UNDATEABLE:  Tuesday 9PM on NBC NBC made its position on the current state of broadcast network comedy fairly clear when it essentially chose UNDATEABLE over The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt this midseason.  Both shows were ordered and had produced their episodes, but the network shuffled the Tina Fey-produced Kimmy to Netflix (which appears to have […]

  THE STRAIN:  Sunday 10PM on FX Despite its contemporary NY setting, there’s an old-world charm to the horrors of THE STRAIN, with its silver bullets and sword-canes.  They come courtesy of series godfather and co-creator Guillermo del Toro, who loves this stuff (his own upcoming movie Crimson Peak appears to be a compendium of […]

  AMERICAN CRIME:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC AMERICAN CRIME‘s first season was, if not great network television, certainly ballsy.  John Ridley’s series took on race and class and religion to boot, and it was shot in a self-conscious “art film” way, with lengthy, intense close-ups, a measured pace, and a minimum of both music and […]

  RUSH HOUR:  Thursday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel It wasn’t long ago that CBS produced a pilot for a rebooted Beverly Hills Cop and decided, despite the participation of Eddie Murphy, not to proceed to series.  One can only imagine how horrible that pilot must have been after seeing RUSH HOUR, which […]

  MISTRESSES:  Monday 10PM on ABC There isn’t much mistressing going on in MISTRESSES at the dawn of the unapologetically frothy summer soap’s 4th season.  Having weathered the loss of marquee star Alyssa Milano’s Savi last year, the remaining lead characters Joss (Jes Macallan), Karen (Yunjin Kim) and April (Rochelle Aytes) are barely being transgressive […]

  DIVORCE:  Sunday 10PM on HBO – In the Queue In its opening half-hour, HBO’s DIVORCE doesn’t show much interest in the “-medy” part of “dramedy.”  The series creator is Sharon Horgan, who with Rob Delaney is also the co-creator and co-star of Amazon’s wonderful Catastrophe.  Part of what makes that show so extraordinary is […]

  BROADCHURCH – Wednesday 10PM on BBCAmerica One of the first things shown in the Season 3 premiere of BROADCHURCH is a looming close-up of a tear rolling down a crime victim’s face, so we know little has changed in that perpetually brooding Dorset town.  However, while Season 2 of Chris Chubnall’s series was a direct […]

  BREATHE (Bleecker Street – Oct 13):  BREATHE wasn’t the favored Triumph of the Human Spirit drama at Toronto this year; that title went to Stronger, with Jake Gyllanhaal as a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing.  Not having seen Stronger, I can’t compare the two, but Breathe has plenty in it to please audiences […]