Despite an underwhelming season finale that favored sentiment over action until the closing seconds, THE LAST SHIP had a fairly smooth second voyage.  (The show, one of TNT’s highest-rated originals, has already been renewed for Season 3.)  Season 1 had ended, somewhat surprisingly, with the discovery of a cure for the virus that had […]

  BLESS THIS MESS:  Tuesday 9:30PM on ABC The six-episode order ABC gave BLESS THIS HOUSE (after FOX had passed on the project) is about as small as any network show can get.  That doesn’t leave much time for series creators Lake Bell (who also stars and directed the pilot) and Elizabeth Meriwether to show […]

  CALL ME KAT:  Thursday 9PM on FOX   There’s been widespread hope that a change in calendar pages would reverse the traumas of 2020, and that 2021 would bring in gusts of new air to blow away all that’s been awful in the world.  Sadly, the arrival of FOX’s CALL ME KAT, the first […]

  The opening 15 minutes of the 38th season premiere of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (fun fact:  Barack Obama was 14 years old when the show first went on the air) set a blazing pace that the rest of the show, alas, couldn’t sustain.  This is a season of transitions for the series–Kristen Wiig and Andy […]

  THE GREAT GATSBY:  Watch It At Home – Moulin Gatsby Just for fun, let’s try to think of a worse match of filmmaker and material than Baz Luhrmann and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY.  Judd Apatow’s Macbeth?  Woody Allen’s Lord of the Rings?  Michael Bay’s Remembrance of Things Past?  Jean-Luc Godard’s Shrek?  (Although […]

  Even as other broadcast networks have been backing off their commitment to situation comedy, ABC seems to have possession of the magic formula.  Last season’s The Goldbergs became a genuine hit with a move to Wednesdays, Fresh Off the Boat richly deserved its renewal on Tuesdays, and even the now-canceled Cristela had its fans.  […]

  THE EXPANSE:  Tuesday 10PM on Syfy – If Nothing Else Is On… The one thing we can tell conclusively about Syfy’s new series THE EXPANSE from its first hour is that it’s in no hurry.  The hour, which aired as a special preview on Monday night before the series moves to its regular Tuesday […]

  As the last notes of the not-remotely-accidentally-chosen “Fight the Power” fade from the closing credits of the 88th ACADEMY AWARDS telecast, 10 quick thoughts on the show and awards. 1.  Sometimes smart is all but indistinguishable from lucky, and that was the case for the Academy this year, which had chosen Chris Rock to […]