FX’s just-concluded third season of Noah Hawley’s FARGO was its most divisive, and the criticisms came from a number of directions.  One segment was simply done with Hawley’s theme-and variations approach to the Coen Brothers’ original film, in which each season tells a new story, but one that always features a disruptive representative of […]

  The final season of AMC’s HELL ON WHEELS was a sprawl, made worse by the network’s decision to play the season in two chunks separated by a year.  This last stretch of 7 episodes was particularly choppy.  One hour was a virtual two-hander for hero Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount) and arch-foe The Swede (Christopher […]

  MINORITY REPORT:  Monday 9PM on FOX – If Nothing Else Is On… It’s not unusual for a sci-fi/fantasy or action-adventure pilot to boast a far more generous budget than the amount allotted to ordinary series episodes, sometimes double or more.  So the high-tech production design and snazzy special effects of FOX’s MINORITY REPORT pilot, […]

  JUSTIFIED:  Tuesday 10PM on FX Final seasons, as we all know, can be tricky, but JUSTIFIED seems to be in strong shape as it enters its last lap.   Justified lost a bit of its mojo last year, the victim of some inadequate villains and scattered plotting (the whole Mexican druglord subplot seemed to come […]

  IN THE DARK:  Thursday 9PM on CW The protagonist of CW’s new drama IN THE DARK is blind, but the show wants it to be very clear that Murphy (Perry Mattfeld) isn’t TV’s typical high-functioning disabled role model.  Murphy is disaffected, sarcastic and often downright rude (she’s even dismissive to her adorable guide dog, […]

  What kind of show, in the end, is HOMELAND?  Focus groups are often asked simply to describe whatever it is they’ve just seen, and Homeland has tried to be a romance, a thriller, an action adventure, a story about politics and terrorism, a psychological drama, and more–all at once.  That it’s succeeded much of […]

  DECEPTION:  Monday 10PM on NBC 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 […]

  Considering what a deeply strange series WILFRED was–even for the wilds, eventually, of FXX–tonight’s series finale provided a surprising amount of closure.  The more-or-less comedy began as a raunchy riff on “man’s best friend” stories about guys and their dogs, based on an Australian format and starring Jason Gann, who’d co-created and starred in […]