THE BLACKLIST:  Monday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… NBC has made it very clear that its top fall priority is the launch of the new Monday drama THE BLACKLIST.  The show has been given the network’s plum post-The Voice slot, and clearly, NBC sees the series as a more consistent […]

  After an absence of more than 7 years, in many ways the early episodes of the new, Netflix-produced 4th season of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT feel like the show never left.  (In fact, it would be unwise to tackle Season 4 without at least a working knowledge of what preceded it.)  The familiar stylistic quirks are […]

  POWER:  Sunday 9PM on Starz Although Starz has embraced the classy Outlander as the face of its original programming, recently giving it a 2-season renewal, the network’s bread and butter is Courtney A. Kemp’s  hip-hop crime saga POWER, which is by far its highest-rated original.  This season, Starz is using the 3rd stanza of […]

  GRACELAND:  Wednesday 10PM on USA GRACELAND is USA’s attempt to meld its jokey procedural sensibility (and that of series creator Jeff Eastin, who previously created White Collar for the network) to the kind of hipper, darker crime dramas that distinguish other cable networks.  The title refers to a seized drug dealer’s beachside house in […]

  As tonight’s series finale of THE NEWSROOM served to remind us, Aaron Sorkin isn’t one to shy away from sentiment, and one would like to think that on some level he was touched by how many of us celebrated the news that his series was going to return for a delayed third season.  Even […]

  WILFRED:  Wednesday 10PM on FXX WILFRED, that metaphysical, existential compendium of stoner, fart and dick jokes, is going for its last walk, relocated to the FXX network for a shortened 4th and final season.  The producers claim that fundamental questions will be answered about the show’s central mysteries:  the nature of Wilfred’s (Jason Gann, […]

  A recurring storyline in FX’s TRUST tracked the obsession of J. Paul Getty (Donald Sutherland) with the sumptuous Los Angeles museum that would bear his name, which was ultimately revealed to be a gigantic monument to its own pointlessness.  Series creator Simon Beaufoy couldn’t have intended that as a mirror to his own show, […]

  HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  Tuesday 10PM on AMC HALT AND CATCH FIRE is AMC’s charity project; every episode could bear a credit saying “This series is brought to you thanks to the generosity of The Walking Dead.”  That show’s mega-success has allowed AMC to indulge itself with a drama that has only gone downward […]