There’s a reason why serialized dramas usually have some sort of “franchise” powering them:  a mystery to be solved, patients to be cured, a quest to be undertaken, etc.  Generating compelling stories on a weekly basis out of something like ordinary life can become awfully difficult, and a series can quickly turn mundane.  THE […]

  NASHVILLE doesn’t make more than a gesture these days toward having very much to say about the music industry, or the place of country music in American culture.  It’s simply a soap, and often an effective one; with this week’s renewal, it’s reached the promised land of a 4th season on the air, buffered […]

  MISTRESSES:  Thursday 9PM on ABC MISTRESSES lost its marquee star this season, when Alyssa Milano declined to move with the show to its new (cheaper) Vancouver shooting location.  We’ll see what effect, if any, this has on the ratings, but in terms of the show’s substance, by Season 2 Milano wasn’t being featured more […]

  THE JIM GAFFIGAN SHOW:  Wednesday 10PM on TV Land (and Nick At Nite) Previously… on THE JIM GAFFIGAN SHOW:  Stand-up comic Jim (Jim Gaffigan) lives with wife Jeannie (Ashley Williams) and their 5 children in a crowded NY apartment–all elements to be found in Gaffigan’s stand-up act and comic memoirs.  Her best friend is […]

  BLINDSPOT has, in a sense, been coasting on the first five minutes of its pilot for an entire season.  That sequence was the most heavily hyped of summer 2015:  a bag dumped into the middle of Times Square turned out, when cautiously opened, to contain a gorgeous, naked amnesiac woman who would be known […]

  Time-travel tales are everywhere on TV these days–Timeless, Making History, Time After Time  and Frequency will join Legends of Tomorrow next season, and even Game of Thrones dabbled in the genre this year.  But the works that take themselves seriously are fiendishly difficult to pull off, apt to fall into traps of timelines that coexist […]

  DIVORCE:  Sunday 10PM on HBO – In the Queue In its opening half-hour, HBO’s DIVORCE doesn’t show much interest in the “-medy” part of “dramedy.”  The series creator is Sharon Horgan, who with Rob Delaney is also the co-creator and co-star of Amazon’s wonderful Catastrophe.  Part of what makes that show so extraordinary is […]

  POWERLESS:  Thursday 8:30PM on NBC – If Nothing Else is On… So far, NBC’s POWERLESS is merely a clever idea for a sitcom.  It’s set on the fringes of the DC superhero universe, in Charm City, where Wayne Security (owned by the unseen Bruce, who of course has things to do in Gotham) exists […]