TV’s summer of 2016 was notable for a splendidly entertaining and emotionally satisfying 1980s-themed horror thriller.  Unfortunately for Freeform and DEAD OF SUMMER, it was Netflix’s Stranger Things.  Dead, which ended a low-rated season tonight, did have its moments, though, especially in its grand guignol final episodes. The general pattern of the series was […]

  Last year, the cop novel “The Whites” was published as the work of Harry Brandt–except that “Harry Brandt” was actually a pseudonym for Richard Price.  This seemed odd at first, because unlike, say, JK Rowling deciding to write detective stories, crime novels were already Richard Price’s bread and butter, in celebrated works of fiction […]

  In recent years, Cameron Crowe has had trouble keeping his scripts coherent even when they only have to last 2 hours.  It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise that giving him 10 hours to play with was asking for trouble, and much of his Showtime series ROADIES has been unfocused and self-indulgent, a […]

  THE STRAIN:  Sunday 10PM on FX FX’s goofiest drama, THE STRAIN, is back for its third season, long-tongued vampiric monsters and Eastern European mythology intact.  Season 2 may have been less notable for killing off leading lady Mia Maestro than for finally letting Corey Stoll discard his awful toupee, and while there’s no sign […]

  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 […]

  There are none less cool than those trying desperately to be seen that way, and that was the fate of Freeform’s GUILT.  Series creators Kathryn Price and Nichole Millard, along with showrunners Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer, all frantically pushed every “scandalous” button they could think of–drugs!  prostitution!  sex clubs!  DJs!  Blackmail!  kinky royals!  […]

  After an entire season, it’s still not clear just what AMC’s PREACHER intends to be, but it’s been a dazzling ride all the same, sort of a Quentin Tarantino version of a Coen Brothers version of a Luis Bunuel version of the apocalypse.  Every episode has had at least one remarkable set-piece sequence, and […]

  Season 2 of FOX’s WAYWARD PINES wouldn’t have felt out of place on Syfy, and that’s not a compliment.  Season 1 had a strong cast (Matt Dillon, Carla Gugino, Toby Jones, Juliette Lewis) and a clever twist, revealed halfway through:  the bucolic yet sinister titular town was actually the last outpost of humanity, its […]