DIVORCE:  Sunday 10PM on HBO – In the Queue In its opening half-hour, HBO’s DIVORCE doesn’t show much interest in the “-medy” part of “dramedy.”  The series creator is Sharon Horgan, who with Rob Delaney is also the co-creator and co-star of Amazon’s wonderful Catastrophe.  Part of what makes that show so extraordinary is […]

  VALOR:  Monday 9PM on CW – Change the Channel VALOR is the CW version of a military drama, which makes it markedly different from NBC’s The Brave and CBS’s SEAL Team.  For one thing, it’s significantly lacking in production values, even in its pilot, which would typically have a higher budget than regular series […]

  TOGETHERNESS:  Sunday 9:30PM on HBO – Potential DVR Alert With TOGETHERNESS, Mark and Jay Duplass join the pilgrimage of indie filmmakers to HBO, which now has a virtual Sundance Film Festival of its own every Sunday night with the new dramedy joining Girls and Looking.  Of the three, Togetherness appears on first glance to […]

  THE FOSTERS:  Monday 9PM on ABCFamily For the most part, ABCFamily’s new THE FOSTERS takes a nicely low-key approach to material that could easily have been cloying or vapid (or both).  Our entry point into the story is Callie (Maia Mitchell), a troubled teen who, upon her release from juvie, is taken in by […]

  INHUMANS:  Friday 9PM on ABC (starting Sept 29) – Change the Channel In this world of Peak TV, it’s harder for a new series to break through the clutter than it’s ever been, and that thicket will be a veritable forest during the fourth week of September, when the major broadcast networks will follow […]

  GRACEPOINT:  Thursday 9PM on FOX starting October 2 – Potential DVR Alert PLAYERS:  Broadchurch, the wildly successful limited (and now continuing) British TV series, of which Gracepoint is a remake.  Broadchurch returnees, including series creator Chris Chibnall, director James Strong and star David Tennant.  A cast surrounding Tennant that includes Anna Gunn, Nick Nolte, […]

  MR. ROBOT:  Wednesday 10PM on USA – Potential DVR Alert There are networks, especially in the pay-TV universe, that play the instant-renewal game, announcing as soon as a new show has premiered, or sometimes even before, that another season has been ordered.  It’s a PR move, for the most part, and sometimes only semi-legitimate, […]

  HELIX:  Friday 10PM on Syfy – If Nothing Else Is On… Just about every network, cable and broadcast, is in the science-fiction business these days in one way or another, and weirdly enough the only one that seems to have been left behind is Syfy, which has been waiting a long time for its […]