THE STRAIN:  Sunday 10PM on FX – Potential DVR Alert Although capable of finer things (notably his Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth), the expert filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is one of those directors–you could call them Tarantinians–with a deep fondness for neo-schlock.  It’s resulted in projects like the Hellboy series, and also Pacific Rim, where del […]

  MULANEY:  Sunday 9:30PM on FOX – Change the Channel MULANEY arrives with a fair amount of goodwill.  It’s a multicamera sitcom modeled after Seinfeld, and produced by Lorne Michaels.  Its creator/star, John Mulaney, is one of the relatively few SNL writers to have achieved some measure of fame for himself, mostly thanks to his […]

  GREY’S ANATOMY is no longer Shonda Rhimes’ brightest, shiniest toy, but in a way her skills as a producer are most evident in the way that her first hit hums along, now in its 2d decade on the air.  That’s incredibly difficult for a serialized drama, especially one that started off as being about […]

  TIME AFTER TIME:  Sunday 9PM on ABC – If Nothing Else Is On… If H.G. Wells really did travel from 1893 to the present day, one of the things that would probably horrify him is the fact that all creative endeavors are now viewed merely as “IP,” a play-doh-like building material used to create […]

Game WISDOM OF THE CROWD:  Sunday 8PM on CBS – Change the Channel CBS’s WISDOM OF THE CROWD is for the people who thought the problem with FOX’s canceled APB was that it didn’t star Jeremy Piven.  Once again we have a high-tech billionaire who decides to privatize crimefighting after someone close to him is […]

  REVERIE:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC In recent seasons, original summer dramas on the broadcast networks have tended to cluster in two varieties:  straightforward procedurals like Rookie Blue and The Night Shift, and fantasy-thrillers like Under the Dome and Extant.  NBC’s new REVERIE, created by Extant‘s Mickey Fisher, tries to mix the genres, with indifferent […]

  WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS:  Wednesday 10PM on FX The deadpan vampire mockumentary cult hit WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS is the latest piece of IP to find eternal–or at least extended–life on the small screen.  In some ways, it seems like that was where it belonged all along, since the format […]

> 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 […]