Once again, Starz has had to stand by and watch as other cable networks, not just its paycable competition HBO and Showtime, but smaller players like BBCAmerica and Sundance–and now even streaming services–get the original programming glory and attention it’s repeatedly tried to capture.  Despite an instant Season 2 renewal (standard practice for Starz), […]

  SILICON VALLEY:  Sunday 10PM on HBO Previously… on SILICON VALLEY:  Richard Hendrix (Thomas Middleditch) is a computer programmer with dreams of inventing the next big billion-dollar thing–and he may have actually done it, with an algorithm that allows for compression and duplication of video, music, etc without loss of quality.  Offered $10M for his […]

  The original CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION turned the corner on its 14th season tonight, and at its age, the show has little interest in reinventing itself beyond the bare minimum.  The days when William L. Petersen starred and people like Jerry Stahl were writing dark-humored, sometimes transgressive episodes are long past, and after a […]

  What is it with endings?  Why do they rattle the brains of even the greatest of television’s creative minds?  Half-endings, too, which is what tonight’s finish to the first half of MAD MEN‘s 7th and final season was, the remaining 7 hours to sit on an AMC shelf until a year from now.  (That […]

  TRUE BLOOD:  Sunday 9PM on HBO You don’t typically associate HBO with “guilty pleasure”–even its genre shows, from The Sopranos to Boardwalk Empire to Game of Thrones, have the weight of dramas determined to reinvent their forms–but TRUE BLOOD has been the exception.  An all-you-can-eat buffet of vampires, werewolves, sex, political satire, more sex, shapeshifters, witches, yet more sex, faeries, […]

  The idea of a changed format turned out to be something of a pretense:  until the last 10 minutes of the final episode, which jumped forward half a day, 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY could more accurately have been called 12.  But the need to fill only half as many hours was a tonic for […]

  SLEEPY HOLLOW:  Monday 9PM on FOX SLEEPY HOLLOW turned out to be the best news FOX would get all of last season.  Although the show’s ratings dropped somewhat from their initially remarkable heights during its 13-episode run, it remained just about the only show on FOX’s air (other than its aging animated monuments) that […]

  SURVIVOR’S REMORSE:  Saturday 9PM on Starz Previously… on SURVIVOR’S REMORSE:  When basketball phenom Cam Calloway (Jessie T. Usher) signs his first giant free agency contract and moves to Atlanta, he takes his family entourage with him:  cousin Reggie (RonReaco Lee), sister M-Chuck (Erica Ash), mother Cassie (Tichina Arnold), and uncle Julius (Mike Epps), along […]