JUSTIFIED:  Tuesday 10PM on FX JUSTIFIED is pure dark pleasure to watch.  Other cable series are more thematically or structurally ambitious (which is why Justified is unfairly ignored at awards time), but Graham Yost’s series, taking its cue from the late Elmore Leonard’s original prose, is utterly assured in its command not just of plotting […]

  A TO Z:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC Previously… on A TO Z:  Dating website marketer Andrew (Ben Feldman) and lawyer Zelda (Cristin Milioti) have had their meet-cute, they’ve discovered that the office windows in their adjacent buildings overlook one another, so they can signal each other during their work-days, and now they’ve embarked on […]

> But first–a nod to the sly marketing department at AMC, which cleverly lampooned its own predicament of trying to persuade at least some of the hordes of WALKING DEAD fans to stay tuned to the network next week for a very different show.  The result was a pair of lighthearted promos for Mad Men […]

  THE MYSTERIES OF LAURA:  Wednesday 8PM on NBC starting September 24 (premieres 10PM on September 17) – Change the Channel PLAYERS:  Star Debra Messing, and central co-stars Josh Lucas and Laz Alonso.  The Spanish TV series on which it’s based.  US series creator Jeff Rake, who’s worked on an assortment of shows over the past decade […]

  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), […]

  As hard as it is to create a compelling, successful television series, it’s much harder to keep one going year after year, after cast changes and writer changes and timeslot changes and network management changes and all the other events that make a showrunner’s life a nonstop ulcer.  (Revenge, for one, barely managed to […]

> A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and 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 in the off-season) give plenty of notes, both helpful and otherwise, and […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots Not even the presence of Michael Chiklis and Elizabeth Perkins could make VINCE UNCENSORED endurable.   Deservedly consigned by CBS to its trash-bin, this isn’t one of those pilots you’ll be likely to hear about again.  The storyline of Vince Uncensored uses a contrivance to get to an […]