The idea of a changed format turned out to be something of a pretense:  until the last 10 minutes of the final episode, which jumped forward half a day, 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY could more accurately have been called 12.  But the need to fill only half as many hours was a tonic for […]

  SLEEPY HOLLOW:  Monday 9PM on FOX SLEEPY HOLLOW turned out to be the best news FOX would get all of last season.  Although the show’s ratings dropped somewhat from their initially remarkable heights during its 13-episode run, it remained just about the only show on FOX’s air (other than its aging animated monuments) that […]

  SURVIVOR’S REMORSE:  Saturday 9PM on Starz Previously… on SURVIVOR’S REMORSE:  When basketball phenom Cam Calloway (Jessie T. Usher) signs his first giant free agency contract and moves to Atlanta, he takes his family entourage with him:  cousin Reggie (RonReaco Lee), sister M-Chuck (Erica Ash), mother Cassie (Tichina Arnold), and uncle Julius (Mike Epps), along […]

  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 […]