SUPERSTORE:  Monday 8PM (starting January 4) on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… If a weak form of The Office‘s DNA seems to flow through NBC’s new sitcom SUPERSTORE, which previewed tonight before beginning its regular run on January 4, it’s not a coincidence:  the series was created by Justin Spitzer, a writer/producer […]

  SHADOWHUNTERS: THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS:  Tuesday 9PM on Freeform – If Nothing Else Is On… Fans of mediocre YA fantasy adventure may remember SHADOWHUNTERS: THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS from its last incarnation, as a 2013 feature film based on Cassandra Claire’s novels.  That was supposed to kick off a franchise, but the movie flopped, and the […]

  THE MESSENGERS:  Friday 9PM on CW – Change the Channel CW wasn’t in any rush to get THE MESSENGERS on its air, holding it until the last month of the broadcast season, and then putting the show in the lowest-visibility slot on its schedule, the Friday 9PM hour.  The series, created by Eoghan O’Donnell […]

  THE ODD COUPLE:  Thursday 8:30PM on CBS – If Nothing Else Is On… As Chandler Bing might say:  Could there be a more CBS show than a reboot of a 45-year old multicamera sit-com, with a star 10 years from his last hit?  If the network’s new version of THE ODD COUPLE works, maybe […]

  ALLEGIANCE:  Thursday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else is On… ALLEGIANCE is what happens when broadcast network executives watch cable.  The story of long-term, deep-cover Russian agents is clearly, shall we say “strongly influenced” by FX’s The Americans, even if the specifics of the storyline aren’t identical.  But broadcast networks desperately need “big […]

  THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC The back half of THE WALKING DEAD‘s fourth season began by bringing the series back to square one:  isolated figures wandering without a clear goal through an anonymous landscape riddled with zombies. The episode, entitled “After,” picked up immediately after last fall’s finale, and established quickly that […]

  MAD MEN:  Sunday 10PM on AMC The final season of MAD MEN was conceived by Matthew Weiner to run, as the previous seasons had, across 14 consecutive weeks, and it was AMC’s decision (for scheduling and budgetary reasons) to break the season in half and run it over 2 years.  Nevertheless, whether by chance […]

  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) […]