PUBLIC MORALS:  Tuesday 10PM on TNT – Change the Channel Unless its pilot turns out to be misleading, PUBLIC MORALS looks to be fairly woeful stuff.  The show’s auteur–its star as well as the series creator, writer and director–is Edward Burns, who’s become the forgotten man of American indie film.  Burns’ The Brothers McMullen […]

  In its second season, Stephen Bochco and Eric Lodal’s MURDER IN THE FIRST altered its format, only to find new ways to fail.  Season 1 had told a single convoluted story, a murder mystery loaded with so many red herrings and reversals that by the time it ended, it was impossible to care who […]

  The ratings for BALLERS have more than justified its renewal by HBO, but the pieces of the series have yet to fit together.  Most of the show’s creative team hails from Entourage, and Ballers embraces the same bimbos-and-bling lifestyle porn and breezy pace, but having Dwayne Johnson as its central attraction has proved to […]

  FEAR THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC – In the Queue The opening episode of FEAR THE WALKING DEAD was audacious as only a sure thing can be.  The new series is, of course, a spin-off of the fantastically successful The Walking Dead–even if it lost two-thirds of its parent show’s ratings, it […]

  How on earth is NBC going to bring back AQUARIUS next season?  In the history of broadcast television, it may well be the lowest-rated series ever renewed by a major network, with viewership so abysmal that the show couldn’t sustain a normal summer run and had to be pushed to the netherworld of Saturdays.  […]

  BLUNT TALK:  Saturday 9PM on Starz – If Nothing Else Is On… For Jonathan Ames, the creator of Starz’s new comedy BLUNT TALK, the sweet spot is the intersection of addled (male) self-delusion and yearning.  His HBO series Bored To Death never found much of an audience, but it was rewarding for those who […]

  KILLJOYS is, along with Dark Matter, one of the ultra-cheap scripted pieces that Syfy runs on Friday nights.  (Defiance, which airs with them, is a somewhat more ambitious enterprise.)  The grubby aesthetics of the two Canadian imports are so similar that it’s no surprise there’s been talk about a crossover between their universes–assuming both are […]

  THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB never achieved much in the way of lift-off, and although ABC knew it was coming–there was a reason it was pushed to a summer run as the lead-in to Mistresses–the show’s flat quality must have initially taken the network by surprise.  On paper, the show seemed like it was exactly […]