RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime Showtime has been having an awful summer, marked by the abject failure of I’m Dying Up Here and Twin Peaks, an 18-hour stunt that is filling the tiniest of niches.  (The soon-to-return Episodes and Dice have never been blockbusters either.)  For deliverance, the network is turning to its own Monarch of Moroseness, the […]

  The line can be thin between an ambitious, wide-ranging drama series and a mess, and honestly, you could argue THE BRIDGE both ways.  It was resistant to being pigeonholed to a fault, and it seemed to resist, too, the central storyline it had undertaken from the Swedish/Danish series it was adapting.  At various times […]

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content of the […]

  ORPHAN BLACK:  Saturday 9PM on BBCAmerica In an era of non-stop TV drama overhype, last season’s arrival of ORPHAN BLACK was that extreme rarity:  the real thing.  Even its network didn’t seem to know initially what it had on its hands, as BBCAmerica promoted the show, but reserved the bulk of its marketing resources […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots It was widely rumored in the weeks before the networks announced their new schedules at the Upfronts that WEEKENDS AT BELLEVUE was destined to hit the air on FOX.  In fact, even its timeslot was supposedly set:  Mondays at 9PM, following House, where it would serve as a […]

  TAMMY:  Not Even For Free – Melissa McCarthy Fumbles Her Industry Clout When a star earns hundreds of millions of dollars for Hollywood, it can show its appreciation by handing over the creative reins to the star (on a modest budget), allowing him or her to realize a “passion project.”  That’s where Melissa McCarthy […]

  RED 2:  Watch It At Home – Less Fizz in the Drink This Time The first RED was a disarming surprise, a rom-com action adventure about retired but very lethal spies as bubbly as it was explosive.  It made almost $200M at the worldwide box office, and while that’s not quite Expendables money ($274M […]

  There’s a reason why B-movies aren’t 13 hours long, and that was demonstrated by THE STRAIN, a well-crafted horror thriller that nevertheless succumbed to monotony before its first season (it’s already been renewed for another) came to an end tonight. Although The Strain is based on a series of graphic novels by the filmmaker […]