THE GIFTED:  Monday 9PM on FOX – In the Queue FOX’s THE GIFTED exists in the X-Men region of Marvel’s mythology, which in corporate terms means that it (along with Fantastic Four) belongs to 20th Century Fox rather than Disney.  Fox has been more adventurous in its part of the superhero terrain than Disney, […]

  KILLING EVE:  Sunday 8PM on BBCAmerica – DVR Alert Transposing an artistic concern to a familiar pop culture genre can make the artist’s work much more accessible.  When John Krasinski made The Hollars, a sensitive story about a strained family, no one bought any tickets, but when he added monsters to the mix, the […]

  WHISKEY CAVALIER:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC ABC capped Oscar Night with a bit of dessert, very much a trifle:  a “sneak preview” of WHISKEY CAVALIER, which will officially premiere on Wednesday night with the same episode.  The genre is Romantic Intrigue Lite, very much in the tradition of Charade, one of the classics of […]

> AMERICAN HORROR STORY – Wednesdays 10PM on FX – Potential DVR Alert The first inkling of just how deranged AMERICAN HORROR STORY is going to be comes with one of the early “normal” scenes.  The location isn’t the haunted house, so we’re away from the girl with Down’s Syndrome who tells people they’re going […]

  NASHVILLE – Wednesday 10PM on ABC:  Potential DVR Alert ABC has become the network of soaps, and its big play in the genre for fall is NASHVILLE, which is inheriting Revenge‘s slot as the latter show gets promoted to Sundays.  The new drama is less instantly compelling than Revenge‘s pilot (there’s no mysterious shooting […]

  SAVE ME:  Thursday 8PM on NBC – Change the Channel Note:  This review was originally written after last year’s Upfronts, before it was known that SAVE ME would be held by NBC until the summer.  It’s possible that the pilot underwent changes during the months that followed, although if it did, NBC didn’t publicize […]

  RESURRECTION:  Sunday 9PM on ABC  – Potential DVR Alert The restrained tension of RESURRECTION‘s pilot may remind you of early, suburban Spielberg, and of M. Night Shyamalan before he became a punchline.  The premise, based on a novel called “The Returned” by Jason Mott (and also perhaps inspired by the unrelated French miniseries that ran […]

  FAKING IT:  Tuesday 10:30PM on MTV FAKING IT is intended as the companion piece to MTV’s hit scripted comedy Awkward., which serves as its lead-in, but on the basis of its pilot, it has nothing like the original comic voice of Lauren Iungerich’s show (of course, now that Iungerich has stepped away from Awkward., […]