Although Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin are still present to provide a continuing center of gravity, the HOMELAND that concluded its sixth season tonight is almost unrecognizable from the one that premiered in 2011.  That series was a dazzling mix of doomed romance and psychological spy thriller, about a bipolar CIA agent who couldn’t […]

  The existence of the strikingly similar (in premise) Stitchers provides some perspective on the imagination and skill that’s gone into IZOMBIE.  Both shows involve young women who temporarily enter the minds of the recently dead to solve their murders, but iZombie is put together with consistent wit, intelligence and a strong sense of character. […]

  When FX’s ATLANTA began its 2nd season at the beginning of March, it seemed like a big enough deal to note that with the departures of Louis C.K. and Ryan Murphy (for very different reasons), Atlanta‘s creator Donald Glover had ascended to being the emblematic creative face of the network.  But now, a bit […]

  THE AFFAIR:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime THE AFFAIR was one of last year’s most confounding shows.  It was at once carefully observed and gimmicky, precise and willfully vague, compulsively watchable and annoying. The problem wasn’t so much the show’s format of telling its overlapping events repeatedly, from the often conflicting perspectives of adulterous Noah […]

  MASTERS OF SEX:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Turning the lives of sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson into a continuing series was an audacious idea from the start, and Season 2 of MASTERS OF SEX proved a challenging one, less focused and compelling than the first season had been.  Tonight’s first episode of […]

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

  Aided by a compatible WWE Smackdown lead-in and a red state-friendly storyline, SHOOTER has been a sturdy performer for USA, already renewed for a second summer season.  The series is low-ambition compared to USA’s Mr Robot or even Suits or Colony (or the awful Falling Water, for that matter), but series creator John Hlavin […]

  As the respect and stature given to TV drama has increased, so has the pressure to deliver a perfect ending.  Series finales are not only expected to satisfyingly end the major storylines and round out the lives of the show’s characters, but to sum up and clarify the themes and overall mission of the […]