FULL FRONTAL WITH SAMANTHA BEE:  Monday 10:30PM on TBS – Potential DVR Alert It is written, apparently, that all alumni of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show who aren’t starring in movies or sitcoms must have their own comedy news series, and tonight it was the turn of Samantha Bee.  TBS’s marketing of the series […]

  TAKEN:  Monday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… NBC’s television version of TAKEN doesn’t have much to do with the movie franchise that provided its title, other than fitting into the action genre and featuring a hero named Bryan Mills.  Although presented as a sort of prequel, it’s a modern-day origin […]

  WILL & GRACE:  Thursday 9PM on NBC Nothing and everything has changed since WILL & GRACE began its run on NBC in 1998, and departed in 2006.  Every effort has been made to duplicate the original series:  not only are Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally back, along with series creators […]

  AGENT X:  Sunday 9PM on TNT – Change the Channel Remember a couple of months ago when The Player started on NBC, and the criticism was that it was the kind of mindless action show that had once made the term “basic cable” a perjorative?  Well, TNT’s new AGENT X is a throwback to […]

  PREACHER:  Sunday 9PM on AMC – Potential DVR Alert It’s not quite clear what on earth AMC’s new PREACHER is after watching its pilot, but it’s certainly intriguing.  Based on a celebrated comic book series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, and widely considered unadaptable after several cycles of development hell over the years, […]

  THE GREAT INDOORS:  Thursday 8:30PM on CBS – Change the Channel Fall TV has a mystery even greater than exactly what’s going on at Westworld:  Joel McHale’s presence in the cardboard CBS sitcom THE GREAT INDOORS.  It’s one thing when multi-camera veterans from the 1990s like Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and Kevin James come […]

  TRANSPLANT:  Tuesday 10PM on NBC A great many shows that we consider “American television” are actually produced in Canada, thanks to favorable tax credits and currency exchange rates.  The creators of these shows and most of the more familiar stars may hail from the US, but the rest of the cast and behind-the-scenes personnel […]

  BEN & KATE:  Tuesday 8:30PM on FOX – Worth A Look   However it may fare in the ratings, this fall’s FOX Tuesday schedule is a model lesson in what a smoothly engineered line-up looks like.  At 9:30PM, The Mindy Project is a perfect match with its lead-in New Girl, and at 8:30PM, the new BEN […]