GOTHAM did a better job of navigating its clog of characters in its second season.  Bruno Heller’s mash-up of Batman origin story, the Dark Knight trilogy, 1930s-style cop drama, and all-around comic book freak-show still had at least one plotline too many–truthfully, no one would miss its Riddler, Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith), if […]

  BLINDSPOT has, in a sense, been coasting on the first five minutes of its pilot for an entire season.  That sequence was the most heavily hyped of summer 2015:  a bag dumped into the middle of Times Square turned out, when cautiously opened, to contain a gorgeous, naked amnesiac woman who would be known […]

  PREACHER:  Sunday 9PM on AMC – Potential DVR Alert It’s not quite clear what on earth AMC’s new PREACHER is after watching its pilot, but it’s certainly intriguing.  Based on a celebrated comic book series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, and widely considered unadaptable after several cycles of development hell over the years, […]

  The fourth and final season of Cinemax’s BANSHEE felt more like an epilogue, or even a spin-off, than a climax.  It wasn’t the time jump between Seasons 3 and 4, or the shortened 8-episode order, or even the physical relocation from North Carolina to Pennsylvania (for tax credit reasons).  The focus, the center of […]

  THE ORIGINALS has some recurring problems.  For one thing, since its antihero family the Mikaelsons are ageless supernaturals who emigrated to the US over the centuries, their foes–and even the family members who turn up from time to time, sometimes in new bodies–tend to be interchangeable Eurotrash.  It took effort this season to remember […]

  After three sets of series creators and two pilots, THE CATCH certainly zeroed in on its inspirations:  To Catch A Thief plus The Thomas Crown Affair, with a touch of Soderbergh’s version of Ocean’s Eleven.  The Catch longs for fizzy romantic intrigue, with light (but opulent) crime stirred alongside flirtatious banter between glamorous people, […]

  The well-oiled Greg Berlanti & Co DC superhero TV machine has so far slipped a gear with CW’s LEGENDS OF TOMORROW.  Despite half a season of careful preparation before its January start, including pre-premiere appearances on The Flash and Arrow and a cast largely familiar from both those shows, Legends hasn’t jelled on any […]

  Every year at about this time, Marvel faces a contradiction.  Even as it has a giant movie dominating multiplexes worldwide (this year, of course, it’s Captain America: Civil War, which is approaching the $1 billion mark), its TV business struggles.  Over the past few weeks, network cousin ABC has canceled hiatus series Agent Carter, […]