CLAWS:  Sunday 9PM on TNT – If Nothing Else Is On… There’s a reason that CLAWS,  TNT’s latest foray into original programming, feels like the offspring of a multi-camera sitcom, a paycable hour and Orange Is the New Black.  The project, created by Eliot Laurence, was originally developed as a HBO half-hour, and then taken […]

  The second season of TNT’s ANIMAL KINGDOM concluded on a fitting note of dissolution and violence.  It was a well-told season, shepherded by series creator Jonathan Lisco and uber-showrunner John Wells, who’s been guiding TV dramas to long runs since China Beach and ER.  Lisco and Wells successfully increased the stakes among the criminal […]

  THE MAYOR:  Tuesday 9:30PM on ABC – Worth A Click The premise for ABC’s breezy THE MAYOR is wall-to-wall gimmick, in a likable way.  Courtney Rose (Brandon Micheal Hall) is a young aspiring rapper in the small town of Fort Gray, CA who decides to get himself some publicity by declaring his candidacy for […]

  MONSTER (no distrib):  There’s less than meets the eye in Anthony Mandler’s Monster.  Based by Colen C. Wiley, Radha Black and Janece Shaffer on Walter Dean Myers’ novel, it seems like it’s going to be a saga of social injustice, dealing as it does with a young black New York honor student (Steve Harmon, […]

  WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS:  Wednesday 10PM on FX The deadpan vampire mockumentary cult hit WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS is the latest piece of IP to find eternal–or at least extended–life on the small screen.  In some ways, it seems like that was where it belonged all along, since the format […]

  MARRIAGE STORY (Netflix – November 6 in theatres/December 6 streaming):  A film doesn’t have to be revolutionary to be great.  There may be no subjects more intensively depicted in movies and on television than marital break-ups and the miseries of divorce, yet Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is so fully realized and brilliantly performed that […]

  THE HUMANS (A24/Showtime – Nov. 24):  There are typically two strategies for adapting a celebrated play about a small number of people in a limited space to the screen.  One is to “open it up,” adding scenes, characters, or at least locations outside the original set.  The other is to lean into the claustrophobia, […]

  THEATER CAMP (Searchlight/Disney):  The odds are that a lot of people who’ll want to see a movie called Theater Camp are comfortable with the kind of ramshackle, hit-or-miss qualities associated with actual summer camp productions, and will likewise find plenty to enjoy in a movie that’s been made with more love and energy than […]