JANE THE VIRGIN:  Monday 9PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… PLAYERS:  Ugly Betty, plus the whole notion of basing US TV shows on Spanish-language series (Red Band Society and The Mysteries of Laura are two more this season), and especially Executive Producer Ben Silverman, who’s was one of those behind Betty […]

  “Are you kidding me?  It’s always the weird stuff that’s the best,” Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) said at one point during tonight’s season finale of TRUE BLOOD–he was watching the birth of half-human/half-faerie quadruplets at the time–and that appears to be the case for the show’s many fans as well.  The hour had no shortage […]

  The farther it gets from the historical person named Leonardo Da Vinci, the better Starz’s DA VINCI’S DEMONS tends to be as a series.  In its 2d season, it went very far–all the way to South America, in a completely fictional Indiana Jones-ish quest for the mystical and all-powerful “Book of Leaves,” not to […]

> The Producers may have been both the best and worst thing ever to happen to Matthew Broderick.  He started his career in the mid-1980s as a fairly smooth, smart-aleck teen mouthpiece for Neil Simon in Brighton Beach Memoirs and John Hughes in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but over the succeeding years, his persona for […]

  ZERO HOUR:  Thursday 8PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert ZERO HOUR‘s pilot is an engaging piece of nonsense, but whether it can work as a continuing TV series is another question.  The premise is a DaVinci Code/National Treasure-ian tangle of Nazis, Rosicrucians, cloning, assassins, and bits and pieces of what seems to be […]

> Jim Field Smith’s comedy BUTTER, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, ambitiously makes a play for both the heartwarming indie Little Miss Sunshine audience and the satire-minded Election crowd.  That may be one play too many, but the movie is worth seeing anyway. Jason A Micallef’s first produced script is set in the […]

  Plot and character revelations are a critical part of James Marsh’s subtle, complex spy drama SHADOW DANCER, adapted by Tom Bradby from his own novel, so I’ll be circumspect in describing its plot beyond the initial set-up.  (Then again, I saw it at an 8:30AM screening at Sundance, so I’m not altogether sure I […]

  In its second season, MTV’s FINDING CARTER made a disappointingly dim argument for sustaining itself beyond its initial premise.  The series remains well-acted, and it has its emotionally pursuasive moments, but its season was swallowed up by plot contrivances and melodrama. Melodrama has always been part of Finding Carter‘s DNA.  It began with the […]