MAJOR CRIMES:  Monday 9PM on TNT MAJOR CRIMES isn’t the kind of series to go for “game-changing” alterations, so the back half (actually 8 episodes) of its second season, which resumed tonight after a break since August, is only incrementally different from what aired last summer.  The show is a straightforward procedural for the […]

  It’s a continuing paradox that a show could have as many colorful characters, so terrific a cast, as much plot and incident and history (not to mention sex and violence) and visual style as BOARDWALK EMPIRE does and yet so often feel like homework.  It’s a pulpy series that sometimes lets its morose sense […]

  GETTING ON:  Sunday 10PM on HBO – Worth A Look It’s probably safe to assume that when a network launches a short run of a new series to air only during the holiday season, and that show isn’t at all holiday-related, the show isn’t prominent in the network’s long-term plans.  HBO is turning its […]

  JA’MIE: PRIVATE SCHOOL GIRL:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – Change the Channel JA’MIE: PRIVATE SCHOOL GIRL belongs to that particular British Empire school of comedy in which the central joke is that a female character is played, very obviously, by a man in drag–not that the character is a man pretending to be a […]

  It’s too easy to play the Hunger Games/”from hunger” card, so let’s just say that with one endearingly goofy exception, host Josh Hutcherson was barely even a presence on one of the weaker SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE episodes of the season.  His–and the show’s–one notable bit was a post-Update piece in which he (mostly) lip-synched […]

  NIKITA:  Friday 9PM on CW Although the cast, crew and studio would no doubt have liked it to go longer, a 6-episode final season for NIKITA isn’t a bad thing.  From CW’s point of view, it fills in the gap between cycles of America’s Next Top Model and gives viewers closure, and with a […]

  The problem with having your main character “go dark” is that she actually has to get somewhere.  In the Season 4 finale of COVERT AFFAIRS, Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) finally seemed to cross a line by coldbloodedly shooting her season-plus nemesis Henry Wilcox (Gregory Itzin) to death in a Hong Kong alley, but like […]

  THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE:  Buy A Ticket – The Odds Remain in This Franchise’s Favor Gary Ross did a fine, gritty job as director and co-writer of the first Hunger Games adaptation, one especially attuned to the emotional arc of its emblematic heroine.  But minutes into the follow-up, THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE, […]