TNT has been burning through its old-line series like Major Crimes and The Librarians two episodes at a time in recent weeks, seemingly in a frenzy to get rid of them.  The network has put its muscle behind darker, more serialized and adult dramas, with mixed results:  Animal Kingdom and Claws are hits, while […]

ONE BIG HAPPY:  Tuesday 9:30PM on NBC Previously… on ONE BIG HAPPY:  Luke (Nick Zano) and lesbian best buddy Lizzy (Elisha Cuthbert) have followed through on their vow to try and have a baby together if neither is with anyone else by age 30.  But the timing is off:  Lizzy finds out she’s pregnant just […]

  While not as loudly buzzy as Girls, SILICON VALLEY has been far more popular, indeed HBO’s highest-performing new comedy in quite a while (the fact that it follows the massive Game of Thrones on the network’s line-up hasn’t hurt, of course). Unlike a lot of comedies, both network and cable, that need some time […]

  The biters and the Governor took their toll on the humans who remained in Season 3 of THE WALKING DEAD, but the show’s potentially most damaging casualty may have been at AMC’s own hand, when it decided to get rid of showrunner Glen Mazzara, for reasons neither side has disclosed or–remarkably–even leaked.  His season […]

  THE GRINDER:  Tuesday 8:30PM on FOX – If Nothing Else Is On… THE GRINDER has something no other network sitcom this fall can claim:  an original, promising premise.  (It’s the execution that needs some work.)  Jared Paul and Andrew Mogel’s comedy gives us Dean Sanderson, Jr (Rob Lowe), longtime star of the primetime courtroom series […]

  LEGION:  Tuesday 10PM on FX The first season of Noah Hawley’s LEGION was enthralling, and a bit of a disappointment.  Hawley’s adult off-shoot of the X-Man franchise toyed with narrative structure, temporal and spatial displacement, and extravagant shifts in tone, until it seemed like Hawley might blow up the entire superhero genre.  Instead, it […]

  The first season of THE ORIGINALS has been entertaining, if a bit more sprawling than it needed to be.  A good season finale makes up for a lot, and tonight’s climactic hour, written by Co-Executive Producer Diane Ademu-John and directed by Matt Hastings, did a very satisfying job of resolving the season’s major storyline […]

  HOSTAGES:  Monday 10PM on CBS Previously… on HOSTAGES:  Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette) is a surgeon scheduled to operate on the President of the United States (James Naughton).  The night before the surgery, her home is invaded by a group that threatens to murder her family–husband Brian (Tate Donovan), daughter Morgan (Quinn Shephard) and son […]