STAR TREK:  DISCOVERY – Episodes available each Sunday at CBS All Access – In the Quene There are quite a few perils to reaching a judgment about the new STAR TREK: DISCOVERY based on its opening hour, the only episode that will air on the CBS broadcast network before the series begins streaming (1 […]

  MANIFEST:  Mondays 10PM on NBC Of all the Lost rip-offs we’ve seen over the years, NBC’s MANIFEST seems from its pilot to be the laziest, and perhaps the worst.  Creator Jeff Rake (he has the eminently forgettable The Mysteries of Laura to his credit) has replaced the dense mythology of Lost with a set-up […]

  DR. KEN:  Friday 8:30PM on ABC – Change the Channel It’s going to be a neck and neck battle this fall between ABC’s DR KEN and NBC’s Truth Be Told (which will soon air directly against it) as to which takes the title of Fall’s Worst Sitcom.  Truth Be Told is tone-deaf and generally […]

  SUPERGIRL:  Monday 8PM on CBS (premiere at 8:30PM tonight) – In the Queue SUPERGIRL is more thrilling as an experiment in network scheduling than as a TV show.  There’s nothing terribly wrong with the series itself, which comes from the Greg Berlanti factory of DC Comics adventures that’s already given us CW’s Arrow and The Flash, with […]

  ZERO HOUR:  Thursday 8PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert ZERO HOUR‘s pilot is an engaging piece of nonsense, but whether it can work as a continuing TV series is another question.  The premise is a DaVinci Code/National Treasure-ian tangle of Nazis, Rosicrucians, cloning, assassins, and bits and pieces of what seems to be […]

> 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 […]

  EMERALD CITY:  Friday 9PM on NBC – Change the Channel EMERALD CITY will make you wish you’d stayed in Kansas.  It’s a muddle of The Wizard of Oz, Mad Max, Game of Thrones (in their dreams) and that terrible Syfy updated version of Alice In Wonderland from a few years ago, and you’d think […]

  THE BLACKLIST:  Monday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… NBC has made it very clear that its top fall priority is the launch of the new Monday drama THE BLACKLIST.  The show has been given the network’s plum post-The Voice slot, and clearly, NBC sees the series as a more consistent […]