GRACEPOINT:  Thursday 9PM on FOX Previously… on GRACEPOINT:  In the small seaside town of Gracepoint, in the western US (as opposed to the small seaside town of Broadchurch in the UK, where the BBC version of the same story took place), the body of 12-year old Danny Solano has been found on the beach […]

  Tonight’s PETER PAN LIVE proved that NBC, and producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, had learned some valuable lessons from last year’s successful but often painful production of The Sound of Music.  Chief among them was that it’s a better idea to anchor your show with an actress who can sing (and sing showtunes) […]

  The braintrust behind AMERICAN HORROR STORY, headed by series creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, seemed to think their work was done when they came up with the FREAK SHOW subtitle for this season.  Despite the limitless psychopaths on hand and the abundant graphic violence, this was by far the least frightening of Horror […]

  AMERICAN CRIME:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Previously… on AMERICAN CRIME:  In Modesto, California, former serviceman Matt Skokie was murdered in his home, and his wife Gwen was viciously injured in the attack.  The lives of a number of people are deeply affected by the crime, including Matt’s miserably divorced parents Russ (Timothy Hutton) and […]

  TATAU:  Saturday 10PM on BBCAmerica BBCAmerica only has two showcase slots to launch new series, those being the hours after Dr. Who and Orphan Black, so with plenty of time to prepare for the return of the latter, it’s difficult to understand how the network ended up handing the space over to TATAU, a […]

  Movies have the advantage over TV when it comes to telling gimmicky stories, because a movie only has to sustain the gimmick for 2 hours, and then it’s done.  YOUNGER could have been an effortless feature vehicle for [fill in the rom-com star blank], but after 12 half-hour episodes, the effort is already showing […]

  THE CARMICHAEL SHOW:  Wednesday 9PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… THE CARMICHAEL SHOW is the latest sitcom to be aired by NBC with a stealth run that suggests one of the network’s programming executives looked at another recently and asked “Do you even remember why we ordered this thing?” and got […]

  At what point does unconventional storytelling become perversity for its own sake, a collection of curlicued narratives that operate like the showrunner version of The Emperor’s New Clothes?  It’s a question that came up often in connection with Damon Lindelof’s Lost, especially toward the end of its ultimately frustrating run, and even though THE […]