RECTIFY:  Monday 10PM on Sundance Channel (2-hour premiere at 9PM on April 22) Taking a leaf from the Hollywood studio playbook, Sundance Channel is promoting its new series RECTIFY as being “from the producers of Breaking Bad,” and it’s even airing reruns of the AMC series alongside Rectify episodes to reinforce the connection.  While […]

  Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here and Midseason Pilot Reports here. LUCKY 7:  Tuesday 10PM on ABC – If Nothing Else Is On… LUCKY 7 doesn’t feel like a jackpot.  Although its premise pilot doesn’t necessarily give a clear idea of what the series will be, the seemingly irresistible plot hook–a half-dozen ordinary […]

  CHICAGO PD:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… This season, NBC went retro in a big way with its new series, from its Don’t you still love Michael J. Fox and Sean Hayes? comedies to its Doesn’t anyone remember Ironside? dramas (The Blacklist, of course, being the single exception), and […]

  WORKING THE ENGELS:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC – Change the Channel As summer sitcoms go, WORKING THE ENGELS makes Undateable look like the return of Seinfeld. It’s an inert pile of unfunny cliches, dysfunctional family division. The contrivance (calling it a “premise” would give it too much dignity) is that Papa Engel, a lawyer, […]

  JANE THE VIRGIN:  Monday 9PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… PLAYERS:  Ugly Betty, plus the whole notion of basing US TV shows on Spanish-language series (Red Band Society and The Mysteries of Laura are two more this season), and especially Executive Producer Ben Silverman, who’s was one of those behind Betty […]

  WEIRD LONERS:  Tuesday 9:30PM on FOX – If Nothing Else is On… WEIRD LONERS belongs to the sitcom subspecies of quirky singles comedy, which has given us New Girl (the pilot for Weird Loners was directed by Jake Kasdan, who’s also a New Girl director/producer) but also things like A To Z and Marry […]

  MERCY STREET:  Sunday 10PM on (many) PBS stations – Potential DVR Alert PBS isn’t accustomed to acting like a conventional “network,” and so it took the service until the very last episodes of Downton Abbey to do what any normal network would have done years ago:  use Downton as a platform to launch a […]

  INSECURE:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – In the Quene HBO introduces a promising new voice to TV comedy with Issa Rae’s INSECURE, which she created with Larry Wilmore (who left after pilot to concentrate on The Nightly Show).  Rae’s vision is strongly R-rated (a key word from the Donald Trump tape gets a full […]