THE GOOD WIFE:  Sunday 9PM on CBS In the wasteland of this fall’s collection of lackluster network programming, THE GOOD WIFE is starting to seem less like an exception and more like a miracle.  (Even more so, since it lives on CBS.)  Robert and Michelle King’s series eased into its 7th season tonight as […]

  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 […]

  In this era of peak TV, there are more shows than ever that we devour, that we obsess about and are thrilled by and that shock us and tear us apart.  There are fewer, however, that we simply love.  Julian Fellowes’s DOWNTON ABBEY was a canny mix of the old-fashioned and new-fangled, aristocracy porn […]

  After three sets of series creators and two pilots, THE CATCH certainly zeroed in on its inspirations:  To Catch A Thief plus The Thomas Crown Affair, with a touch of Soderbergh’s version of Ocean’s Eleven.  The Catch longs for fizzy romantic intrigue, with light (but opulent) crime stirred alongside flirtatious banter between glamorous people, […]

  THE NIGHT OF:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – DVR Alert “Noisy” is the byword of the television moment, and HBO makes noise as well as any programming service, whether its shows are laden with dragons, foul-mouthed politicians or coke-snorting record executives.  Every so often, though, the network demonstrates that it can also deliver unadorned […]

  WESTWORLD:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – Potential DVR Alert HBO’s mega-series WESTWORLD began its run enigmatically and laden with multiple layers of meta-narrative, so much so that it’s not entirely clear from the 70-minute premiere where it intends to take us. The premise is clear enough, preserved by series creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa […]

  VICTORIA:  Sunday 9PM on PBS – In the Queue Female British monarchs are certainly having a television moment, with Elizabeth I a regular character on CW’s soon-to-return Reign, her current namesake at the center of Netflix’s The Crown, and now the PBS/ITV VICTORIA.  The newest arrival is far classier than CW’s YA soap, but […]

  It’s been fascinating to watch AMERICAN GODS play out side-by-side with David Lynch’s rebooted Twin Peaks on the past several Sunday nights, because Bryan Fuller (who created the TV version of Gods with Michael Green from Neil Gaiman’s novel) may be this generation’s most overtly Lynchian TV artist.  Fuller and Lynch are both besotted […]