GOD FRIENDED ME:  Sunday 8PM on CBS It’s not hard to figure out the target demographic for CBS’s GOD FRIENDED ME.  The Steven Lilien/Bryan Wynbrandt series appears to have been custom-stitched for those viewers who would have loved ABC’s Kevin (Probably) Saves the World if only it had been a little bit more urban.  […]

  After almost 4 decades (!) on the air, it’s a little silly to describe any given SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE episode, or even season, as “critical” or “vital.”  Nevertheless, this is a big transition year for the show, with such veterans as Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis and Fred Armisen (on top of Kristin Wiig the […]

  In its second season, Courtney Kemp Agboh’s POWER solidified its position as Starz’s biggest original hit, and it was a considerably better drama, too.  Partly that was because of Season 1’s weird structure, which played as 8 hours of prologue because the show’s two protagonists, drug trafficker Jamie “Ghost” St. Patrick (Omari Hardwick) and […]

  NBC is all-in on CHICAGO FIRE.  Not only has it given the show a plum spot for the fall on Tuesdays with The Voice as its lead-in, it’s ordered a police-oriented spin-off for midseason.  All this enthusiasm is a little puzzling, giving that the show has been only a marginal success (its season average […]

> THE FIRM:  Thursdays 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel THE FIRM isn’t NBC’s #1 priority for midseason–that would clearly be Smash.  (In other news, there’s no truth to the rumor that NBC has decided to change its corporate name to “Smash–The Monday After the Super Bowl”.)  But The Firm is the inheritor of […]

  THE JIM GAFFIGAN SHOW:  Wednesday 10PM on TV Land (and Nick At Nite) Previously… on THE JIM GAFFIGAN SHOW:  Stand-up comic Jim (Jim Gaffigan) lives with wife Jeannie (Ashley Williams) and their 5 children in a crowded NY apartment–all elements to be found in Gaffigan’s stand-up act and comic memoirs.  Her best friend is […]

  DATES:  Thursday 9PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… CW is barely promoting its run of the 2013 British series DATES, which the network is using (presumably for a negligible fee) to fill a few hours of its summer schedule.  It’s an oddity, the kind of show you might expect to find […]

  TRAINING DAY:  Thursday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel If the idea that CBS, of all networks, could turn the dark, ruthless police drama TRAINING DAY into a TV series seemed counterintuitive–well, they haven’t.  There’s a show with that title on the network schedule, and the general outlines of the character dynamic and […]