THE RED LINE:  Sunday 8PM on CBS CBS waited until the final few weeks of the regular broadcast season to do something very un-CBS:  over the next 4 Sundays, it will air all 8 hours of the limited series THE RED LINE, an earnest social drama produced by Ava DuVernay and Greg Berlanti about […]

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 otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

  After two seasons on the air, WILFRED remains the most confounding show on television–which presumably is just as its makers want it.  The season finale, written by the developer of the US version of the series, David Zuckerman (from a story by Zuckerman and Scott Prendergast) and directed by house director Randall Einhorn, had […]

  THE ORIGINALS has some recurring problems.  For one thing, since its antihero family the Mikaelsons are ageless supernaturals who emigrated to the US over the centuries, their foes–and even the family members who turn up from time to time, sometimes in new bodies–tend to be interchangeable Eurotrash.  It took effort this season to remember […]

  DA VINCI’S DEMONS:  Friday 9PM on Starz – If Nothing Else Is On… Starz has been searching for a signature original series it can call its own, especially now that Homeland has brought Showtime, arguably, into parity with HBO.  The Spartacus franchise was successful, but so heavy in sex and gore that it crossed […]

  9-1-1:  Wednesday 9PM on FOX – Surprisingly Unsurprising Saying that FOX’s 9-1-1 is the Ryan Murphy team’s version of a Dick Wolf procedural makes it sound far more subversive and original than it actually is.  In fact, for the most part its opening hour is virtually indistinguishable from one of the cogs in Wolf’s wheel […]

  GROUND FLOOR:  Thursday 10PM on TBS – If Nothing Else Is On… As cable networks have stolen more and more of the glory from broadcasters, with TV movies, miniseries, and quality 1-hour dramas now largely in their domain, one of the last bastions of broadcast domination is the mainstream sitcom.  (Niche comedies are a […]

  The limits of critical adoration are demonstrated by LOUIE.  Despite possibly terabytes of raves and features about Louis C.K.’s show in every corner of the media all season, the ratings, especially since Anger Management finished its run, have been terrible, and last night’s season finale was watched by fewer than 450,000 people in its […]