FRANKLIN & BASH:  Wednesday 10PM on TNT Until very recently, FRANKLIN & BASH was what people had in mind when they talked about “Summer TV.”  It’s a fluffy, undemanding procedural whose buddy heroes Jared Franklin (Breckin Meyer) and Peter Bash (Mark Paul Gosselaar) are at least as interested in partying as in winning cases, […]

A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the 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) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the 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) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

  HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  Sunday 10PM on AMC – Potential DVR Alert HALT AND CATCH FIRE won’t remind you much of The Social Network.  (Or for that matter of Silicon Valley.)  Set in 1983 Texas and written by first-time series creators Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers (the series will be run by the […]

  In a way, COVERT AFFAIRS typifies the uncertain place where USA Network finds itself these days.  The series began in 2010 as one of USA’s mostly light-hearted “blue-sky” procedurals.  It centered around young, naive language expert Annie Walker (Piper Perabo), who was literally seduced into joining the CIA on a beach vacation, and who […]

  THE FOSTERS:  Monday 9PM on ABCFamily For the most part, ABCFamily’s new THE FOSTERS takes a nicely low-key approach to material that could easily have been cloying or vapid (or both).  Our entry point into the story is Callie (Maia Mitchell), a troubled teen who, upon her release from juvie, is taken in by […]

  ENLISTED:  Friday 9:30PM on FOX  – Change the Channel Not all goofy, barely-functional family sitcoms are alike, and although FOX has paired the new ENLISTED with Raising Hope on its Friday schedule, the two aren’t much of a match.  Raising Hope is a very smart comedy about people who aren’t necessarily rocket scientists, while […]

  MURPHY BROWN:  Thursday 9:30PM on CBS MURPHY BROWN was Prestige TV comedy before that concept really existed.  When it went on the air 30 years ago, it was a year before the arrival of Seinfeld, and 5 years ahead of Frasier, and while there were other intelligent, funny sitcoms on the air, Diane English’s […]