FX’s just-concluded third season of Noah Hawley’s FARGO was its most divisive, and the criticisms came from a number of directions.  One segment was simply done with Hawley’s theme-and variations approach to the Coen Brothers’ original film, in which each season tells a new story, but one that always features a disruptive representative of […]

  JOJO RABBIT (Fox Searchlight – October 4):  The discourse about Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit has quickly become a debate between those who think its Nazi-era black comedy is authentically daring, and those who feel its purported audacity is a pretense covering a merely middlebrow sensibility.  (Note:  every person in the history of language who […]

  DA VINCI’S DEMONS:  Friday 9PM on Starz 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, […]

  It’s been a heavy week for epochal TV.  On Sunday, Mad Men sold us one last Coke, and tonight marked the end of David Letterman’s reign, one that’s lasted into a fourth decade on the air and has had an almost incalculable influence not just on late-night TV or even TV in general, but […]

  PROOF:  Tuesday 10PM on TNT Previously… on PROOF:  Brilliant, brusque cardiac surgeon Cat Tyler (Jennifer Beals), struggling with the death of her son and her own near-death experience, is recruited by dying billionaire Ivan Turing (Matthew Modine) to provide scientific proof of what, if anything, happens after death.  She sets off with intern Zedan […]

  ROSEWOOD:  Wednesday 8PM on FOX Previously… on ROSEWOOD:  Although he appears to be bursting with good health, Dr. Beaumont Rosewood (Morris Chestnut) has enough congenital illnesses to fell the entire emergency room of Code Black, and they’ve affected him in two ways:  he has an easygoing desire to fully enjoy each day as if […]

  SCREAM QUEENS was 13 consecutive hours of shrill campiness, and it was only fans of shrill camp who turned out for it–and they were far lower in number than FOX and the Ryan Murphy brain-trust had hoped.  As the MTV reboot of Scream had previously demonstrated, slasher movies don’t lend themselves to being extended […]

  VINYL:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – DVR Alert Even with an ever-increasing amount of new and emerging competition, for now at least there’s still nothing in television quite like an all-in, no-expense-spared HBO event, and the network’s rock & roll spectacle VINYL certainly qualifies.  It reunites Martin Scorsese with writer/executive producer Terence Winter, with […]