EUREKA, while never a breakout hit, was a sturdy performer for 5 years on Syfy–and one of the increasingly small number of shows on its air that was actually science-fiction, as opposed to superhero fantasy, horror, reality, paranormal thriller, or whatever else the network is trying to use to broaden its brand (while actually […]

  GLEE:  Thursday 9PM on FOX It was announced a while back that GLEE will wait until its third episode, after its previously planned 2-part salute to The Beatles, to deal with the passing of Cory Monteith and the absence of his character Finn.  Nevertheless, it was hard not to feel as though Lea Michele’s […]

  Despite an underwhelming season finale that favored sentiment over action until the closing seconds, THE LAST SHIP had a fairly smooth second voyage.  (The show, one of TNT’s highest-rated originals, has already been renewed for Season 3.)  Season 1 had ended, somewhat surprisingly, with the discovery of a cure for the virus that had […]

  SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE went musical in a big way for its host, Anna Kendrick, and that mostly wasn’t a bad thing.  Kendrick is a genuine musical-comedy performer, with not just the novelty hit “Cups” from Pitch Perfect to her credit but a lead in the upcoming film of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods on […]

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 […]

  BLACK MONDAY:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Showtime and Don Cheadle didn’t look far afield for their follow-up after 5 seasons of the network’s House of Lies.  In that series, Cheadle played a fast-talking, rule-breaking business consultant whiz, while in the new BLACK MONDAY… he plays a fast-talking, rule-breaking Wall Street whiz.  (For its part, […]

  SILICON VALLEY:  Sunday 10PM on HBO Previously… on SILICON VALLEY:  Richard Hendrix (Thomas Middleditch) is a computer programmer with dreams of inventing the next big billion-dollar thing–and he may have actually done it, with an algorithm that allows for compression and duplication of video, music, etc without loss of quality.  Offered $10M for his […]

  DEVIOUS MAIDS:  Sunday 10PM on Lifetime Previously… on DEVIOUS MAIDS:  A quintet of maids toil for the vapid, selfish, and sometimes downright evil well-to-do of Beverly Hills.  Carmen (Roselyn Sanchez) hopes contact with her music-star boss will jump-start her own singing career.  Zoila (Judy Reyes) is trying to keep her daughter Valentina (Edy Ganem) […]