MIDNIGHT, TEXAS:  Monday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel NBC’s summer series MIDNIGHT, TEXAS is a horror, all right.  It’s based on novels by True Blood author Charlaine Harris, and the idea was plainly to do a broadcast network version of HBO’s hit.  But even if Midnight had been any good, the idea […]

  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 […]

  SALVATION:  Wednesday 10PM on CBS CBS’s summer series SALVATION presents a potential end of the world so pedestrian that viewers might fall asleep while awaiting the apocalypse.  It’s a disappointment, because at their best (BrainDead, the first season of Under the Dome), CBS’s forays into the sci-fi potboiler genre can be entertainingly over the […]

  WATCHMEN:  Sunday 9PM on HBO The Damon Lindelof/HBO WATCHMEN provides a new wrinkle to the world of IP exploitation.  It’s not an adaptation of the classic Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel (a la Zack Snyder’s all-too-reverent 2009 film) or even a reboot, but a newly conceived work that’s more like a spin-off or a […]

  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 […]

  SHADES OF BLUE:  Thursday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… SHADES OF BLUE is the weak tea brewed by broadcast network executives who dream of airing something like The Shield.  Both shows center on corrupt urban cops, but where The Shield smacked viewers in the face, forcing them to decide where […]

  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 […]

  GOD FRIENDED ME:  Sunday 8PM on CBS It’s not hard to figure out the target demographic for CBS’s GOD FRIENDED ME.  The Steven Lilien/Bryan Wynbrandt series appears to have been custom-stitched for those viewers who would have loved ABC’s Kevin (Probably) Saves the World if only it had been a little bit more urban.  […]