OUTLANDER:  Saturday 9PM on Starz – If Nothing Else Is On… After an uncharacteristic stop in the urban milieu of Power, Starz returns to its comfort zone of historical drama with OUTLANDER, based on the bestselling series of books by Diana Gabaldon.  The TV version retains a distinctly romance novel tone (with a pay-cable […]

  THE BRINK:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – If Nothing Else Is On… THE BRINK will make you appreciate the precision and verbal dexterity of Veep.  Actually, although it’s an HBO political satire, The Brink gets most of its inspiration from an earlier classic of the form, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.  Much as in that […]

  FOR THE PEOPLE:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC – In the Queue Things may change when Shonda Rhimes moves to Netflix, but in her ABC incarnation, her name on a project creates a certain set of expectations, which the new FOR THE PEOPLE mostly satisfies.  The pilot for the series, created by former Scandal writer/producer […]

> VEEP:  Sundays 10PM on HBO – Potential DVR Alert   Although of course it made all the sense in the world to precede tonight’s premiere of its new political comedy VEEP with the trailer for its upcoming political comedy-drama, Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom, in some ways HBO might have considered thinking twice.  Both Sorkin […]

  WEIRD LONERS:  Tuesday 9:30PM on FOX – If Nothing Else is On… WEIRD LONERS belongs to the sitcom subspecies of quirky singles comedy, which has given us New Girl (the pilot for Weird Loners was directed by Jake Kasdan, who’s also a New Girl director/producer) but also things like A To Z and Marry […]

> THE FIRM:  Thursdays 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel THE FIRM isn’t NBC’s #1 priority for midseason–that would clearly be Smash.  (In other news, there’s no truth to the rumor that NBC has decided to change its corporate name to “Smash–The Monday After the Super Bowl”.)  But The Firm is the inheritor of […]

> 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 […]

> 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 […]