The first season of YELLOWSTONE was a feat of auteurship.  Every episode of the recently-rebooted Paramount Network’s prestige series was written and directed solely by series creator Taylor Sheridan, something not even David Lynch or Sam Esmail can claim.  The result was 10 hours of television that qualified, to an extent rarely seen, as […]

  DECEPTION:  Sunday 10PM on ABC – In the Queue For its newest trick, the House of Greg Berlanti presents a crime procedural so insubstantial it seems to disappear before your very eyes.  DECEPTION, created by Chris Fedak (co-creator of NBC’s vintage Chuck) mixes together tropes like a summer camp magic show:  the smug amateur […]

  Not to be cynical, but no show on TV could have an easier time coming up with a season-ending cliffhanger than CHASING LIFE, a YA soap whose heroine is battling leukemia.  For most of the back half of the series’ first season, April’s (Italia Ricci) cancer had been in remission, which left the show […]

  HELL ON WHEELS – Sunday 9PM on AMC WHERE WE WERE:  Building the transcontinental railroad.  Our antihero, former Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon, joined the Union Pacific Railroad’s march to the west only because he was tracking down the Union soldiers who murdered his wife during the Civil War, and (mistakenly, it seems) believed the […]

  In its 4th season, the geist of GIRLS no longer seemed to be hitting the zeit the way it used to.  Ratings were down, and so was the sense of buzz.  Some of that was simply the fact that shows of the moment don’t stay that way forever, and HBO didn’t help by giving […]

  Showtime’s BILLIONS has cultivated one of the most recognizable signatures on television, from its rudely epigrammatic dialogue, to its love/hate relationship with its ruthless, narcissistic characters, to its very narrative devices.  Tonight’s Season 4 finale, written by series co-creators David Levien and Brian Koppelman and directed by experienced Billions hand Colin Bucksey, was precisely […]

  BAD JUDGE:  Thursdays 9PM on NBC starting October 2 – Change the Channel PLAYERS:  Non-Writing Executive Producers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (and Anne Heche).  Star Kate Walsh.  Series creator Chad Kultgen (mostly a novelist–Jason Reitman’s new dramedy movie Men, Women & Children is based on his book–although he was also a writer on, […]

> We’re not on the tabloid beat at SHOWBUZZDAILY, but when Lindsay Lohan put herself in front of the cameras tonight on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, she made herself fair game.  It would be heartwarming to be able to report that with tonight’s appearance, she’s finally taken the first real step of her professional rehabilitation, but […]