BELIEVE was one of the more regrettable failures of the 2013-14 broadcast season.  That wasn’t because of its premise (super-powered girl is pursued by evil scientists who want to weaponize her gifts, ho hum), but due to the involvement of the great Alfonso Cuaron as series co-creator.  But Believe was in trouble from the […]

  Even though death is part of the daily menu of our television and movies, dying–lingering, fatal illness–is much rarer.  We prefer our deaths to be mere starting points for police investigations, or the byproduct of our fascination with serial killers–puzzles rather than human beings.  Even on medical shows, patients who die rarely take up […]

  The farther it gets from the historical person named Leonardo Da Vinci, the better Starz’s DA VINCI’S DEMONS tends to be as a series.  In its 2d season, it went very far–all the way to South America, in a completely fictional Indiana Jones-ish quest for the mystical and all-powerful “Book of Leaves,” not to […]

  The idea of a changed format turned out to be something of a pretense:  until the last 10 minutes of the final episode, which jumped forward half a day, 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY could more accurately have been called 12.  But the need to fill only half as many hours was a tonic for […]

> Just how big a fan are you of RULES OF ENGAGEMENT?  If CBS dropped it off the top of the Empire State Building, would you jump after it?  Because that’s pretty much what they’ve done by (probably only temporarily) airing new episodes on Saturdays.  The rest of the night isn’t even worth mentioning… The […]

  Back in 2000, the rapid-fire fizzy dialogue of Gilmore Girls prompted some to spread an utterly unfounded rumor that Amy Sherman-Palladino, its creator and chief writer, didn’t actually exist, and that Girls was really being written by Aaron Sorkin.  This was wrong in every possible way, of course, including the fact that Sorkin was […]

> A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and production of episodes for the regular season:  a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover in the off-season) give plenty of notes, both helpful and otherwise, and […]

  Season 5 of WHITE COLLAR rebounded nicely from its more lachrymose previous season, which asked us to care far too much about the backstory issues of con man/forger/FBI consultant Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and his sidekick Mozzie (Willie Garson).  This year, the show was back to doing what it does best, providing breezy capers […]