A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

  THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY – Watch It At Home – A Long, Slow Trek Through Middle-Earth As a devotee of the Tolkien canon, Peter Jackson is obviously responsive to sage words of wisdom and well-worn adages.  Here’s one he should have considered:  Quit While You’re Ahead.  But first, let’s talk about HFR. The […]

  SHAMELESS:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime SHAMELESS often feels like the raging id of its showrunner and (US) creator, pillar of the Hollywood establishment John Wells.  Wells is the man behind ER, the senior producer who guided Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing and took over when Sorkin left, and as a filmmaker, his next […]

  THE FOLLOWING:  Monday 9PM on FOX A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover) give plenty of notes, helpful […]

  JACK THE GIANT SLAYER:  Watch It At Home – No Giants Here It’s been a dozen years since moviegoers took up residence in Middle Earth with the opening of the first Lord of the Rings film, and since the multi-billion dollar success of that franchise, Hollywood has refused to let us leave.  Apart from […]

  Over the course of the season, THE NEW NORMAL toned down its most disastrous miscalculation, which can be summarized in two words:  Ellen Barkin.  Not Barkin the very fine actress, of course, but the character she was called upon to play, Jane Forrest, the conservative Republican midwesterner grandmother who had raised Goldie Clemmons (Georgia […]

  THE BIG C: HEREAFTER – Monday 10PM on Showtime THE BIG C has spent a lot of time trying not to be the show it was supposed to be.  TV shows, much like people, tend to want to go on for as long as possible, so although Darlene Hunt’s dramedy began with Cathy Jamison […]

  THE MINDY PROJECT has spent much of its first season shambling toward what kind of show it wants to be, but its struggles have become progressively more entertaining to watch. Mindy started with an enormous amount of good will, thanks to its creator/star Mindy Kaling, the terrifically talented writer, comic and co-star of The […]