INSECURE:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – In the Quene HBO introduces a promising new voice to TV comedy with Issa Rae’s INSECURE, which she created with Larry Wilmore (who left after pilot to concentrate on The Nightly Show).  Rae’s vision is strongly R-rated (a key word from the Donald Trump tape gets a full […]

  There was hardly a toy in the filmmaking nursery that Legion and its hugely talented creator Noah Hawley left unplayed by the time its third and final season was over:  aspect ratios, color, camera angles, musical numbers, stop-motion, slow-motion, miniatures, repetitions, multiple exposures, stylized sets–everything short of 3D Imax.  And like many a child […]

> CW has announced the line-up for its 2011/12 regular season finales, as well as a late-season premiere: First to exit will be ONE TREE HILL, which winds up its 9 seasons on April 4 with a 2-hour special. On April 17, RINGER will be done for the season (and maybe longer).  Starting April 24, […]

  In HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas created an odd but appealing mix of traditional sitcom humor and conceptual originality (their upcoming FOX show The Goodwin Games looks like another unusual angle on the genre), and with comedy, as with drama, the thing about conceptual storytelling is that at some […]

    Even by CW standards–and this is a network where shows that could barely hold a slot in basic cable get renewed–THE LA COMPLEX is a clear flop, watched by about  2/10 of 1% of the 18-49 year old audience and less than half a million people in total. So although it’s been reported […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots Remember the Sideways universe in the last season of Lost?  (I feel your pain; bear with me.)  In particular, remember the storyline where Sawyer and Miles were tough LA detectives, living out their version of a 1970s cop show?  Well, for Battlestar Galactica fans, there was almost a […]

> 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 […]

> ENLIGHTENED – Mondays 9:30PM on HBO – If Nothing Else Is On… As a writer, Mike White is drawn to stories of delusion.  Even though their tones (and commerciality) are widely divergent, his screenplays from Chuck & Buck to The School of Rock, The Good Girl to Nacho Libre share protagonists who are firmly […]