WORKING THE ENGELS:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC – Change the Channel As summer sitcoms go, WORKING THE ENGELS makes Undateable look like the return of Seinfeld. It’s an inert pile of unfunny cliches, dysfunctional family division. The contrivance (calling it a “premise” would give it too much dignity) is that Papa Engel, a lawyer, […]

  OUTLANDER:  Saturday 9PM on Starz – If Nothing Else Is On… After an uncharacteristic stop in the urban milieu of Power, Starz returns to its comfort zone of historical drama with OUTLANDER, based on the bestselling series of books by Diana Gabaldon.  The TV version retains a distinctly romance novel tone (with a pay-cable […]

  In its second season, Syfy’s DEFIANCE continued to be erratic, although sometimes in a more satisfying way than in Season 1.  Under the helm of series co-creator and new showrunner Kevin Murphy (replacing fellow co-creator Michael Taylor), Defiance was less bound by its initial efforts to be a neo-western–set in a post-apocalyptic St. Louis […]

  PARENTHOOD:  Thursday 10PM on NBC It’s something of a miracle that PARENTHOOD, with its marginal-or-worse ratings, low concept and large, expensive cast, even survived to a 6th season on NBC.  Much of its luck had more to do with the collapse of the network’s schedule around it than Parenthood itself–its audience, while small, was loyal, and […]

  BIRDMAN or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance):  Worth A Ticket – A Stunt, But An Amazing One Alejandro G. Inarritu’s BIRDMAN is, like this year’s Boyhood, a film defined by its form.  In the case of Boyhood, that form was inextricable from its content:  its depiction of the passage of time, and the experience […]

  Martin Freeman, of The Hobbit franchise and the miniseries version of Fargo, brought a drier energy to tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE than the typical host, and that paid off for the show in a few of the night’s sketches. Freeman first came to American attention playing Tim (who in the US version would become […]

  Rarely has a TV series crashed as quickly and completely as ABC’s RESURRECTION.  It premiered just 10 months ago with a 3.8 rating in the 18-49 demo, yet last week it managed only an 0.8 (actually up a tenth from the previous week).  In other words, 80% of the audience that was initially enthusiastic about […]

  It was an odd SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE all around tonight, starting with the fact that host Chris Hemworth was there to plug The Avengers:  The Age of Ultron, which won’t even open for 2 more months.  Hemsworth isn’t exactly known as a comic stylist, so although he had a few enjoyably goofy moments, the […]