Viewed in its 10-hour entirety, THE YOUNG POPE encompassed much of the good and bad of Auteur TV.  HBO, by all appearances, wrote a (very large) check to the arthouse filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino as creator, director and co-writer of the series, and then left him alone to make his art.  He emerged with a […]

  GRACEPOINT:  Thursday 9PM on FOX starting October 2 – Potential DVR Alert PLAYERS:  Broadchurch, the wildly successful limited (and now continuing) British TV series, of which Gracepoint is a remake.  Broadchurch returnees, including series creator Chris Chibnall, director James Strong and star David Tennant.  A cast surrounding Tennant that includes Anna Gunn, Nick Nolte, […]

  ON BECOMING A GOD IN CENTRAL FLORIDA:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime There’s an overlap between two of cable’s more high-profile new shows, which also happen to air against each other in the linear world.  Both HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones and Showtime’s ON BECOMING A GOD IN CENTRAL FLORIDA are dark comedies about pernicious American […]

  It was an odd SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE all around tonight, starting with the fact that host Chris Hemworth was there to plug The Avengers:  The Age of Ultron, which won’t even open for 2 more months.  Hemsworth isn’t exactly known as a comic stylist, so although he had a few enjoyably goofy moments, the […]

  BELIEVE:  Sunday 9PM on NBC Previously… on BELIEVE:  10-year old Bo Adams (Johnny Sequoyah) is one special little girl, with superpowers that include telekinesis and the ability to foretell the future and read people’s minds.  Her powers, like those of so many Chosen Ones before her, can be used to help, but they also […]

  HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER is an edifice built on two foundations:  the acting of Viola Davis as the show’s brilliant and complex criminal attorney Annalise Keating, and the ability of series creator Peter Nowalk and his writing/producing staff to come up with compelling non-stop plot twists.  In Season 2, Davis as usual […]

  It’s odd for a successful TV series to be asked to justify its continued existence, but that’s where HBO’s BIG LITTLE LIES found itself after the network looked at the Season 1 ratings (not just high but steadily rising, which is almost unheard-of these days), and expanded the show from its original one-time-only limited […]

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full TV pilot reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content […]