GROWN-ISH:  Wednesday 8PM on Freeform – In Progress ABC’s Black-ish has been a bright spot on the broadcast landscape, the rare network family sitcom to earn both wide audiences and critical praise for its combination of political sting and emotional warmth.  A spin-off created by Black-ish creator Kenya Barris (and Larry Wilmore, an original […]

  INSECURE:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – In the Quene HBO introduces a promising new voice to TV comedy with Issa Rae’s INSECURE, which she created with Larry Wilmore (who left after pilot to concentrate on The Nightly Show).  Rae’s vision is strongly R-rated (a key word from the Donald Trump tape gets a full […]

  THE NEVERS:  Sunday 9PM on HBO The arrival of HBO’s THE NEVERS introduces a continuing series that’s also, in a sense, a limited one.  It was initially meant to be the latest original franchise from creator/auteur/showrunner Joss Whedon, the inventor of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe and director of the first two Avengers […]

> LUCK – Sundays 9PM on HBO starting January 29 – Potential DVR Alert The TV auteur David Milch got rich by co-creating (with Steven Bochco) NYPD Blue, but he’s probably most beloved for creating Deadwood.  Deadwood, while never a giant hit–it ran only 36 episodes on HBO, and never had a proper ending–was a […]

  THE REAL O’NEALS:  Tuesday 8:30PM on ABC – Change the Channel Whatever its other ailments, over the past few years ABC has had an extraordinary run of diverse, smart family sitcoms,–an area where other networks have struggled badly–with Fresh Off The Boat, Black-ish and The Goldbergs building on Modern Family and The Middle.  (Even […]

  THE CHI:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime – More Mean Streets Showtime’s THE CHI is geographically close enough to the Chicago of its veteran hit Shameless that its characters could bump into Gallaghers at any given moment, but series creator Lena Waithe is influenced more by the work of David Simon, and not so much […]

  BALLERS:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – Change the Channel BALLERS is alarmingly ramshackle by HBO standards.  Of course, it’s got enough A-list lineage to justify it getting on the air several times over, with genuine movie star Dwayne Johnson in the lead, and most of the Entourage production team attached, including Mark Wahlberg, this […]

  MULANEY:  Sunday 9:30PM on FOX – Change the Channel MULANEY arrives with a fair amount of goodwill.  It’s a multicamera sitcom modeled after Seinfeld, and produced by Lorne Michaels.  Its creator/star, John Mulaney, is one of the relatively few SNL writers to have achieved some measure of fame for himself, mostly thanks to his […]