TABOO:  Tuesday 10PM on FX – Potential DVR Alert It may be that Tom Hardy will join Clive Owen and Michael Fassbinder among British leading men who never quite became the global superstars they seemed meant to be.  With Owen and Fassbinder, there’s a certainly coldness to them that makes them perfectly cast in […]

  HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER:  Thursday 10PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert PLAYERS:  Executive Producer Shonda Rhimes–and you can repeat that name several more times without overstating her importance.  The actual series creator, Peter Nowalk (a Scandal/Grey’s Anatomy alumnus).  A cast headed by the estimable Viola Davis, and with an assortment of […]

  MALIBU COUNTRY: Friday 8:30PM starting November 2 on ABC – Worth A Look Disclaimer: Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall. Pilots are often reedited and re-scored, and in some cases even recast or reshot. These critiques shouldn’t be taken as full pilot reviews, […]

  MR. SELFRIDGE:  Sunday 9PM on PBS MR. SELFRIDGE, the solace for PBS viewers between editions of Downton Abbey, has returned for its second season.  It lacks the dramatic urgency of Downton and is altogether a more conventional piece of work–it’s literally a show that, set in 1914, climaxes its opening hour by having someone […]

  BEYOND:  Monday 9PM on Freeform (Preview Tonight at 9PM), also available on VOD/streaming – Change the Channel Add BEYOND to the growing pile of genre shows that have failed at Freeform since Pretty Little Liars became the network’s signature series, joining Guilty, Twisted and Dead of Summer.  (Shadowhunters returns on Monday but with new […]

  Although it regrouped somewhat in its last few episodes, Season 7 of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES was mostly an awkward and ungainly one.  Some readjustment was foreseeable after leading lady Nina Dobrev decided not to return, but by the end of Season 6, series co-creator Julie Plec and showrunner Caroline Dries seemed to have a […]

  DARK MATTER:  Friday 10PM on Syfy – Change the Channel You can easily imagine the first episode of Syfy’s new DARK MATTER as being the pitch that sold the series, and it also sounds like the start of a joke:  6 people and an android wake up on a spaceship…  (In fact, the show […]

  BILLIONS:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime The second season of Showtime’s financial intrigue soap BILLIONS isn’t in a tremendous hurry to get started.  The story picks up a few weeks after the Season 1 finale, enough time for billionaire Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis) to fix up the offices he’d ripped apart after US Attorney Chuck […]