WATCHMEN:  Sunday 9PM on HBO The Damon Lindelof/HBO WATCHMEN provides a new wrinkle to the world of IP exploitation.  It’s not an adaptation of the classic Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel (a la Zack Snyder’s all-too-reverent 2009 film) or even a reboot, but a newly conceived work that’s more like a spin-off or a […]

  Before the final 2 weeks of its run, the word no one would ever have dreamed of attaching to TRUE BLOOD was “subdued”; it was the guilty pleasure HBO series that was loaded with sex and violence and got great ratings, but without the class of, say, Game of Thrones, and with no serious […]

  90210 has never been CW at its best.  The semi-network specializes almost exclusively in fantasies, either of the supernatural or soapy kind (or both), and some of its shows deliver those fantasies with wit and compelling storytelling–The Vampire Diaries and the early years of Gossip Girl, for example. 90210, though, has always a very […]

> Just how big a fan are you of RULES OF ENGAGEMENT?  If CBS dropped it off the top of the Empire State Building, would you jump after it?  Because that’s pretty much what they’ve done by (probably only temporarily) airing new episodes on Saturdays.  The rest of the night isn’t even worth mentioning… The […]

> Previously… on THE FIRM:  Mitch McDeere (Josh Lucas), having relocated with his family to the Canadian part of Washington DC, 10 years after the events in the book and movie, has associated his scrappy small practice with a new but equally evil big firm that’s particularly interested in him because of an accused murderer […]

> On Saturday night, HBO’s GAME CHANGE scored the network’s highest premiere rating for an original TV-movie in 8 years.  (As it always the case with HBO, the movie will be rebroadcast many times, as well as being available on HBO GO and other platforms.)  While there were certainly A list names associated with the […]

> 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 […]

THE NEWSROOM:  Sundays 10PM on HBO – DVR Alert We live in an era of TV auteurs.  Although there will always be networks and studios writing the checks–just ask Dan Harmon–it’s arguably the case that writer/producers like Matthew Weiner, Louis C.K., Kurt Sutter and Lena Dunham have more clout than all but a tiny handful […]