KEVIN CAN WAIT:  Monday 8:30PM on CBS (thru 10/17, then 8PM) – Change the Channel Sometimes when a TV star returns to the tube, it’s to try something excitingly different.  Think of Rob Lowe’s second career as a comic actor, or Kyle Chandler’s move from the heroic coach of Friday Night Lights to the […]

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 otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

  THE GREAT INDOORS:  Thursday 8:30PM on CBS – Change the Channel Fall TV has a mystery even greater than exactly what’s going on at Westworld:  Joel McHale’s presence in the cardboard CBS sitcom THE GREAT INDOORS.  It’s one thing when multi-camera veterans from the 1990s like Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and Kevin James come […]

> Even diminished from the powerhouse it once was, GREY’S ANATOMY is the foundation of ABC’s drama schedule, and its return to the air after a nearly 2 month absence should lift the network’s Thursday considerably. WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  Things were grim when we last visited Seattle Grace.  Cristina (Sandra Oh) had, unknowingly, operated […]

  Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and re-scored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  These critiques shouldn’t be taken as full pilot reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content of the […]

  Many remarkable things have happened in the world of television over the past few years, but none may be odder than the fact that a story about the 16th century Mary, Queen of Scots ran on network TV for four seasons.  Even more, while REIGN initially squeezed into the CW demographic by concentrating on […]

  AMERICAN GODS:  Sunday 9PM on Starz – Potential DVR Alert It seems only fair to note upfront, upon the arrival of Bryan Fuller’s new Starz series AMERICAN GODS (created with Michael Green, and based on the novel by Neil Gaiman) that I was not among the congregation that worshiped Fuller’s Hannibal.  I admired the […]

  THE SLAP:  Thursday 8PM on NBC Previously… on THE SLAP:  A group of friends and relatives gathered for the 40th birthday party of mid-level NY public official Hector (Peter Sarsgaard), and tensions ran high, between Hector (who’s in the midst of a mid-life crisis) and his wife Aisha (Thandie Newton), between Aisha and Hector’s mother […]