As zombie shows go, Z NATION exists very far in the shadow of The Walking Dead in every way, from ratings to quality.  And yet Syfy’s good-humored rip-off can be seen as the show Walking Dead fans sometimes wish that blockbuster would be:  pulpier, faster and more singlemindedly splatterific, with little interest in existential […]

  BACKSTROM:  Thursday 9PM on FOX – Change the Channel BACKSTROM is literally FOX’s try at being CBS:  the project, based on a series of Swedish mystery novels, was originally developed for the silver-haired network and a pilot was ordered, but CBS ultimately passed.  FOX’s in-house studio was the show’s production company, and its creator is […]

  Everyone in Banshee, Pennsylvania is a tortured soul, from its Mayor to its police officers to its waitresses and teens.  That’s what gives BANSHEE a weight that goes beyond its sheer awesomeness as an action series–although make no mistake, it so consistently hits so high a bar in its set-piece sequences that there’s nothing […]

  ORPHAN BLACK:  Saturday 9PM on BBCAmerica In the first season of ORPHAN BLACK, it was more than enough that the series introduced us to the incredible Tatiana Maslany, a previously almost unknown actress who delivered a jaw-dropping series of performances as clones who each had separate backgrounds and personalities (from suburban soccer mom to […]

  STITCHERS:  Tuesday 9PM on ABCFamily Previously… on STITCHERS:  Graduate student and science whiz Kirsten (Emma Ishta) has “temporal dysplasia,” a (fictional) condition in which she doesn’t experience the passage of time.  Somehow this has given her a robotic personality, but for unexplained reasons it also makes her the perfect candidate for the government’s Stitchers […]

  DATES:  Thursday 9PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… CW is barely promoting its run of the 2013 British series DATES, which the network is using (presumably for a negligible fee) to fill a few hours of its summer schedule.  It’s an oddity, the kind of show you might expect to find […]

  RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime When a car crashes into a Los Angeles wall in the Season 4 premiere of Showtime’s sizable if somewhat inexplicable hit RAY DONOVAN, it doesn’t just crash into a wall:  it crashes directly into a giant mural of the Virgin Mary.  That’s the way Ray Donovan rolls, its […]

  VAN HELSING:  Friday 10PM on Syfy – Change the Channel The playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute has dabbled in genre before, although he may prefer not to be reminded of his disastrous remake of The Wicker Man.  Still, it’s odd to see him as the creator of Syfy’s postapocalyptic vampire saga VAN HELSING.  It […]