It took some down-to-the-wire negotiations between ABC and production studio Lionsgate, but NASHVILLE made its way to a Season 3 renewal this week.  (And barring further ratings collapse, that makes a Season 4 more likely than not, since ABC would share in the increased revenues from syndication that would follow a 4-season run.)  It […]

  THE NIGHT SHIFT:  Tuesday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel It’s as though NBC and series creators Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs (they were among the showrunners of the 90210 reboot, and wrote the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie) deliberately set out to make the least distinctive series possible with THE NIGHT […]

  REVENGE, in its second season, demonstrates the perils of stretching a good thing too far.  (Also being stretched:  ABC’s concept of a “fall finale,” since unlike shows like Revolution and The Walking Dead that won’t be returning until February or March, Revenge will be back after the holidays.) Revenge started with a premise that […]

  GRAND HOTEL:  Monday 10PM on ABC ABC’s cardboard summer soap GRAND HOTEL is set at a resort hotel in Miami that isn’t as much fun as the one in Jane the Virgin.  This one has a standard-issue set of crises:  the hotel is bankrupt, its owner Santiago Mendoza (Demian Bichir) in debt to shady […]

  An odd thing happened to NASHVILLE in its 5th season, as it shifted networks to CMT and showrunners to Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick.  When series creator Callie Khouri and original showrunner Dee Johnson were in charge, Nashville had revolved around three women:  country music superstar Rayna Jaymes (Connie Britton), glitzy troublemaker Juliette Barnes […]

  TAXI BROOKLYN:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel NBC’s summer action comedy TAXI BROOKLYN has a remarkably full history for such a negligible project.  It started as a French movie hit in 1998, written and produced by Luc Besson, who’s now much better known here as the mastermind behind a slew of […]

  Despite the declining fortunes of network TV, it was a good season for newly-launched dramas, with big hits emerging for FOX in Empire, ABC in How to Get Away With Murder, and CW in THE FLASH.  The latter isn’t just one of its network’s highest-rated shows ever, but remarkably has outrated series in its […]

  WITCHES OF EAST END:  Sunday 9PM on Lifetime The marketing campaign for Season 2 of WITCHES OF EAST END has been working hard to create the impression of a darker, edgier show this time around.  Apart from the odd decision to shoot most of the season premiere in semi-darkness, though, the series appears to […]