TRANSPLANT:  Tuesday 10PM on NBC A great many shows that we consider “American television” are actually produced in Canada, thanks to favorable tax credits and currency exchange rates.  The creators of these shows and most of the more familiar stars may hail from the US, but the rest of the cast and behind-the-scenes personnel […]

  ZOEY’S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST – Sundays 10PM on NBC (starting February 16) In a broadcast network landscape musty with procedurals and the mildest possible sitcoms, NBC deserves credit for commissioning Austin Winsberg’s ZOEY’S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST, an original musical fantasy (the collected works of Dennis Potter and ABC’s short-lived Eli Stone aside).  It’s a genuine attempt […]

  WATCHMEN:  Sunday 9PM on HBO The Damon Lindelof/HBO WATCHMEN provides a new wrinkle to the world of IP exploitation.  It’s not an adaptation of the classic Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel (a la Zack Snyder’s all-too-reverent 2009 film) or even a reboot, but a newly conceived work that’s more like a spin-off or a […]

  NANCY DREW:  Wednesday 9PM on CW Although NANCY DREW doesn’t hail from CW’s go-to producer Greg Berlanti (its showrunners are Gossip Girl‘s Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who created the show with Noga Landau), the series is clearly meant to follow in the path of Berlanti’s Riverdale as an “adult” (i.e., sexualized and violent) […]

  ALMOST FAMILY:  Wednesday 9PM on FOX Whether we like it or not, the strongest lead-in on broadcast television right now is The Masked Singer, which makes it somewhat surprising that FOX has given the precious slot afterward to the mess that ALMOST FAMILY appears to be.  Even more surprising is that the lead producer […]

  ON BECOMING A GOD IN CENTRAL FLORIDA:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime There’s an overlap between two of cable’s more high-profile new shows, which also happen to air against each other in the linear world.  Both HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones and Showtime’s ON BECOMING A GOD IN CENTRAL FLORIDA are dark comedies about pernicious American […]

  THE LOUDEST VOICE:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime The rise of Fox News through its dark visionary Roger Ailes, and the resulting effect on media, politics and the world at large, is one of the most important sociopolitical stories of this era, but on the basis of its opening hour, Showtime’s 7-hour limited series THE […]

  GRAND HOTEL:  Monday 10PM on ABC ABC’s cardboard summer soap GRAND HOTEL is set at a resort hotel in Miami that isn’t as much fun as the one in Jane the Virgin.  This one has a standard-issue set of crises:  the hotel is bankrupt, its owner Santiago Mendoza (Demian Bichir) in debt to shady […]