For fans of his remarkable Battlestar Galactica reboot, it’s still strange to see series creator Ronald D. Moore switch to Starz’s much more old-fashioned OUTLANDER.  (Some of the abruptness of that switch was accidental:  Moore was attached to other, more BSG-like shows in the interim, but they weren’t picked up to series.)  Nevertheless, on […]

  Under showrunner Scott M. Gimple, this fifth season of THE WALKING DEAD became steadily better as drama than the series has ever been, drawing closer to deserving its phenomenal level of ratings as still (even after the arrival of Empire) TV’s biggest non-football success.  Gimple and his team have greatly improved the show’s eternal […]

  THE BLACKLIST adequately completed the first act of its season’s mission with tonight’s fall finale–but the tough part is still to come.  NBC largely adopted a conservative schedule this season–a new sitcom after Tuesday’s The Voice and a couple more thrown away on Thursday, another fantasy thriller after Grimm, a third old-skewing procedural to […]

  It seems that for many viewers, ONCE UPON A TIME has become too conceptual for its own good.  The ratings, so robust just 2 seasons ago, have continued to sink (down another full ratings point this season), and while Once is still relatively successful by ABC standards, it’s no longer a substantial hit.  Nevertheless, […]

  Almost every quality series, at one point or another, takes a wrong turn (remember the Friday Night Lights murder storyline?); the mark of one with staying power is whether it can bounce back.  THE FOSTERS was in danger of going over the edge at the end of its first season, piling one melodramatic plot […]

  Even as ABC’s Agents of SHIELD suggests the limits of corporate/entertainment synergy, it’s been working out just fine for the same network’s ONCE UPON A TIME.  Whether the idea originated with the show’s network, studio or (as they claim) producers, melding Disney’s Frozen with the Once melenge of fairy tale, myth and pop culture […]

  VINYL watchers, HBO feels your pain.  Late in a run that matched low ratings with little buzz or critical enthusiasm, the network took the unusual step of not just firing co-creator/showrunner Terence Winter, but of publicizing that decision before Season 1 even finished airing, despite the fact that HBO and Winter have a history […]

  SUITS is USA Network’s last remaining scripted hit, yet it finds itself in a bind:  with tonight’s midpoint of Season 4, it’s taken its original premise–Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) having been hired as a law firm associate by partner Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), even though Harvey knew that Mike had never attended law […]