This season, ABC’s A MILLION LITTLE THINGS provided proof that even as viewers accustom themselves to DVRs and video on demand, old-fashioned network scheduling can still be key.  A Million Little Things was languishing on Wednesdays, on the bubble for next season, when a move behind Grey’s Anatomy allowed it to thrive, and led […]

  In its second season, HBO’s SUCCESSION found an exquisite middle ground between Dallas and Shakespeare.  The show is still a somewhat rareified taste–it’s routinely been the lowest-rated show in the network’s current Sunday line-up–but as evidenced by its surprise writing Emmy a few weeks ago, its quality is recognized. The Season 2 finale, written […]

  HAPPY TOGETHER:  Monday 8:30PM on CBS Even though CBS’s HAPPY TOGETHER is inspired by a period in Executive Producer Harry Styles’s actual life, it’s one of those sitcoms where no one in front of or behind the cameras appears to have spent much time on Earth.  The contrivance that serves as the plot has […]

  Although its production studio MRC is seeking a stay of execution from another network or streaming service, it currently appears as though Starz’s Season 2 finale of COUNTERPART will be the last we see of the show, which is both a shame and less than a shock.  In an era where much of TV […]

  Times are dark indeed in Storybrooke this season.  The ratings for ONCE UPON A TIME have never been worse, and the the once-inventive show’s writing, by series creators Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis and their staff, is at a low ebb.  Truth be told, this has been coming for a while (remember the show’s […]

  WIDOWS (20th – Nov. 16):  Widows is a genre movie that isn’t sure it wants to be one.  That’s not a shock, because the idea of the aesthete director Steve McQueen, of Hunger, Shame and 12 Years A Slave renown, toiling in the land of Ocean’s 8 seemed odd from the start.  And for […]

  Season 4 of THE ORIGINALS had the chance to emerge from the shadow of its departing parent The Vampire Diaries–there was even a 5-year time jump to distance the two shows–but it didn’t really happen.  For most of its length, the season was a variation of the same pattern that Originals has followed since […]

  The first season of Freeform’s Marvel series CLOAK & DAGGER was from the measured pace school of serialized TV drama.  Joe Pokaski’s saga was essentially 10 hours of origin story, tracing Tandy Bowen (Olivia Holt) and Tyrone Johnson (Aubrey Joseph) from teen outcasts to budding superheroes, with only scattered uses of their powers until […]