WITCHES OF EAST END:  Sunday 10PM on Lifetime – Potential DVR Alert The supernatural serial isn’t exactly a neglected genre on TV–this week alone brings the season debuts of American Horror Story and The Walking Dead, and The Originals and Sleepy Hollow have just gotten started–but based on its pilot, Lifetime’s new WITCHES OF […]

> THE HOUR:  Wednesday 10PM on BBCAmerica:  Potential DVR Alert Here’s what’s wrong with BBCAmerica. Don’t get me wrong:  it’s marvelous that BBCA exists to bring us shows like Luther, the original (and superior) Torchwood, the also original (and even more superior) Being Human, and now THE HOUR.  The problem is that a BBC “1-hour” […]

  SEED:  Monday 9:30PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… Remember last year’s Vince Vaughn (purported) comedy Delivery Man?  CW’s summer sitcom SEED isn’t a rip-off of the movie, exactly, since it premiered in Canada before the Vaughn movie opened (although whether it’s a rip-off of Starbuck, the 2011 Canadian movie that preceded […]

  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 […]

  BRAND X WITH RUSSELL BRAND:  Thursday 11PM on FX – Change the Channel Russell Brand has been more or less flailing around for the past several years, trying to find a place in American pop culture.  His introduction to most domestic audiences came with his role as the comically dissipated rock star in Forgetting […]

  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 […]

> 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 reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content of the […]

  THE LIBRARIANS:  Sunday 8PM on TNT – If Nothing Else Is On… TNT’s THE LIBRARIANS is a reboot, of a sort.  It’s based on a trio of Indiana Jones-ian original movies the network aired starting in 2004 (when it was more currently a knock-off of the National Treasure franchise), toplining Noah Wyle as a […]