Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here and Midseason Pilot Reports here. RAKE:  Thursday 9PM on FOX starting Midseason TBD – Worth A Look FOX’s high-profile midseason dramedy RAKE wastes no time in establishing its protagonist Keegan Deene’s (Greg Kinnear) lovable-heel bona fides.  In the opening minutes, we see Key (as he’s called) with […]

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content of the […]

  Despite an abundance of first-rate acting, RAY DONOVAN may have been the biggest disappointment of the summer.  Ann Biderman’s dark family drama didn’t succeed at any of the things it seemed to be trying to do, and never lived up to the promise of its pilot. The show’s major failure was in the relationship […]

  GALAVANT:  Sunday 8PM on ABC – If Nothing Else Is On… GALAVANT is one of the goofier network enterprises in recent memory.  It’s a fairy tale comedy-musical created by Dan Fogelman (whose resume covers everything from Crazy, Stupid, Love to Tangled to The Neighbors) that’s meant to be in the vein of The Princess Bride and […]

  EIGHT FOR SILVER:  Sean Ellis’s 19th century werewolf movie takes itself very seriously.  Ellis has extensively revised the usual mythology of the genre:  the full moon doesn’t figure into things, the werewolf curse dates back to biblical times and relates to a set of silver teeth, there’s a political dimension to the story, and […]

  THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER (Apple – September 30):  Peter Farrelly’s Green Book was one of the clearest beneficiaries of winning Toronto’s People Choice Award, vaulting from being entirely under the awards radar to a (somewhat divisive) Oscar for Best Picture a few months later.  No doubt the premiere of his follow-up The Greatest […]

  COLONY:  Thursday 10PM on USA (pilot available via on-demand and streaming) – If Nothing Else Is On… USA’s new COLONY falls into the category of alien-invasion science fiction, but its pilot has more in common with World War II films like The Last Metro or the recent alt-history chronicle The Man In the High […]

  It may not be fair, but it’s awfully hard not to compare the second seasons of KILLING EVE directly with HBO’s Barry, since both were comedies-with-drama/dramas-with-comedy about hired killers that aired on virtually the same Sunday nights.  Many of us watched the latest installments of each series in the span of the same few hours.  […]