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 […]

  ROADIES:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime – In the Queue Showtime’s ROADIES is the first small-screen project from Cameron Crowe (he wrote and directed the pilot, and is showrunner with My So Called-Life‘s Winnie Holzman), and it’s very much a distillation of everything that makes his filmmaking exhilarating and frustrating.  There’s the wholehearted affection he […]

  NOTORIOUS:  Thursday 9PM on ABC – Change the Channel Any viewer apt to complain about the over-the-top melodrama of Scandal should be forced to watch the pilot for Notorious, a supposed “drama” so consistently idiotic that it’s closer in tone to the self-mocking theatrics of Jane the Virgin.  As it happens, Notorious is filling […]

  TRIAL & ERROR:  Tuesday 9PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… NBC’s TRIAL & ERROR is a cluttered joke-book of a sitcom that parodies true-crime docuseries like Making A Murderer and especially The Staircase.  As in the latter, the accused murderer, here named Larry Henderson (John Lithgow), is a figure of some […]

  I’M DYING UP HERE:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime – If Nothing Else Is On… A stand-up comic’s set, especially if the comic is a newcomer, has to make its mark immediately if the audience’s attention isn’t going to wander.  That’s a lesson that Showtime’s new dramedy series about 1970s stand-ups I’M DYING UP HERE […]