Considering how defiantly unlike the rest of broadcast television HANNIBAL is, not to mention its love of metaphor, it made sense for the show’s Season 2 finale to air entirely on its own, separate from the last episodes of just about every other network series, and 2 days after the end of the regular […]

  Host James Franco (and very busy musical guest Nicki Minaj, who turned up in several sketches) had the benefit of one of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’s sharper episodes of the season tonight–uneven, of course, but with at least as much good as bad. Things didn’t start off particularly well.  It’s gotten to the point where […]

  After three seasons, THE KILLING is still hard to get a fix on.  Technically it’s a murder mystery, but efficiently and intelligently spinning out crime stories is what it’s least good at–its narrative is notoriously overextended, sloppily plotted and reliant on bad detective work and a seemingly infinite number of red herrings.  (Even though […]

  As everyone knows by now, although ONCE UPON A TIME has been renewed for a 7th season, tonight’s 2-hour “Final Battle” episode marked the end of the series as we’ve known it.  Only 3 members of the core cast are returning–Lara Parrilla’s Regina, Robert Carlyle’s Rumplestiltskin, and Colin O’Donoghue’s Hook–and as we learned in […]

  THE ENEMY WITHIN:  Monday 10PM on NBC NBC’s spy thriller THE ENEMY WITHIN is a variation of The Blacklist, itself a variation of The Silence Of The Lambs, all telling stories about ingenious master villains recruited by the FBI to help track down other fiendish criminals.  But series creator Ken Woodruff’s script (his previous […]

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full TV pilot reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content […]

  HANNIBAL:  Friday 10PM on NBC With the exception of Twin Peaks, HANNIBAL may well be the strangest drama ever to air on a broadcast network.  Created for television by Bryan Fuller as a prequel in the Thomas Harris canon to Red Dragon, it mixes mannered, hushed, often extended dialogue sequences with loving, lingering scenes of […]

  ICE AGE:  CONTINENTAL DRIFT – Watch It At Home – The CSI of Family Franchises Does Its Thing   You know what the fabulous Peter Dinklage never gets to do on Game of Thrones?  Sing!  That’s remedied in the new 3D animated ICE AGE:  CONTINENTAL DRIFT, where as the voice of monkey pirate Captain […]