A guy–almost always a middle-aged white guy–walks out onto a stage and delivers a 10 or 15 minute stand-up routine about current events, to the cameras and a live audience of a few hundred people.  Then he sits behind a desk and for another 10 minutes or so, he does a pre-scripted (sometimes pre-taped) […]

  DA VINCI’S DEMONS:  Saturday 9PM on Starz In its second season, Starz’s DA VINCI’S DEMONS continues to be less fun than it seems like it should be.  The series concerns a “Leonardo Da Vinci” who’s about as historically accurate as “Matt LeBlanc” is on Episodes, an Indiana Jones-ish adventurer who’s hip-deep in mystical skullduggery […]

  PARENTHOOD doesn’t have the luxury that higher-rated long-running shows do of deciding its own fate, so tonight’s season finale, written by series creator Jason Katims and directed by Lawrence Trilling, could end up as the last we see of it–we may not know for another month, when the networks will announce their fall schedules.  […]

  After a so-so fall spent mostly in Neverland, ONCE UPON A TIME rebounded strongly with its midseason arc, which brought the Wicked Witch of the West (Rebecca Mader) to Storybrooke.  The plotline effectively continued the process of redemption for former Evil Queen Regina (Lana Parrilla) and Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) that had started in the […]

  The farther it gets from the historical person named Leonardo Da Vinci, the better Starz’s DA VINCI’S DEMONS tends to be as a series.  In its 2d season, it went very far–all the way to South America, in a completely fictional Indiana Jones-ish quest for the mystical and all-powerful “Book of Leaves,” not to […]

  DOMINION:  Thursday 9PM on Syfy Previously… on DOMINION:  Following on the events of the movie Legion, in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, an enclave of surviving humans are protected by the Archangel Michael (Tom Wisdom) from the evil angels, led by his brother Gabriel (Carl Beukes), who killed most of mankind–which they believe they did […]

  YOU’RE THE WORST:  Thursday 10:30PM on FX – Worth a Look YOU’RE THE WORST overplays its hand from the start, and its gooey center is all too visible beneath its hard-candy exterior, but it’s still far more enjoyable than Married, its companion comedy on FX.  Series creator Stephen Falk’s concept (he’s a longtime associate […]

  OUTLANDER:  Saturday 9PM on Starz Previously… on OUTLANDER:  Claire Randall (Caltriona Balfe) is, shortly after the end of World War II, a former Army nurse vacationing in Scotland with her ex-Intelligence Officer historian husband Frank (Tobias Menzies)–until she drops out of time and finds herself living in 1743, among the Scottish rebels against the […]