PARTNERS:  Monday 9PM on FX – Change the Channel Anyone who’s seen the promos on FX over the past several weeks has known what was coming:  PARTNERS is a sitcom with the charm of an IRS audit.  It’s really less a TV show than an illustrated business deal, the latest in the assembly line […]

  The signs are foreboding for AGENT CARTER:  not only have the Season 2 ratings gone from lukewarm to frigid, but star Hayley Atwell has signed for another ABC pilot (although since the same studio and network are involved, and Carter only produces a limited number of episodes each season, doing both isn’t impossible).  It […]

  TAKEN:  Monday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… NBC’s television version of TAKEN doesn’t have much to do with the movie franchise that provided its title, other than fitting into the action genre and featuring a hero named Bryan Mills.  Although presented as a sort of prequel, it’s a modern-day origin […]

  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 […]

  RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Previously… on RAY DONOVAN:  Ray (Liev Schreiber) is a Hollywood fixer who solves the daily difficulties and career-threatening scandals that trouble the lives of stars and senior executives.  He also has problems of his own.  His marriage to Abby (Paula Malcolmson) is troubled, partly because of his own […]

  TV is a little poorer for the loss of TREME, a series that never fully received the appreciation–from viewers or critics–that it deserved.  Even a bit watered down from its usual density in a last season of only 5 hours (well, 5 1/3 with tonight’s supersized finale), it was a unique mix of New […]

  In a way, COVERT AFFAIRS typifies the uncertain place where USA Network finds itself these days.  The series began in 2010 as one of USA’s mostly light-hearted “blue-sky” procedurals.  It centered around young, naive language expert Annie Walker (Piper Perabo), who was literally seduced into joining the CIA on a beach vacation, and who […]

  FX probably shouldn’t hold its breath for THE AMERICANS to become a wider popular success than it is. The series, for all its excellence, was more grim in its 3rd season than ever–the sun barely even seemed to shine on its distressed, and distressing, characters.  There was intense drama, to be sure, and outbursts of shocking violence […]