> After a full season, it’s still not clear just what HOUSE OF LIES is. The season finale, written and directed by series creator Matthew Carnahan, centered on what became the show’s main storyline in the latter part of its run:  the attempted takeover of the management consulting firm that employs Marty Kaan (Don Cheadle) […]

  THE MESSENGERS:  Friday 9PM on CW – Change the Channel CW wasn’t in any rush to get THE MESSENGERS on its air, holding it until the last month of the broadcast season, and then putting the show in the lowest-visibility slot on its schedule, the Friday 9PM hour.  The series, created by Eoghan O’Donnell […]

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content of the […]

  BARRY:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – Potential DVR Alert The buzz is that HBO’s BARRY is a series that changes quite a bit from its pilot, so we’ll keep this short and return to the series later in its 8-episode run.  Co-created by star Bill Hader (who also directed the opening three episodes) and […]

  House of Cards Season 2 Eps 1-3 Review Here. A 13-hour season may be a bit too much free rein for HOUSE OF CARDS US series creator Beau Willimon, who is enthralled by the intricately devious strategems of politics, but lacks Aaron Sorkin’s genius for condensing them into bite-sized, easily comprehensible capsules.  So the […]

  With the exception of those shows that don’t know they’re about to be canceled, rarely has a long-running series come to less of a conclusion than tonight’s last episode of THE CLOSER.  And with good reason, of course–the episode was less an ending than a brief interruption, with the spin-off Major Crimes literally premiering […]

  In a way, COVERT AFFAIRS typifies the uncertain place where USA Network finds itself these days.  The series began in 2010 as one of USA’s mostly light-hearted “blue-sky” procedurals.  It centered around young, naive language expert Annie Walker (Piper Perabo), who was literally seduced into joining the CIA on a beach vacation, and who […]

  MAJOR CRIMES:  Monday 9PM on TNT MAJOR CRIMES isn’t the kind of series to go for “game-changing” alterations, so the back half (actually 8 episodes) of its second season, which resumed tonight after a break since August, is only incrementally different from what aired last summer.  The show is a straightforward procedural for the […]