THE BRAVE:  Monday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel In the Age of Trump, and with younger audiences migrating to alternative delivery platforms, the broadcast networks are making a play–some might call it their last stand–for red-state viewers, who may not be premium customers as far as advertisers are concerned, but who show […]

  KRYPTON:  Wednesday 10PM on Syfy – Change the Channel With the engagingly odd exception of The Magicians, Syfy hasn’t had much luck with its big swings, and KRYPTON is unlikely to change that.  The network’s position for the last several years has been so strange as to be almost nightmarish:  in a pop culture […]

  REBEL:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Krista Vernoff is one of network TV’s most prized showrunners.  She’s successfully guided Shonda Rhimes’s Grey’s Anatomy into a remarkable 17th season of success (which will be extended further if the necessary deals are made), and when she took over Station 19, that show became an effective one-two punch […]

> 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 […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots Had it managed to become a full-fledged series, PARTNERS might have been a decent fit with ABC’s other female-oriented crime shows like Castle and Body of Proof, but based on the pilot, its only points of distinctiveness were probably too gimmicky and contrived to work.   The title […]

  THE NEW NORMAL: Tuesday 9:30PM starting September 11 on NBC -If Nothing Else Is On… Disclaimer: Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall. Pilots are often reedited and re-scored, and in some cases even recast or reshot. These critiques shouldn’t be taken as full […]

  RECTIFY:  Monday 10PM on Sundance Channel (2-hour premiere at 9PM on April 22) Taking a leaf from the Hollywood studio playbook, Sundance Channel is promoting its new series RECTIFY as being “from the producers of Breaking Bad,” and it’s even airing reruns of the AMC series alongside Rectify episodes to reinforce the connection.  While […]

  INTELLIGENCE:  Preview Tonight at 9PM, then Monday 10PM on CBS starting January 13 – If Nothing Else Is On… Gabriel Black (Josh Holloway), the hero of CBS’s midseason entry INTELLIGENCE, follows in the TV footsteps of Chuck and the autistic character from Alphas by having a brain directly wired into all electronic signals in […]