THE FOLLOWING:  Monday 9PM on FOX – DVR Alert We’ve been here before, perhaps most memorably in Red Dragon aka Manhunter:  the burned-out, injured, brilliantly intuitive FBI agent, called back to the field to go after his nemesis, a savage but erudite serial killer.  But even Thomas Harris didn’t invent that archetype, and Kevin […]

  UNDER THE DOME:  Monday 10PM on CBS – Potential DVR Alert Much of CBS’s programming philosophy is built around the steady reliability of its reruns, so on the face of it, the Eye would seem least likely of the broadcast networks to make the summer’s biggest play with an expensive, top-level original series.  But […]

  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 […]

  SALEM:  Sunday 10PM on WGN America – If Nothing Else Is On… There’s more than vanity to the desire of just about every cable network to have at least one original scripted series (although that’s part of it).  There’s also a clear dollar and cents value to original scripted programming, which pays off in […]

  HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER:  Thursday 10PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert PLAYERS:  Executive Producer Shonda Rhimes–and you can repeat that name several more times without overstating her importance.  The actual series creator, Peter Nowalk (a Scandal/Grey’s Anatomy alumnus).  A cast headed by the estimable Viola Davis, and with an assortment of […]

  AGENT CARTER:  Tuesday 9PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert Marvel’s AGENT CARTER was more sure-footed in its start than the fantasy factory’s Agents of SHIELD was–maybe more than the improved SHIELD is even now.  With only 8 hours to show its stuff, filling in for SHIELD while that series takes its winter break, Carter is […]

  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 […]

  DICE:  Sunday 9:30PM on Showtime – Change the Channel The journey of Andrew Dice Clay from an explosively successful poster child (and, many would say, cynical exploiter) of comedy political incorrectness to a long sentence in the showbiz wilderness and then a new career as an increasingly respected character actor, with solid recent performances […]