MARRIED:  Thursday 10PM on FX – If Nothing Else Is On… Acrid indie comedy is FX’s brand, with shows like It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, The League, Legit and (although it transcends such categories) Louie.  The network has introduced a new pair for the summer, the first of which is Andrew Gurland’s MARRIED.  It’s on-brand, […]

  THE MYSTERIES OF LAURA:  Wednesday 8PM on NBC starting September 24 (premieres 10PM on September 17) – Change the Channel PLAYERS:  Star Debra Messing, and central co-stars Josh Lucas and Laz Alonso.  The Spanish TV series on which it’s based.  US series creator Jeff Rake, who’s worked on an assortment of shows over the past decade […]

  NASHVILLE:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC NASHVILLE has both improved and flattened out over time.  When the series started, it was frustratingly uneven, but also trying to do something potentially exciting:  combine the appeal of a traditional TV serial with stories that would talk frankly about women in show business (of various ages) and the […]

  THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC Based on everything we know about THE WALKING DEAD, it seemed a safe assumption after the Season 4 finale that we’d be spending a large chunk of Season 5 trapped with our heroes at Terminus, the supposed sanctuary they’d spent most of the season seeking that turned […]

  Martin Freeman, of The Hobbit franchise and the miniseries version of Fargo, brought a drier energy to tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE than the typical host, and that paid off for the show in a few of the night’s sketches. Freeman first came to American attention playing Tim (who in the US version would become […]

  ALLEGIANCE:  Thursday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else is On… ALLEGIANCE is what happens when broadcast network executives watch cable.  The story of long-term, deep-cover Russian agents is clearly, shall we say “strongly influenced” by FX’s The Americans, even if the specifics of the storyline aren’t identical.  But broadcast networks desperately need “big […]

  UNDATEABLE:  Tuesday 9PM on NBC NBC made its position on the current state of broadcast network comedy fairly clear when it essentially chose UNDATEABLE over The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt this midseason.  Both shows were ordered and had produced their episodes, but the network shuffled the Tina Fey-produced Kimmy to Netflix (which appears to have […]

  Like many visitors to the Hamptons, REVENGE stayed too long at the party, and what had once been an amusingly twisted soap eventually became repetitious and silly.  The series would have been better served as an American Horror Story/True Detective type anthology that told its story and rebooted the next season.  As it was, […]