6:30 We’ve arrived at that strangest phenomenon of awards season, the night when we collectively grant the 88 nonentities of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (none of them filmmakers, many of them not even critics, and some of them of dubious principle) meaningful sway over the Academy Awards.  That will be even more true this […]

  COUNTERPART:  Sunday 9PM on Starz Starz’s COUNTERPART is both TV’s most cerebral thriller and its most cerebral sci-fi, a very serious story of espionage that happens to take place between two parallel versions of Earth where virtually every inhabitant has a physical (but not psychological) double, and the border between the two Earths is […]

  The first half of The Walking Dead‘s 9th season included so many major changes that its ratings continuing their general downward trend rather than collapsing entirely may count as a sort of moral victory, even though the numbers are now at series lows.  New showrunner Angela Kang had 8 episodes to cover a whole […]

  DIRTY JOHN:  Sunday 10PM on Bravo Bravo recently finished a 2-season run of Imposters, the story of a con artist who seduced victims into marriage, only to steal all their money.  Clearly the network knows what it likes, because in Imposters’ stead we have Dirty John, which tells a story remarkably close to that […]

  ESCAPE AT DANNEMORA:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Although the star currency of producer/director Ben Stiller and leading players Benicio del Toro, Patricia Arquette and Paul Dano doubtless were responsible for the 7 hours of ESCAPE AT DANNEMORA being produced by Showtime, the limited series is far from a glossy big-name vehicle.  As an actor, […]

  Hardly anyone has been watching KIDDING, which makes Showtime’s decision to renew the show for a second season a sign of their commitment either to indie movie sensibility or to being in business with Jim Carrey.  In either case, the renewal gives the series a year to decide whether to work past its seemingly […]

  RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime On the occasion of its 6th season, Showtime’s RAY DONOVAN has relocated across the country to New York, and the surprise is that although the series has always been very LA-intensive, both in storylines and use of locations, there’s very little difference in the final product.  Ray (Liev […]

  LEGACIES:  Thursday 9PM on CW CW’s LEGACIES brings the Vampire Diaries extended universe once again close to its roots, after the older-skewing adventures of The Originals.  We’re not only back in Mystic Falls, Virginia, but in a version of high school, although one that looks a lot like Hogwarts.  (The connection is so blatant […]