Pilot Reports

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “The Rookie”

Posted October 17, 2018 by Mitch Salem

  THE ROOKIE:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC THE ROOKIE is mostly a standard-issue police procedural, not surprisingly most reminiscent of ABC’s long-running summer series Rookie Blue, but with one big difference:  it’s unmistakably a star vehicle for Nathan Fillion.  He’s one of those actors who seems to have spent his entire adult life starring in […]

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Midseason Pilots

PREMIERING TONIGHT: THE SKED Pilot Review: “The Night Shift”

Posted May 27, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  THE NIGHT SHIFT:  Tuesday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel It’s as though NBC and series creators Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs (they were among the showrunners of the 90210 reboot, and wrote the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie) deliberately set out to make the least distinctive series possible with THE NIGHT […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “True Detective”

Posted January 13, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  TRUE DETECTIVE:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – DVR Alert It sometimes seems like brooding serial-killer thrillers are as plentiful on the New Television as multi-camera family sitcoms were on the Old.  TRUE DETECTIVE, though, gives the genre the HBO Deluxe treatment–premiering, no less, on the same night one of its stars, Matthew McConaughey, became […]

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Pilot Reports

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”

Posted September 8, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  The world of television may have undergone a revolution over the past decade, but it hasn’t hit the continent of late-night network talk shows, which have introduced variations from their 1950s-era formats, but little meaningful change.  There is, every time, the (middle-aged white) guy who does a topical monologue, the desk (or pre-taped) piece, […]

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Pilot Reports

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Scream Queens”

Posted September 22, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  SCREAM QUEENS:  Tuesday 9PM on FOX – Change the Channel SCREAM QUEENS could have been more accurately titled “Ryan Murphy Presents,” in the manner of the old Alfred Hitchcock show, because it’s essentially his own salute to his favorite tropes and styles.  As Bill Hader’s Stefon might say, it has everything:  Glee, American Horror […]

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Pilot Reports

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Bull”

Posted September 20, 2016 by Mitch Salem

  BULL:  Tuesday 9PM on CBS – Change the Channel CBS’s BULL is, from its title down, almost completely insufferable.  Loosely inspired by the pre-TV professional life of Dr. Phil (billed here as “Dr. Phillip C. McGraw” for maximum pretentiousness), and co-created by McGraw and industry veteran Paul Attanasio (a co-creator of the great Homicide […]

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Pilot Reports

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Stitchers”

Posted June 3, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  STITCHERS:  Monday 9PM on ABCFamily – Change the Channel These are high times for those who can’t get enough of TV shows about young women who solve crimes by entering the memories of the recently deceased  Even as iZombie nears its season finale next week, ABCFamily’s new STITCHERS is telling a variation on the […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “Siberia”

Posted July 1, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  SIBERIA:  Monday 10PM on NBC-Worth A Look SIBERIA holds onto its conceit for a very long time.  Until the closing minutes of tonight’s series premiere, the show presents itself as being what it’s pretending to be, which is the opening episode of a new reality series about a multinational group of contestants who are […]

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