THE SLAP:  Thursday 8PM on NBC – Potential DVR Alert THE SLAP is strikingly different from everything else on broadcast television–it’s unusual even by cable standards, with an indie film, non-genre mindset that brings little to mind beyond Showtime’s The Affair and HBO’s Togetherness (and even The Affair has its flash-forward murder plot to help […]

  BILLIONS:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime (pilot available via VOD and streaming) – Potential DVR Alert There’s a gag in The Big Short where an esoteric piece of financial information, crucial for understanding the mortgage meltdown but hard to communicate without an audience’s eyes glazing over, is illustrated by having it explained by Margot Robbie […]

  AMERICAN GOTHIC:  Wednesday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel Since even ABC is having trouble these days with its trademark soaps about melodrama, dark reveals and violence among close relations (The Family, Blood & Oil, the exhausted cancellation of Revenge), it’s not much of a surprise that CBS is completely out of its […]

  THE GOOD FIGHT:  Episodes Release Each Sunday On CBS All Access – Binge-Worthy If THE GOOD FIGHT were actually a CBS drama, the spin-off of The Good Wife would instantly become the network’s best show–and one of the most promising anywhere on broadcast TV.  But while a slightly edited version of the opening episode […]

  DIRTY JOHN:  Sunday 10PM on Bravo Bravo recently finished a 2-season run of Imposters, the story of a con artist who seduced victims into marriage, only to steal all their money.  Clearly the network knows what it likes, because in Imposters’ stead we have Dirty John, which tells a story remarkably close to that […]

> 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 […]

  TRUTH BE TOLD:  Friday 8:30PM on NBC – Change the Channel Out of the pit that is the current state of NBC comedy crawls TRUTH BE TOLD, which was seemingly designed to make its lead-in, the mediocre Undateable, look like a television classic.  Its creator is DJ Nash, who last gave us the semiautobiographical […]

> 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 […]