THE GOOD DOCTOR:  Monday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel ABC’s THE GOOD DOCTOR arrives with some pedigree, being a medical series from David Shore, the creator of House, and starring Freddie Highmore, fresh off his remarkable turn on Bates Motel.  The pilot, though, suggests that there’s very little of note here. The […]

THE NEWSROOM:  Sundays 10PM on HBO – DVR Alert We live in an era of TV auteurs.  Although there will always be networks and studios writing the checks–just ask Dan Harmon–it’s arguably the case that writer/producers like Matthew Weiner, Louis C.K., Kurt Sutter and Lena Dunham have more clout than all but a tiny handful […]

  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 […]

  RED WIDOW:  Sunday 10PM on ABC The “2-hour premiere” of RED WIDOW actually consisted of the pilot that was shot before last year’s upfronts, combined with the first regular episode (both halves written by series creator Melissa Rosenberg, with the pilot directed by Mark Pellington and episode 2 by Daniel Sackheim).  Watching the combination […]

  KING & MAXWELL:  Monday 10PM on TNT – Change the Channel Jon Tenney and Rebecca Romijn are an attractive, appealing pair of series leads, but they’re not enough to make the markedly sub-par new procedural KING & MAXWELL worth watching.  Even by TNT’s usually unadventurous summer standards, this is a show that never should […]

> 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 reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content of the […]

  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 […]

    HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS (FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE):  Wednesday 9:30PM on ABC –  Change the Channel There isn’t much to be said for the exhaustively titled midseason comedy HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS (FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE), but within the subgenre of sitcoms about adults living […]