Every year at about this time, Marvel faces a contradiction.  Even as it has a giant movie dominating multiplexes worldwide (this year, of course, it’s Captain America: Civil War, which is approaching the $1 billion mark), its TV business struggles.  Over the past few weeks, network cousin ABC has canceled hiatus series Agent Carter, […]

  THE STRAIN:  Sunday 10PM on FX FX’s goofiest drama, THE STRAIN, is back for its third season, long-tongued vampiric monsters and Eastern European mythology intact.  Season 2 may have been less notable for killing off leading lady Mia Maestro than for finally letting Corey Stoll discard his awful toupee, and while there’s no sign […]

  FREQUENCY:  Wednesday 9PM on CW – Potential DVR Alert We still have ABC’s Time After Time and FOX’s half-hour Making History to come, but of the time-travel sagas we’ve seen so far, CW’s FREQUENCY accomplishes more with far fewer resources than NBC’s lavish Timeless.  While it’s not entirely clear how Jeremy Carver, a longtime […]

  There was a time when BONES was a breath of fresh TV air.  When it arrived in 2005, the networks were deep into Peak Grim Procedural mode, as shows like CSI, Criminal Minds and NCIS thrived and spawned seemingly endless spin-offs.  Bones pumped some changes into the format, adding rom-com, screwball comedy, warmth and […]

  ORPHAN BLACK:  Saturday 10PM on BBCAmerica A somewhat meta line of dialogue about “consolidation” is a sign that ORPHAN BLACK has commenced its final (and 5th) season.  Series creators Graeme Manson and John Fawcett (Manson is credited as writer of the season premiere, Fawcett as director) have started to move their pieces toward the […]

  The seventh season of HBO’s blockbuster GAME OF THRONES, its most watched and in some ways most confounding, was shaped by two outside factors, and possibly a third.  Series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, having outrun the completed portion of George R. R. Martin’s series of novels, were in total control of the […]

  COME SUNDAY (Netflix):  American films that feature religious figures tend to come in two varieties:  the cloying “faith-based” dramas that play quite literally to the choir, and the “edgy” films in which the supposedly pious are revealed to be hypocritical and often evil frauds.  Joshua Marston’s Come Sunday is a rarity, a film that […]

  CAMPING:  Sunday 10PM on HBO Although HBO’s new comedy CAMPING is set in the great outdoors, it has the dynamics of a filmed play.  The concept is simple:  throw a number of mismatched characters together in a confined area, and watch them rub each other the wrong way.  In this case, the occasion is […]