MAJOR CRIMES:  Monday 9PM on TNT   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, […]

  STATE OF AFFAIRS:  Monday 10PM on NBC Previously… on STATE OF AFFAIRS:  Charleston–call her Charlie–Tucker (Katherine Heigl) is the CIA analyst whose task it is to put together the President’s Daily Briefing book that gives POTUS Constance Payton (Alfre Woodard) her rundown on the immediate foreign threats affecting the US.  Charlie and the President […]

          GO ON:  TUESDAYS 9PM ON NBC   WHAT IT’S SAYING:  Chandler Bing… um, Matthew Perry is back!  Still sarcastically quipping to hide his deeper feelings after all these years.   WHAT IT’S REALLY SAYING:  Also back:  Dear John.  With a dash of a (less bizarre) Community, as the oddball grief […]

  GOTHAM did a better job of navigating its clog of characters in its second season.  Bruno Heller’s mash-up of Batman origin story, the Dark Knight trilogy, 1930s-style cop drama, and all-around comic book freak-show still had at least one plotline too many–truthfully, no one would miss its Riddler, Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith), if […]

  The network is preserving its contractual rights, but the signs are rife that tonight’s HART OF DIXIE was the last we’ll see of the series.  After being banished to Fridays, it was held for midseason, then left off CW’s extensive list of early renewals; star Rachel Bilson has made it clear that she wants […]

  BLACK-ISH:  Wednesday 9:30PM on ABC Previously… on BLACK-ISH:  Dre Anderson is a successful ad agency executive who lives well with his lovely anesthesiologist wife Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross), teen children Junior (Marcus Scribner) and Zoey (Yara Shahidi), younger twins Jack (Miles Brown) and Diane (Marsai Martin), and moderately cantankerous Pops (Laurence Fishburne).  Dre’s one […]

  There was hardly a toy in the filmmaking nursery that Legion and its hugely talented creator Noah Hawley left unplayed by the time its third and final season was over:  aspect ratios, color, camera angles, musical numbers, stop-motion, slow-motion, miniatures, repetitions, multiple exposures, stylized sets–everything short of 3D Imax.  And like many a child […]

  THE ROYALS:  Sunday 10PM on E! Previously… on THE ROYALS:  The (fictional) British monarchy is a mess.  The Prince of Wales has died in mysterious circumstances, and the next in line to the crown is now his brother Prince Liam (William Moseley), who’s falling for Ophelia (Merritt Patterson), the raised-in-America commoner daughter of the […]