MR. SELFRIDGE:  Sunday 9PM on PBS MR. SELFRIDGE, the solace for PBS viewers between editions of Downton Abbey, has returned for its second season.  It lacks the dramatic urgency of Downton and is altogether a more conventional piece of work–it’s literally a show that, set in 1914, climaxes its opening hour by having someone […]

  BLACK BOX:  Thursday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel In ABC’s (partial) defense, BLACK BOX wasn’t intended to run during the regular broadcast season.  It was meant to be seen in summer, when standards are lower, but the network was caught flat-footed when Kerry Washington’s pregnancy caused Scandal to cut its season by […]

  There was so much going on in tonight’s finale of the sensational fifth season of THE GOOD WIFE, it felt at times like a 2-hour episode that had been forced at gunpoint to strip down to a single hour.  There was barely enough time for Veronica (Stockard Channing), the irresponsibly direct mother of Alicia […]

  MURDER IN THE FIRST:  Monday 10PM on TNT Previously… on MURDER IN THE FIRST:  San Francisco homicide detectives Terry English (Taye Diggs) and Hildy Mulligan (Kathleen Robertson) are investigating two crimes connected to arrogant high-tech tycoon Erich Blunt (Tom Felton), the violent deaths of both his biological father and his former employee and lover.  […]

  STATE OF AFFAIRS:  Monday 10PM on NBC starting November 17 – If Nothing Else Is On… PLAYERS:  Star and Executive Producer Katherine Heigl, who developed the series for herself and pitched it to all the networks, hoping to spark a bidding war (which never really happened).  Series creator and pilot director Joe Carnahan, a […]

  NEW GIRL:  Tuesday 9PM on FOX NEW GIRL returned for its fourth season tonight with something to prove.  Rarely has an acclaimed, popular comedy plunged so quickly and so badly, both critically and with viewers:  the series that premiered in 2011 with a 4.8 rating had lost three-quarters of that audience by last May, […]

  THE ORIGINALS:  Monday 8PM on CW THE ORIGINALS, that gloomier and more gothic cousin of The Vampire Diaries, essentially revolves around an endless turf war, the territory at issue being New Orleans.  (The show itself shoots in Georgia rather than the Big Easy for financial reasons, which limits it to mostly verbal celebrations of […]

  THE BLACKLIST adequately completed the first act of its season’s mission with tonight’s fall finale–but the tough part is still to come.  NBC largely adopted a conservative schedule this season–a new sitcom after Tuesday’s The Voice and a couple more thrown away on Thursday, another fantasy thriller after Grimm, a third old-skewing procedural to […]