SATISFACTION:  Thursday 10PM on USA – If Nothing Else Is On… Sean Jablonski’s new series SATISFACTION is a rarity for USA Network:  a drama that isn’t built around a familiar procedural franchise or fast-talking, quipping heroes.  Instead, it’s a story about midlife angst and marriage–there’s a namecheck of “Updike” at one passing point in […]

  SURVIVOR’S REMORSE:  Saturday 9PM on Starz Because Starz only airs one scripted show at a given time, its identity tends to shift with whatever that series happens to be.  Recently it’s been fluctuating in an almost schizophrenic way between contemporary big-city stories and costume dramas:  from Boss to DaVinci’s Demons, from Power to Black Sails, and now […]

  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 […]

  VAN HELSING:  Friday 10PM on Syfy – Change the Channel The playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute has dabbled in genre before, although he may prefer not to be reminded of his disastrous remake of The Wicker Man.  Still, it’s odd to see him as the creator of Syfy’s postapocalyptic vampire saga VAN HELSING.  It […]

  THE ARRANGEMENT:  Sunday 10PM on E! – If Nothing Else Is On… E! stays on-brand with its second scripted series THE ARRANGEMENT, which plays off the rumors that surrounded Tom Cruise’s marriage to Katie Holmes.  It’s got celebrity and the heat of a scandal roman a clef, but it completely lacks the saucy, junky […]

  GHOSTED:  Sunday 8:30PM on FOX – In the Queue FOX’s new sitcom GHOSTED has two big assets in stars Adam Scott and Craig Robinson, a pair of experienced comedy players who combine star presence with chops as members of the unselfish Parks & Recreation and The Office ensembles.  The premise of Tom Gormican’s series […]

  SWEETBITTER:  Sunday 8PM on Starz – In the Quene Starz’s SWEETBITTER is, with Vida, part of the network’s unusual run of back-to-back half-hour dramas, each of them with a short 6-episode order.  Both shows make use of indie tropes, with Vida on the “gritty estranged family that has to co-exist” end of the Sundance […]

  THE ENEMY WITHIN:  Monday 10PM on NBC NBC’s spy thriller THE ENEMY WITHIN is a variation of The Blacklist, itself a variation of The Silence Of The Lambs, all telling stories about ingenious master villains recruited by the FBI to help track down other fiendish criminals.  But series creator Ken Woodruff’s script (his previous […]