Luckily for ELEMENTARY, appearances by the BBC’s celebrated Sherlock are so sporadic and brief (this season’s 3 episodes were the first in 2 years), that the two series only infrequently need to be judged against one another.  Those comparisons aren’t to Elementary‘s advantage in terms of conceptual brilliance and sheer inspiration, but then Elementary […]

  Marvel may own the movie houses, but DC Comics has been demonstrating that it has the edge when it comes to the small screen.  ARROW has steadily improved since its debut, and in its second season it provided a model of the way comic book action-adventures can work on TV within the limitations of […]

  It took some down-to-the-wire negotiations between ABC and production studio Lionsgate, but NASHVILLE made its way to a Season 3 renewal this week.  (And barring further ratings collapse, that makes a Season 4 more likely than not, since ABC would share in the increased revenues from syndication that would follow a 4-season run.)  It […]

  Tonight’s series finale of SUBURGATORY provided as clear a picture as any of how much the series had lost its way in the course of its three season run.  Originally, Emily Kapnek’s show had a very clear voice and point of view:  Tessa Altman (played wonderfully by Jane Levy) had been moved against her […]

  The headlines have all been in PERSON OF INTEREST‘s favor this past season.  As stories of massive worldwide surveillance by the NSA and other agencies have continued to surface, what not so long ago looked like a CBS entry into sci-fi has taken on the feel of just slightly exaggerated reality.  The series itself […]

  To use an analogy that’s unfortunately apt, GLEE is heading out the door like a Broadway diva who won’t admit that her voice is shot and she can’t remember her lines anymore.  The show probably would have been canceled this season, after a run of ratings that have gone beyond disappointing to flat-out dreadful, […]

  The first season of THE ORIGINALS has been entertaining, if a bit more sprawling than it needed to be.  A good season finale makes up for a lot, and tonight’s climactic hour, written by Co-Executive Producer Diane Ademu-John and directed by Matt Hastings, did a very satisfying job of resolving the season’s major storyline […]

  AGENTS OF SHIELD was unquestionably a better show at the end of this season than it was when it arrived, but it still has plenty of work to do.  SHIELD arrived on the air with almost impossible expectations.  It was, however unfairly, inevitably going to be compared to the mega-budgeted superhero spectacles with which […]