Pilots

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “Low Winter Sun”

Posted August 11, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  LOW WINTER SUN:  Sunday 10PM on AMC – Potential DVR Alert It’s been more than a decade since The Shield introduced US television to not just corrupt, but murderous cops as protagonists, and–well, it feels like about 15 minutes since the last bleak serialized mystery (actually it was a few days ago, with the US premiere of Broadchurch), […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “The White Queen”

Posted August 10, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  THE WHITE QUEEN – Saturday 9PM on Starz – Worth A Look Starz’s THE WHITE QUEEN is, apart from a bit of nudity (this is pay cable, after all), a rather old-fashioned historical bodice-ripper.  The bodice in question belongs to England’s Queen Elizabeth (Rebecca Ferguson), wife of Edward IV (Max Irons) circa 1464, 9 […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “Broadchurch”

Posted August 7, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  BROADCHURCH:  Wednesday 10PM on BBCAmerica – Potential DVR Alert BROADCHURCH suffers a bit, through no fault of its own, from murder fatigue.  Since The Killing, we’ve seen quite a few of these extended mysteries, tracing a single crime (usually against a child or other innocent) throughout a season, from The Bridge to Top of […]

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Netflix

THE SKED NETFLIX REVIEW: “Orange Is the New Black” (Episodes 1-3)

Posted July 11, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  With the arrival of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK after House of Cards, Hemlock Grove and Arrested Development, Netflix has completed the first quartet of its initial plunge into high-profile original programming .  Based on the available evidence (Netflix doesn’t release viewership information), the process has gone extremely well, with both subscriptions and the stock […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “The Bridge”

Posted July 11, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  THE BRIDGE:  Wednesday 10PM on FX – DVR Alert FX has assumed a leadership role in the development of serious, ambitious TV drama over the past decade (The Shield, Rescue Me, The Americans), and with its new series THE BRIDGE, it takes on its largest canvas to date.  The Bridge, which is based on […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “Camp”

Posted July 11, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  CAMP:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… If drive-in theaters hadn’t been superseded by multiplexes, NBC’s new CAMP would be the TV equivalent of a drive-in movie, a throwback to B-movie 80’s comedies like Meatballs, Summer School and One Crazy Summer.  (It would prefer to be a throwback to better […]

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Fall Pilots

THE SKED FALL PILOT REPORT: CBS’s “The Crazy Ones”

Posted July 8, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  THE CRAZY ONES:  Thursday 9PM on CBS starting Sept. 26 – Worth A Look Well, we know David E. Kelley has been watching Mad Men.  A key scene in the pilot for his new comedy THE CRAZY ONES, which is set at an ad agency, has the show’s protagonist Simon Roberts (Robin Williams) giving […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “King”

Posted July 6, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  KING:  Friday 10PM on Reelz – If Nothing Else Is On… One genre that’s never in short supply, even on summer TV, is the police procedural–in fact, during the summer months, even Canadian police procedurals seem to be just about everywhere.  Reelz has added another with the schedule-filler KING, an unobjectionable but hardly notable […]

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