FRANKLIN & BASH:  Wednesday 9PM on TNT Wednesdays have become series reclamation night on cable.  Last week we had Necessary Roughness adding John Stamos for a new series setting and a bit of zing; now FRANKLIN & BASH, reaching into the same bag of TV nostalgia, has brought Heather Locklear in as a regular.  […]

  Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here and Midseason Pilot Reports here. US & THEM:  Midseason TBD on FOX – Potential DVR Alert   FOX’S midseason rom-com US & THEM features two of TV’s most huggable stars in Jason Ritter (recently of Parenthood–let’s all try to forget The Event) and Alexis Bledel (once and forever Rory […]

  LAST MAN STANDING:  Friday 8PM on ABC If your heart beats faster when you hear the retro sound of a voice saying “Last Man Standing Is Recorded Before A Live Studio Audience,” then to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, you just may be the audience for Last Man Standing.  It’s found a smallish but loyal crowd […]

  HELLO LADIES:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO HBO sure loves it some Ricky Gervais-ian British comedy.  Apart from his stand-up specials, over the past few years the network has aired Extras, Life’s Too Short and The Ricky Gervais Show, and now, with Gervais in Netflix’s clutches with Derek, it’s resorted to the pseudo-Gervais of the […]

  WELCOME TO THE FAMILY:  Thursday 8:30PM on NBC Previously… on WELCOME TO THE FAMILY:  What could possibly be funnier than the unplanned pregnancy of 18-year old recent high school graduates Molly (Ella Rae Peck) and Junior (Joey Haro)?  Well, what if she were a flighty Anglo and he a studious Latino?  And what if […]

  THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY:  Buy A Ticket – Ben Stiller’s Imaginative, Flawed Reboot Of The Classic Tale The movies Ben Stiller directs for himself (Reality Bites, Zoolander, Tropic Thunder) are nearly always more interesting than the product he churns out as an actor (the Night At the Museum franchise, the Meet the […]

  AMERICAN HUSTLE:  Buy A Ticket – David O. Russell’s Epic Romp Is a Party That Goes On Till Dawn Even though it’s concerned with con men, low-lifes and deluded losers, AMERICAN HUSTLE is the happiest movie in town.  The co-writer/director David O. Russell seems intoxicated with life’s utter craziness and the joy of moviemaking; […]

  JUSTIFIED:  Tuesday 10PM on FX JUSTIFIED is pure dark pleasure to watch.  Other cable series are more thematically or structurally ambitious (which is why Justified is unfairly ignored at awards time), but Graham Yost’s series, taking its cue from the late Elmore Leonard’s original prose, is utterly assured in its command not just of plotting […]