HEARTBEAT:  Wednesday 8PM on NBC – Change the Channel NBC’s HEARTBEAT differs from most of the post-ER, post-Grey’s Anatomy medical shows that have come down the pike in that it’s an unabashed star vehicle rather than an ensemble piece.  And this isn’t an antihero story, a la House:  Dr. Alexandra Panttiere (played by Melissa […]

  STITCHERS:  Tuesday 10PM on Freeform STITCHERS gave itself an IZombie joke tonight (the two shows have somewhat notoriously similar premises, both concerning young women who can temporarily enter the memories of the recently dead to solve their murders), and that gag was about as imaginative as things got.  Stitchers is by far the more […]

  OF KINGS AND PROPHETS:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel ABC’s biblical saga OF KINGS AND PROPHETS was a big swing for the network administration headed by Paul Lee, but the fact that he’s not around to witness its launch (which had been postponed from last fall when the production turned troubled) […]

  THE FAMILY:  Sunday 9PM on ABC Previously… on THE FAMILY:  Ten years after his disappearance and presumed death, a now-teen Adam Warren (Liam James) appears, freshly escaped from what he describes as a decade spent in a hole in the ground near a “dragon.”  In the intervening years, his mother Claire (Joan Allen) has […]

  THE REAL O’NEALS:  Tuesday 8:30PM on ABC – Change the Channel Whatever its other ailments, over the past few years ABC has had an extraordinary run of diverse, smart family sitcoms,–an area where other networks have struggled badly–with Fresh Off The Boat, Black-ish and The Goldbergs building on Modern Family and The Middle.  (Even […]

  TOGETHERNESS:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO HBO pairs Jay and Mark Duplass’s TOGETHERNESS with Girls on Sunday nights, and in a way they make sense as companion pieces, since Togetherness concerns a screwed-up foursome at a later stage of their lives than Lena Dunham’s characters.  Togetherness, though, views its people with a more mature and […]

  GIRLS:  Sunday 10PM on HBO We now know that the 6th and next season of Lena Dunham’s GIRLS will be its last, and the Season 5 premiere made clear that Dunham has little intention of making the show less polarizing than it’s been from the start. The episode, written and directed by Dunham, used […]

  VINYL:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – DVR Alert Even with an ever-increasing amount of new and emerging competition, for now at least there’s still nothing in television quite like an all-in, no-expense-spared HBO event, and the network’s rock & roll spectacle VINYL certainly qualifies.  It reunites Martin Scorsese with writer/executive producer Terence Winter, with […]