> Worth A Ticket; A tasty croissant from Woody Allen. Woody Allen interrupts the opening credits of his new comedy MIDNIGHT IN PARIS to insert a montage of lovely Paris locations.  I mention this because after more than 40 years and as many films, the rules of Woody-land seem as fixed and immutable as the […]

  If there was a way to turn its premise into a TV series worth watching, TOUCH didn’t find it.  The show tried very different approaches in its two seasons, but FOX’s cancellation notice this week closed the door on any further tries. In its first season, Touch was built around the feel-good idea that […]

  Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here. SLEEPY HOLLOW:  Monday 9PM on FOX – If Nothing Else Is On… For what’s supposed to be an original series, SLEEPY HOLLOW feels awfully familiar.  Part of it, of course, is that writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are doing a spin on the Washington Irving classic […]

  DARK MATTER:  Friday 10PM on Syfy Previously… on DARK MATTER:  A half-dozen people (plus an android) wake up in deep space, and find their memories wiped out.  However, their bodies retain sense memories of serious fighting, piloting and other skills.  They discover that before they were put into hypersleep, they were vicious mercenaries, working […]

  BLINDSPOT:  Monday 10PM on NBC Previously… on BLINDSPOT:  A mysterious naked woman, her body covered in tattoos, is discovered in Times Square with a note saying to call the FBI.  She’s got amnesia, so they call her Jane Doe (Jaimie Alexander), and when the name of FBI agent Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) is found […]

  AQUARIUS:  Thursday 10PM on NBC Of all the puzzling decisions broadcast networks have made in these waning years of their reign, none may top NBC’s utterly inexplicable renewal of its 1960s cop saga/Charles Manson history lesson AQUARIUS, a series with ratings so woeful that it was exiled to summer Saturday nights in its first […]

  24: LEGACY:  Monday 8PM on FOX – In the Queue It’s difficult to watch the “new” 24: LEGACY simply as a TV show.  By the time the original series went off the air in 2010, it was already more trope than drama, its many gimmicks (the “real-time” format, split screens, on-screen countdown clock, etc) […]

A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the 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) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]