> See A Word About Busted Pilots  Deadline reported today that ABC Studios has signed Jesse Martin to a talent hold deal that, although it could end up with him being cast in a different ABCS project, is largely in place so he’ll be available for a redeveloped version of Marc Cherry’s HALLELUJAH pilot, for […]

> 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 […]

It’s a cliche to say, when a director of commercials and music videos helms his or her first feature film, that the result resembles a video extended to feature length–and certainly not one that’s always true, as the debuts of, among others, Ridley Scott (The Duellists) and David Fincher (Alien 3) have shown.  But cliches […]

  The curtain rang down on the 4th season of WHITE COLLAR tonight, an unusually labored one.  The show still has a fair amount of style and charm, but it’s starting to feel as shackled as Neal Caffrey’s ankle bracelet (and harder to slip out of). Partly the series is a victim of its own […]

  It helps, when watching CW’s BEAUTY & THE BEAST, not to think too much about “Beauty and the Beast”.  Not the 1987 TV show, and certainly not the movies and other adaptations of the story.  Jay Ryan’s Vincent Keller just isn’t much of a Beast–he’s not even much of an Incredible Hulk, and he’s […]

  How on earth is NBC going to bring back AQUARIUS next season?  In the history of broadcast television, it may well be the lowest-rated series ever renewed by a major network, with viewership so abysmal that the show couldn’t sustain a normal summer run and had to be pushed to the netherworld of Saturdays.  […]

  HEROES REBORN:  Thursday 8PM on NBC, starting September 24   This year, for the first time, the Toronto Film Festival has included a slate of television productions from around the world in its line-up, formalizing the degree to which the status of TV has changed in the last few years.  That’s completely logical.  What […]

  If HOMELAND hadn’t once been so good, it wouldn’t be so painful now to see what it’s become.  Season 5 was by no means terrible:  it was crisply produced, Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin remain enviable leads, and the plotting was no sillier than that of many other TV action-adventures, which could also have […]