If the word “edgy” can be applied to a CBS procedural, for a while that described PERSON OF INTEREST, which added a high-tech, slightly sci-fi touch to its crime-of-the-week storylines.  The episodic plots were doled out by an ambiguous super-powerful top-secret surveillance system, a concept that could hardly be more topical, and it was […]

  Rob Thomas and Dianne Ruggiero-Wright’s CW series IZOMBIE is a show that would benefit from a season order shorter than the 19 hours it had to deliver this year–and with its less than stellar ratings, that might be exactly what it gets next season.  As it was, this season was overextended, with too many […]

  A unique year in the history of movies (not to mention the history of the world) will culminate in a unique ACADEMY AWARDS tonight.  Only a small fraction of audiences will have seen any of the nominees on a big screen, relying instead on their televisions for VOD presentations and as part of the […]

  DR. KEN:  Friday 8:30PM on ABC – Change the Channel It’s going to be a neck and neck battle this fall between ABC’s DR KEN and NBC’s Truth Be Told (which will soon air directly against it) as to which takes the title of Fall’s Worst Sitcom.  Truth Be Told is tone-deaf and generally […]

  Something unexpected has been going on in the first half of the fourth season of AMC’s franchise spin-off FEAR THE WALKING DEAD.  Fear has always felt like a corporate calculation and a creative afterthought, unable to find a lasting identity as it roamed from being a Walking Dead prequel to being all too literally […]

  Creative risk-taking should always be applauded, especially in the conservative world of network television, and tonight NBC (in the particular person of its President Robert Greenblatt) and Executive Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron pushed all their chips to the center of the table for a massive live production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s THE […]

  THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB never achieved much in the way of lift-off, and although ABC knew it was coming–there was a reason it was pushed to a summer run as the lead-in to Mistresses–the show’s flat quality must have initially taken the network by surprise.  On paper, the show seemed like it was exactly […]

  ZERO HOUR:  Thursday 8PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert ZERO HOUR‘s pilot is an engaging piece of nonsense, but whether it can work as a continuing TV series is another question.  The premise is a DaVinci Code/National Treasure-ian tangle of Nazis, Rosicrucians, cloning, assassins, and bits and pieces of what seems to be […]