The second season of Starz’s OUTLANDER was often disconcerting for a viewer unfamiliar with Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling novels.  That may be one reason why the series, embraced by Starz (along with the hit Power) as one of its signature properties, and gifted with a 2-season renewal order, didn’t fare particularly well in the ratings […]

  LAW & ORDER:  SVU:  Wednesday 9PM on NBC WHERE WE WERE:  A turf war between escort services run by Delia (Brooke Smith) and Ganzel (Peter Jacobson) turned murderous, leading to the death of a prostitute and the former Governor of NY.  Detectives Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Amaro (Danny Pino) were on the case, along […]

  THE DICTATOR:  Watch It At Home – Little Shock, No Awe   With Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen made one of the noisiest splashes into movie stardom of the past decade, daring and distinctive.  The question was whether he could follow it up.  And the answer, based on Bruno and the new THE DICTATOR, is […]

  RISE:  Tuesday 9PM on NBC – In the Queue RISE creator Jason Katims practically demands that viewers compare his new series with his classic Friday Night Lights.  The song that accompanies the opening scene sounds like it came off the Lights soundtrack, director Mike Cahill (an indie filmmaker whose best-known works are Another Earth […]

  WOMEN TALKING (UA/MGM/Amazon – December 9):  In an insular Mennonite community, the woman have always believed what the men told them, that when they awake to discover evidence of sexual assault and thereafter sometimes pregnancy, those were the result of attacks by evil spirits and ghosts.  When the story of Women Talking begins, they’ve […]

  THE NORMAL HEART:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – DVR Alert When Larry Kramer’s just-barely-semi-autobiographical THE NORMAL HEART was first written and performed in 1985, it was as “ripped from the headlines” as any episode of Law & Order, a furious, mournful expose about the AIDS crisis as it was happening just outside the theater […]

> When A GIFTED MAN came onto the scene, it had all the high-class auspices a new series could want.  The pilot was directed by Academy Award-winner Jonathan Demme, was written by Susannah Grant (Eric Brockovich) and had a cast that included such strong actors as Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Ehle, Margo Martindale (who, by the […]

  Considering how defiantly unlike the rest of broadcast television HANNIBAL is, not to mention its love of metaphor, it made sense for the show’s Season 2 finale to air entirely on its own, separate from the last episodes of just about every other network series, and 2 days after the end of the regular […]