MASTERS OF SEX:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Turning the lives of sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson into a continuing series was an audacious idea from the start, and Season 2 of MASTERS OF SEX proved a challenging one, less focused and compelling than the first season had been.  Tonight’s first episode of […]

  RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime It’s a bit surprising that RAY DONOVAN has been a steady performer for Showtime, considering that its tone tends toward the glum and monotonous, but next to Homeland, it’s one of the network’s more consistent titles.  Despite that success, Showtime deposed series creator/showrunner Ann Biderman at the end […]

  THE STRAIN:  Sunday 10PM on FX Despite its contemporary NY setting, there’s an old-world charm to the horrors of THE STRAIN, with its silver bullets and sword-canes.  They come courtesy of series godfather and co-creator Guillermo del Toro, who loves this stuff (his own upcoming movie Crimson Peak appears to be a compendium of […]

  DOMINION:  Thursday 10PM on Syfy This summer, long-suffering USA and Lifetime finally succeeded in airing image-changing original series with Mr. Robot and UnReal.  Syfy, though, still dwells in the desert where most of its low-rent programming seems to be shot, watching other networks notch hits even in its own home genre.  If Defiance is […]

  DATES:  Thursday 9PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… CW is barely promoting its run of the 2013 British series DATES, which the network is using (presumably for a negligible fee) to fill a few hours of its summer schedule.  It’s an oddity, the kind of show you might expect to find […]

  SCREAM:  Tuesday 10PM on MTV Previously… on SCREAM:  In the town of Lakewood, it’s been 20 years since a misshapen student supposedly slaughtered a horde of schoolmates in a single night, all for the love of Daisy Duval.  Now someone who really loves his/her up-to-the-minute tech is stalking the local teens once again.  They’re […]

  ZOO:  Tuesday 9PM on CBSa Previously… on ZOO:  From Botswana to Los Angeles, animals are on the attack.  Lions are mauling, and some awfully suspicious cats have clustered in a West LA tree.  In Africa, photo-safari organizer Jackson Oz (James Wolk), the son of a nutty/genius professor who prophesized the rise of the planet […]

In its second season, John Logan’s gothic horror mash-up PENNY DREADFUL remained an elaborate conceit that pays off only from time to time.  Logan has gathered together a host of characters for his saga.  Some hail from classics of the genre:  Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway), his Monster (Rory Kinnear), and the latter’s intended Bride (Billie […]