THAT’S MY BOY:  Not Even For Free – Low-Rent Even For Sandler   THAT’S MY BOY is 116 minutes long.  I mention that up front because, for those of us who consider time spent watching Adam Sandler movies to be akin to a prison term, there’s a constitutional right of due process to let you […]

  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 […]

  HOSTAGES:  Monday 10PM on CBS Previously… on HOSTAGES:  Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette) is a surgeon scheduled to operate on the President of the United States (James Naughton).  The night before the surgery, her home is invaded by a group that threatens to murder her family–husband Brian (Tate Donovan), daughter Morgan (Quinn Shephard) and son […]

> A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and production of episodes for the regular season:  a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover in the off-season) give plenty of notes, both helpful and otherwise, and […]

  EUPHORIA:  Sunday 10PM on HBO HBO’s new teen transgression drama EUPHORIA is produced by the indie studio A24, and for those who frequent what’s left of the American indie landscape, most notably the films that come out of Sundance, Euphoria is less revolutionary than it presents itself as being.  The drugs- and porn-saturated world […]

> ALCATRAZ was a show–pardon the use of past tense:  the series still has a pulse, but recent ratings make it an increasing longshot for a repeat sentence–that just never found its groove.  Convoluted but obvious, original and yet impersonal, the show was rarely terrible and never essential. The series was, as they say, “troubled.”  […]

> 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 reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content of the […]

  MADAM SECRETARY:  Sunday 8PM on CBS Previously… on MADAM SECRETARY:  Elizabeth McCord (Tea Leoni), a college professor and prior to that a crack CIA analyst, is asked by her former CIA boss, now President of the United States Conrad Dalton (recurring guest star Keith Carradine) to become his Secretary of State after the death […]