MAD MEN:  Sunday 10PM on AMC And still–there’s MAD MEN.  Even in an era of unparalleled TV drama, nothing else on the air is quite like Matthew Weiner’s masterwork, a TV series that simply isn’t playing the same game as all the rest.  “When you bring me something like this, it looks like cowardice,” Peggy […]

  Showtime’s HOUSE OF LIES was a bit more ambitious in its second season, and that was a good move, even if the results were uneven.  In its initial season, House was all too clearly a companion piece for Californication, a weekly half-hour of light, sexy satire around the consulting group campfire, with Don Cheadle’s […]

  In its sixth season, Showtime’s CALIFORNICATION barely tried to achieve forward motion.  Every year, occasional novelist and full-time satyr Hank Moody (David Duchovny) toys with reform (which barely lasts an episode), and amidst his always-busy substance abuse and sexual exploits, he pines for his lost love and ex-wife Karen (Natascha McElhone), the (mostly) level-headed […]

  In the post-Homeland era of Showtime, SHAMELESS, the network’s Parenthood on crack, has been pushed even farther to the background–and to be sure, the two shows aren’t comparable in terms of seriousness of purpose or blazing quality.  Nor does Shameless have the tabloid zing of Dexter‘s plots.  Nevertheless, apart from being a steady, reliable performer […]

  SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE usually benefits from having a host with the confident comic talent that Melissa McCarthy brings to the table, but even with a 3-week hiatus in its pocket, the writing staff came up with little that was up to her level.  The result was a very long 90 minutes. Almost everything that […]

  ORPHAN BLACK:  Saturday 9PM on BBCAmerica The second hour of BBCAmerica’s ORPHAN BLACK continued to keep up the pace while gradually revealing its secrets.  The very hardworking Tatiana Maslany this time got to add German and soccer mom accents to her repertoire, as the base character of Sarah met yet more of her lookalikes, […]

  EVIL DEAD:  Watch It At Home – Plenty of Icky, Not So Much Scary A slick, Hollywood-budgeted remake of Sam Raimi’s 1981 EVIL DEAD (actually there was a ‘the” in front of that one, the definite article having been misplaced over the decades) is sort of a contradiction in terms.  The whole appeal of […]

  TRANCE:  Watch It At Home – Tricky But Unsatisfying Thriller From Danny Boyle TRANCE is both extremely clever and remarkably stupid.  I wish I could explain exactly how, but Danny Boyle’s thriller, written by John Hodge and Joe Ahearne, has the kind of story that piles reversals on twists on reveals, so there’s not […]