NEXT CALLER:  TBD Midseason on NBC – Change the Channel If you were going to do a satire about network television in the vein of Episodes, one that required a show-within-the-show to illustrate how hackneyed and witless a TV sitcom could be, you might well make it about a burned-out, sexist–but secretly sensitive–radio shock […]

  SEAN SAVES THE WORLD:  Thursday 9PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… This is the kind of sitcom SEAN SAVES THE WORLD is.  A co-worker of Sean (Sean Hayes), Liz (Megan Hilty), walks into his office already talking, not realizing that he’s actually on speakerphone with their new boss.  When she’s called […]

  EMERALD CITY:  Friday 9PM on NBC – Change the Channel EMERALD CITY will make you wish you’d stayed in Kansas.  It’s a muddle of The Wizard of Oz, Mad Max, Game of Thrones (in their dreams) and that terrible Syfy updated version of Alice In Wonderland from a few years ago, and you’d think […]

  THE BRINK:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – If Nothing Else Is On… THE BRINK will make you appreciate the precision and verbal dexterity of Veep.  Actually, although it’s an HBO political satire, The Brink gets most of its inspiration from an earlier classic of the form, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.  Much as in that […]

  MINORITY REPORT:  Monday 9PM on FOX – If Nothing Else Is On… It’s not unusual for a sci-fi/fantasy or action-adventure pilot to boast a far more generous budget than the amount allotted to ordinary series episodes, sometimes double or more.  So the high-tech production design and snazzy special effects of FOX’s MINORITY REPORT pilot, […]

  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) […]

  FEED THE BEAST:  Tuesday 10PM on AMC – Change the Channel There’s not much on the menu of AMC’s new FEED THE BEAST, which previewed tonight in advance of its regular timeslot debut on Tuesday.  The show is based on a Danish format, and perhaps that version had more meat on its bones, but […]

  WELCOME TO THE FAMILY:  Thursday 8:30PM on NBC – Change the Channel NBC continues is retro approach to fall comedy with WELCOME TO THE FAMILY. Even more than Sean Saves the World and The Michael J. Fox Show, Family seems intended for viewers just an AARP mailing away from TVLand, for whom the very idea […]