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 […]

  RUSH:  Thursday 9PM on USA – Change the Channel USA Network is aiming for “edgy” with its new Thursday line-up, and so the pilot for RUSH begins with its antihero Will Rush (Tom Ellis) doing coke.  The twist?  When his lady friend goes into cardiac arrest, Will reveals himself as a brilliant physician who […]

  SEED:  Monday 9:30PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… Remember last year’s Vince Vaughn (purported) comedy Delivery Man?  CW’s summer sitcom SEED isn’t a rip-off of the movie, exactly, since it premiered in Canada before the Vaughn movie opened (although whether it’s a rip-off of Starbuck, the 2011 Canadian movie that preceded […]

  BACKPACKERS:  Monday 8:30PM on CW – Change the Channel BACKPACKERS feels like a student film project, although it isn’t one.  Instead, it’s another example of the walls coming down between entertainment platforms:  a Canadian digital series–written and directed by British talent–that aired on CW’s website and has now been picked up for air (along […]

  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 […]

  WELCOME TO SWEDEN:  Thursday 9PM on NBC – Potential DVR Alert WELCOME TO SWEDEN has one of the more unusual provenances of any show on a US broadcast network.  It was commissioned by Swedish television, where it aired last spring–and which explains its heavy use of subtitled Swedish dialogue.  Although it includes some familiar […]

  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, […]

  EXTANT:  Wednesday 9PM on CBS – If Nothing Else Is On… CBS’s EXTANT has been at the center of a Hollywood tentpole-sized marketing campaign for months, so it’s a bit disappointing to find that the show itself is just a moderately compelling hodgepodge of sci-fi motifs, without even the ambitious scale of the network’s […]