INTO THE BADLANDS:  Sunday 10PM on AMC – If Nothing Else Is On… The first 5 minutes of the pilot for INTO THE BADLANDS tell you pretty much all you need to know.  There’s an opening narration placing us in one of those post-apocalyptic, neo-western futures, the kind where “Barons” rule, aided by sworn […]

> Today, 3 films from first-time directors: Caroline Bottaro’s marvelous QUEEN TO PLAY is, in a sense, a sports movie.  We have the out-of-nowhere player whose newly-discovered talent shakes up her whole life, the wise and somewhat eccentric mentor, even the climactic competition.  The game here, though, is chess, and the film (in French, with […]

> EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE:  Worth A Ticket –  Earns Its Tears If EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE accomplishes nothing else–and it actually accomplishes quite a bit–it’s served to let us know exactly where the third rail of current American popular culture is located.  It’s not every day that the august NY Times informs […]

  CROSSING LINES:  Sunday 10PM on NBC Previously… on CROSSING LINES:  Under the aegis of senior official Michel Dorn (Donald Sutherland), the International Criminal Court has established a multinational group of crimefighters to track down wrongdoers operating throughout Europe.  Each of our heroes, as it happens, labors under heavy baggage from crimes left unsolved and/or […]

  MURPHY BROWN:  Thursday 9:30PM on CBS MURPHY BROWN was Prestige TV comedy before that concept really existed.  When it went on the air 30 years ago, it was a year before the arrival of Seinfeld, and 5 years ahead of Frasier, and while there were other intelligent, funny sitcoms on the air, Diane English’s […]

  LAST MAN STANDING:  Friday 8PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  In the home and workplace of Mike Baxter (Tim Allen).  Not just a man’s man but a sitcom dad’s sitcom dad, Mike argues the cause of hunting, fishing, and all other middle-class-straight-white-male pursuits in the vlogs he does for his sporting goods company, where […]

  The return of Tracy Morgan to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE after his long convalescence from a devastating auto accident was an event, and the show treated it as such, with guest appearances from Morgan’s 30 Rock co-stars Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Jane Krakowski and Jack McBreyer, not to mention Larry David as Bernie Sanders in […]

  To be sure, NBC’s THE GOOD PLACE hasn’t had much competition in the category of Most Imaginative Broadcast Sitcom this season.  (Really, there’s just The Last Man On Earth, which has been having a monotonous and somewhat off-putting Season 2.)  Still, while the half-hour form (you can’t really call many of the shows “comedies” […]