THE REAL O’NEALS:  Tuesday 8:30PM on ABC – Change the Channel Whatever its other ailments, over the past few years ABC has had an extraordinary run of diverse, smart family sitcoms,–an area where other networks have struggled badly–with Fresh Off The Boat, Black-ish and The Goldbergs building on Modern Family and The Middle.  (Even […]

  In real life, serial killers are not infrequently foiled by mistakes as mundane as unpaid traffic tickets, and while Hannibal Lecter may be eternal, the NBC television series version of Hannibal–despite an inexpensive license fee and critical adoration–was finally brought down by low ratings, the show’s online streaming deal, and series creator Bryan Fuller’s […]

  THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT:  Tuesday 8:30PM on ABC THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT is ABC’s 9th family sitcom currently on the air (10th if you count the quasi-family of Single Parents), which puts it in a meta position not unlike its focal character Timmy Cleary (Jack Gore), the middle child of eight Catholic sons and […]

  MINORITY REPORT:  Monday 9PM on FOX Previously… on MINORITY REPORT:  In 2065, 11 years after the events of Steven Spielberg’s film, the “precog” program, in which a trio of psychically gifted empaths were used to predict crimes that hadn’t been committed yet, allowing police to arrest the potential perpetrators before the fact, has been […]

  THE ROOKIE:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC THE ROOKIE is mostly a standard-issue police procedural, not surprisingly most reminiscent of ABC’s long-running summer series Rookie Blue, but with one big difference:  it’s unmistakably a star vehicle for Nathan Fillion.  He’s one of those actors who seems to have spent his entire adult life starring in […]

  THE BLACKLIST:  Monday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… NBC has made it very clear that its top fall priority is the launch of the new Monday drama THE BLACKLIST.  The show has been given the network’s plum post-The Voice slot, and clearly, NBC sees the series as a more consistent […]

  There weren’t a lot of surprises at tonight’s EMMY AWARDS, and the truth is that where television is right now, there didn’t need to be.  (A full list of winners is here.)  Game of Thrones and Veep were arguably coming off their best seasons ever, and it would be hard to begrudge them their […]

  GOD FRIENDED ME:  Sunday 8PM on CBS It’s not hard to figure out the target demographic for CBS’s GOD FRIENDED ME.  The Steven Lilien/Bryan Wynbrandt series appears to have been custom-stitched for those viewers who would have loved ABC’s Kevin (Probably) Saves the World if only it had been a little bit more urban.  […]