RIZZOLI & ISLES:  Tuesday 9PM on TNT TNT set the last cornerstone of its extensive but unambitious summer schedule in place with tonight’s return of RIZZOLI & ISLES, one of the network’s mainstays, now back for its 4th season.  Like Bones, R&I is a relationship show that finds the time to solve a weekly murder, […]

  RED 2:  Watch It At Home – Less Fizz in the Drink This Time The first RED was a disarming surprise, a rom-com action adventure about retired but very lethal spies as bubbly as it was explosive.  It made almost $200M at the worldwide box office, and while that’s not quite Expendables money ($274M […]

  Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here and Midseason Pilot Reports here. WE ARE MEN:  Monday 8:30PM on CBS – Change the Channel It hasn’t been a great fall for new sitcoms.  On CBS, WE ARE MEN (which could have better been called We Are Mediocrities) joins Mom, The Crazy Ones, and The Millers, […]

  BROOKLYN NINE-NINE:  Tuesday 8:30PM on FOX Previously… on BROOKLYN NINE-NINE:  Fun and games in a Brooklyn police precinct.  Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) is the ace detective who solves crimes but is happily slovenly about everything else in his life.  Now he has to deal with a new boss, Captain Ray Holt (Andre Braugher), who’s […]

  The line can be thin between an ambitious, wide-ranging drama series and a mess, and honestly, you could argue THE BRIDGE both ways.  It was resistant to being pigeonholed to a fault, and it seemed to resist, too, the central storyline it had undertaken from the Swedish/Danish series it was adapting.  At various times […]

  DANCING ON THE EDGE:  Saturday 9PM on Starz Starz’s latest British import, DANCING ON THE EDGE, seems on the basis of its first double-length episode to be intended for viewers who enjoy the jazzy millieu of Boardwalk Empire but find its pace too rapid and its violence too rude.  It’s a well-produced, intelligent drama […]

  NIKITA:  Friday 9PM on CW Although the cast, crew and studio would no doubt have liked it to go longer, a 6-episode final season for NIKITA isn’t a bad thing.  From CW’s point of view, it fills in the gap between cycles of America’s Next Top Model and gives viewers closure, and with a […]

  The most inventive part of tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE really wasn’t, because it was almost certainly unintentional.  Nevertheless, it was sort of brilliant, in a “found art” sort of way.  Soon after the monologue, there was a negligible piece about a suburban group performing a snowflake dance for the Christmas pageant at their local […]