THE ORIGINALS and its creator/showrunner Julie Plec have been fearless about plunging viewers of the New Orleans-set supernatural soap into a veritable bayou of mythology.  We’re half a season in, and already swamped by vampires, werewolves, vampire/werewolf hybrids, an impossible unborn hybrid baby, a teen super-witch, an assortment of garden-variety witches, and the occasional […]

  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 […]

  This week marked the end of the road for two of TV’s most distinctive, original takes on the romantic-comedy genre.  FXX’s You’re the Worst and CW’s CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND were both “cult hits,” which is to say that they survived low ratings for multiple seasons (5 for Worst, 4 for Girlfriend) thanks to critical praise […]

  ROGUE:  Wednesday 9PM on Audience Network (DirecTV only) 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 […]

  BACK IN THE GAME:  Wednesday 8:30PM on ABC Previously… on BACK IN THE GAME:  Newly divorced Terry Gannon, Jr (Maggie Lawson), with her son Danny (Griffin Gluck), has little choice but to move back home with her father Terry Sr, better known as “The Cannon” (James Caan).  The Cannon was a baseball player and […]

  ROSEANNE:  Tuesday 8PM on ABC – In the Queue Television continues its remembrance of things past with ABC’s reboot of ROSEANNE, which last aired a new episode in 1997.  Like NBC’s Will & Grace, this Roseanne is a skillful resuscitation that features the original cast (although in this case, not the original writing staff), […]

  KILLJOYS is, along with Dark Matter, one of the ultra-cheap scripted pieces that Syfy runs on Friday nights.  (Defiance, which airs with them, is a somewhat more ambitious enterprise.)  The grubby aesthetics of the two Canadian imports are so similar that it’s no surprise there’s been talk about a crossover between their universes–assuming both are […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots For those who like Six Degrees of Separation-ish linkages:  the protagonist of ABC’s busted pilot GRACE is Michael Grace, an aging, womanizing choreographer who bears some resemblance to Bob Fosse–or at least to Joe Gideon, the center of Fosse’s semiautographical All That Jazz.  The actor playing Grace is […]