THE PLAYER:  Thursday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel How fond are you of grade-B basic cable action series?  Do you watch the anonymous movies your cable/satellite service piles on its pay-per-view schedule each week?  Do you remember Cannon Films, and are you nostalgic for its product?  Does it mean something to you […]

>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 of […]

  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 […]

  SOMEWHERE BETWEEN:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel (Now!) There’s no politically correct way to put this.  ABC’s summer thriller SOMEWHERE BETWEEN hinges on the frantic efforts of TV producer Laura Price (Paula Patton) to stop the murder of her daughter Serena (Aria Birch) after the fact, when Laura is inexplicably transported […]

  DECEPTION:  Monday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:  a beautiful young woman returns to the Long Island estate of the family she knew when she was growing up, becoming involved with their intrigues as she hides her true identity, unfinished business on her mind.  Now, […]

  DIRTY JOHN:  Sunday 10PM on Bravo Bravo recently finished a 2-season run of Imposters, the story of a con artist who seduced victims into marriage, only to steal all their money.  Clearly the network knows what it likes, because in Imposters’ stead we have Dirty John, which tells a story remarkably close to that […]

  TATAU:  Saturday 10PM on BBCAmerica BBCAmerica only has two showcase slots to launch new series, those being the hours after Dr. Who and Orphan Black, so with plenty of time to prepare for the return of the latter, it’s difficult to understand how the network ended up handing the space over to TATAU, a […]

  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, […]