that could achieve success in the ratings.  It’s very much a post-Louie series (both air on FX), with its disregard of typical TV format and structure, but even Louie, for all its brilliant […]

  PRIVATE PRACTICE:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  Absorbing a lot of drama.  Pete (Tim Daly) was arrested for his part in a mercy-killing.  Addison (Kate Walsh), having chosen to finally begin her romance with Jake (Benjamin Bratt), was surprised by a proposal from Sam (Taye Diggs).  Amelia (Caterina Scorsone), with the help […]

  WOMEN TALKING (UA/MGM/Amazon – December 9):  In an insular Mennonite community, the woman have always believed what the men told them, that when they awake to discover evidence of sexual assault and thereafter sometimes pregnancy, those were the result of attacks by evil spirits and ghosts.  When the story of Women Talking begins, they’ve […]

> Watch It At Home; A circus story that’s not the greatest show in the multiplex. Sometimes even a small moment in a movie can typify how it’s gone wrong.  There’s a scene fairly early in WATER FOR ELEPHANTS–it’s not a major plot point, for those wary of spoilers–where an animal loved by the circus […]