“Interactive TV” is a phrase that’s been used many times in many contexts over the years, and HBO’s WESTWORLD provided a new way to look at the concept.  The first season of Westworld was–more than Lost, more than Mr. Robot, even going back all the way to The Prisoner–an unprecedentedly elaborate series of puzzles.  […]

  As hard as it is to create a compelling, successful television series, it’s much harder to keep one going year after year, after cast changes and writer changes and timeslot changes and network management changes and all the other events that make a showrunner’s life a nonstop ulcer.  (Revenge, for one, barely managed to […]

  Tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE marked the return of movie-star alumnus Will Ferrell as host, but he had a minimal amount to do with the clear highlight of the night.  That would be the show’s 100th Digital Short, a genuine extravaganza (if this was the reason there was no Digital Short last week, the effort […]

  BROADCHURCH – Wednesday 10PM on BBCAmerica One of the first things shown in the Season 3 premiere of BROADCHURCH is a looming close-up of a tear rolling down a crime victim’s face, so we know little has changed in that perpetually brooding Dorset town.  However, while Season 2 of Chris Chubnall’s series was a direct […]

  MISS AMERICANA (Netflix – January 31):  There are certainly areas of Taylor Swift’s life that are carefully elided in MISS AMERICANA (her actor boyfriend’s face and name are absent, for example, and there’s no mention of Cats), and Lana Wilson’s documentary culminates in an inspirational push that is very much on-message with Swift’s latest […]

  STATION 19:  Thursday 9PM on ABC – In the Queue STATION 19 probably marks the end of an era at ABC:  unless a pilot developed under her watch is picked up, it will be the last new Shonda Rhimes series at the network, as she moves on to her huge new deal at Netflix.  […]

    It wasn’t so long ago that the announcement of an epic period love story starring Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen as war correspondent Martha Gellhorn and legendary novelist Ernest Hemingway, directed by Philip Kaufman, the man behind The Right Stuff, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Henry & June, premiering at the Cannes […]

  A planted pilot is just what it sounds like:  an episode of an existing TV show temporarily invaded by the elements of a prospective newcomer for an semi-official on-air tryout.  Networks and studios like them because they’re cost-effective, since most of the expenses can rolled into the episodic budget of the series being utilized, […]