THE NEVERS:  Sunday 9PM on HBO The arrival of HBO’s THE NEVERS introduces a continuing series that’s also, in a sense, a limited one.  It was initially meant to be the latest original franchise from creator/auteur/showrunner Joss Whedon, the inventor of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe and director of the first two Avengers […]

  REBEL:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Krista Vernoff is one of network TV’s most prized showrunners.  She’s successfully guided Shonda Rhimes’s Grey’s Anatomy into a remarkable 17th season of success (which will be extended further if the necessary deals are made), and when she took over Station 19, that show became an effective one-two punch […]

  LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME – Thursday 10PM on NBC   Long before Marvel had a Cinematic Universe, there was Law & Order.  Dick Wolf’s behemoth kicked off in 1990, and it was joined 9 years later by SVU.  At peak franchise in the mid-2000s, there were four Law & Orders on the air, […]

  CLARICE:  Thursday 10PM on CBS The Silence Of the Lambs wasn’t supposed to be Hannibal Lecter’s story.  Despite Anthony Hopkins’ Best Actor Oscar for the role, the character was a supporting player in both Thomas Harris’ 1988 novel and Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film.  The center of the tale was FBI agent Clarice Starling, but […]

  WANDAVISION:  Episodes 1 & 2 available now on Disney+, remaining episodes drop 12:01AM each Friday   WANDAVISION mixes the old and the new in ways both self-conscious and not.  COVID delays on other projects led to it becoming the first genuine piece of MCU content created for the small screen.  (Earlier series like Agents […]

  CALL ME KAT:  Thursday 9PM on FOX   There’s been widespread hope that a change in calendar pages would reverse the traumas of 2020, and that 2021 would bring in gusts of new air to blow away all that’s been awful in the world.  Sadly, the arrival of FOX’s CALL ME KAT, the first […]

  For 3 seasons, Noah Hawley’s FX anthology series FARGO displayed an uncanny ability to channel the unique sensibilities of Joel and Ethan Coen, even while telling original stories with their own idiosyncratic characters.  In Season 4, Hawley seemed to tire of exercising that muscle, and while the season was clearly intended as his nod […]

  B POSITIVE – Thursday 8:30PM on CBS These are tumultuous times.  (Hell, as this is being written, these are tumultuous hours.)  And that’s true in the world of broadcast television as well, which was already being hammered by new technology and viewing habits even before the pandemic hit.  And yet the model of the […]