ZERO HOUR:  Thursday 8PM on ABC 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 […]

  Season 4 of  JUSTIFIED may or may not have been its best so far–Margo Martindale’s Mags Bennett still towers over Season 2–but it was unquestionably the most thrillingly novelistic, true to the show’s original source in the writing of Elmore Leonard.  The series, created and run by Graham Yost (who’s also been supervising The Americans […]

  It’s a little churlish, in the face of tonight’s mostly splendid Season 4 finale of THE GOOD WIFE, to point out that for the most part, the rest of the season didn’t quite live up to its high level of quality.  We will, unavoidably, get to that.  But let’s start by talking about what a […]

  In contrast to last week’s Kristin Wiig-fest, tonight’s season finale of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE didn’t give victory laps to all the franchise characters Bill Hader and Fred Armisen have contributed to the show over their 8 and 11 seasons.  (And, praise God, it didn’t give them both a last “The Californians” sketch.)  Instead, each […]

  GRACELAND:  Thursday 10PM on USA As we all know, if there’s one thing USA Network wants us to remember about itself, it’s that the network is a place where characters–which is to say the memorable kind– are welcome.  On first exposure, though, the only thing really distinctive about the network’s hugely-hyped new series GRACELAND […]

  In its first season, Marc Maron’s self-created series MARON was more of an uneven experiment than a cohesive series.  Maron tried on several different formats in the course of its 10 episodes on IFC–mordant day in the life, surreal Louie-ish flights of fancy, naturalistic multiepisode story arc–and while some tries were better than others, […]

  RESURRECTION:  Sunday 9PM on ABC  – Potential DVR Alert The restrained tension of RESURRECTION‘s pilot may remind you of early, suburban Spielberg, and of M. Night Shyamalan before he became a punchline.  The premise, based on a novel called “The Returned” by Jason Mott (and also perhaps inspired by the unrelated French miniseries that ran […]

  REVOLUTION:  Wednesday 8PM on NBC Can REVOLUTION save itself?  It had the splashiest start of any drama last season, leaping to a 4.1 rating on the back of The Voice.  (That’s even higher than this week’s launch of The Blacklist in the same slot.)  But from there it tumbled downward all season, losing more […]