THE NIGHTLY SHOW WITH LARRY WILMORE:  Mon-Thurs @11:30PM on Comedy Central When Stephen Colbert made his decision to leave Comedy Central and serve as David Letterman’s successor on CBS, replacing The Colbert Report with a new show hosted by Larry Wilmore was about as no-brainer as these things get.  Wilmore’s regular guest appearances on […]

  INSTINCT:  Sunday 8PM on CBS – Change the Channel It’s a coincidence that the movie Love, Simon and CBS’s series INSTINCT premiered over the same weekend, but both are facets of a newish stage in LGBTQ pop culture:  the ordinary genre story that happens to have a gay lead.  In the case of Love, […]

  VICTORIA:  Sunday 9PM on PBS – In the Queue Female British monarchs are certainly having a television moment, with Elizabeth I a regular character on CW’s soon-to-return Reign, her current namesake at the center of Netflix’s The Crown, and now the PBS/ITV VICTORIA.  The newest arrival is far classier than CW’s YA soap, but […]

  GROUND FLOOR:  Thursday 10PM on TBS – If Nothing Else Is On… As cable networks have stolen more and more of the glory from broadcasters, with TV movies, miniseries, and quality 1-hour dramas now largely in their domain, one of the last bastions of broadcast domination is the mainstream sitcom.  (Niche comedies are a […]

  MR. SELFRIDGE:  Sunday 9PM on PBS To get the obvious over with quickly, MR. SELFRIDGE, PBS’s attempt to find a partner for its blockbuster hit Downton Abbey, isn’t in that show’s league.  Instead it’s a merely pleasant traipse down another corner of early 20th-century British history. While Downton offers a cornucopia of sharply-drawn characters […]

> 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 […]

  BALLERS:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – Change the Channel BALLERS is alarmingly ramshackle by HBO standards.  Of course, it’s got enough A-list lineage to justify it getting on the air several times over, with genuine movie star Dwayne Johnson in the lead, and most of the Entourage production team attached, including Mark Wahlberg, this […]

  MAGNUM, P.I.:  Monday 9PM on CBS As everyone knows, the 2018-19 CBS TV season has turned out to be the final one overseen by Les Moonves, the longtime network mogul ousted after allegations of sexual misconduct.  It’s fitting that the first new series of his last season is that definitive Moonves-ian object, a rebooted […]