Back in 2000, the rapid-fire fizzy dialogue of Gilmore Girls prompted some to spread an utterly unfounded rumor that Amy Sherman-Palladino, its creator and chief writer, didn’t actually exist, and that Girls was really being written by Aaron Sorkin.  This was wrong in every possible way, of course, including the fact that Sorkin was […]

  The Ewing family had to figure out how to muddle through this season after the loss of its most illustrious and colorful member, and so did the TV show that created them all.  DALLAS survived the death of Larry Hagman, and the consequent passing of J.R. Ewing, with ratings that stayed fairly steady in […]

  HANNIBAL:  Thursday 10PM on NBC A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover) give plenty of notes, helpful and […]

  KILLING EVE:  Sunday 8PM on BBCAmerica – DVR Alert Transposing an artistic concern to a familiar pop culture genre can make the artist’s work much more accessible.  When John Krasinski made The Hollars, a sensitive story about a strained family, no one bought any tickets, but when he added monsters to the mix, the […]

  TREME thrives on its idiosyncracies–if “thrive” is the word for a show that hardly anyone watches–and one of those is its limited interest in engaging in a “season finale.”  Thus, tonight’s close of Season 3, written by series creators David Simon and Eric Overmeyer (from a story by Simon and Anthony Bourdain–yes, that one) […]

  One of the ways the emergence of Netflix as an important programming platform has changed the way we regard “television” is in its obliteration of the concept of a series “season” as something that takes place over an extended time.  When Netflix releases a full batch of episodes all at once, it’s more akin […]

  PERCEPTION:  Monday 10PM on TNT A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover) give plenty of notes, helpful and […]

  TURN: WASHINGTON’S SPIES:  Monday 10PM on AMC After its initial season concluded, the reruns of AMC’s Revolutionary War drama TURN acquired the subtitle WASHINGTON’S SPIES, presumably in recognition of the fact that the original title conveyed absolutely nothing about what the show was about.  There was the hope that this signaled a Season 2 […]