SECRETS & LIES – Sunday 9PM on ABC – Change the Channel Everything about the return of ABC’s SECRETS & LIES feels a bit off.  Even the scheduling of the quasi-anthology series (different stories and characters, except for the connecting presence of Juliette Lewis as stern lead detective Andrea Cornell) is odd–the series took […]

  THE EXORCIST:  Friday 9PM on FOX – Potential DVR Alert Like Noah Hawley’s ongoing take on Fargo, the new FOX version of THE EXORCIST, created for television by Jeremy Slater (one of the unhappy group credited for the script of last year’s awful Fantastic Four reboot) wisely uses the underlying material as inspiration for […]

  MACGYVER:  Friday 8PM on CBS – Change the Channel CBS’s reboot of the 30-year old MACGYVER was the fall’s problem child.  After picking up the series, the network didn’t just dump the original pilot, it fired the showrunner and most of the cast, virtually starting from scratch.  (The original showrunner, Paul Downs Colaizzo, retains […]

  VAN HELSING:  Friday 10PM on Syfy – Change the Channel The playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute has dabbled in genre before, although he may prefer not to be reminded of his disastrous remake of The Wicker Man.  Still, it’s odd to see him as the creator of Syfy’s postapocalyptic vampire saga VAN HELSING.  It […]

  PITCH:  Thursday 9PM on FOX – Potential DVR Alert Dan Fogelman is a busy man.  He’s not only the creator of This Is Us, which debuted strongly two nights ago, he’s also co-creator (with Rick Singer) of the buzzy PITCH.  And gues what, this pilot has a twist in its final moments too. The Pitch twist is the […]

  NOTORIOUS:  Thursday 9PM on ABC – Change the Channel Any viewer apt to complain about the over-the-top melodrama of Scandal should be forced to watch the pilot for Notorious, a supposed “drama” so consistently idiotic that it’s closer in tone to the self-mocking theatrics of Jane the Virgin.  As it happens, Notorious is filling […]

  “Go big or go home” isn’t a sentiment that’s usually associated with the second year of a successful TV series.  More often, it’s “Do the same thing again,” possibly appended with “… only bigger.”  But Sam Esmail, the creator of MR. ROBOT (and this season, also the director of all its episodes), knows no […]

  DESIGNATED SURVIVOR:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC – In the Queue ABC’s DESIGNATED SURVIVOR takes great pains to distinguish its version of Kiefer Sutherland from 24‘s Jack Bauer.  The show’s Tom Kirkman spends most of the pilot clad in a formless gray Cornell-insignia hoodie, and wearing horn-rim glasses.  Sutherland speaks in a diffident tone, and […]