Articles

THE SKED PILOT REVIEW: “The LA Complex”

Posted April 25, 2012 by Mitch Salem

> THE LA COMPLEX:  Tuesdays 9PM on CW – If Nothing Else Is On… By CW standards, THE LA COMPLEX is close to gritty realism, which is to say it’s a shade less glossy than 90210 and Gossip Girl.  Set in a downscale version of the kind of apartment building/motel familiar to anyone who watched […]

Full Story »

Fall Pilots

THE SKED Fall Pilot Report: FOX’s “Sleepy Hollow”

Posted September 17, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here. SLEEPY HOLLOW:  Monday 9PM on FOX – If Nothing Else Is On… For what’s supposed to be an original series, SLEEPY HOLLOW feels awfully familiar.  Part of it, of course, is that writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are doing a spin on the Washington Irving classic […]

Full Story »

Pilot Reports

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Conviction”

Posted October 4, 2016 by Mitch Salem

  CONVICTION:  Monday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel It’s routine to refer to a procedural TV series as featuring a “case of the week,” but ABC’s CONVICTION takes it literally.  When former First Daughter and party girl Hayes Morrison (Hayley Atwell) is arrested for cocaine possession and blackmailed by NY’s politically ambitious DA […]

Full Story »

Pilot Reports

THE SKED’S FALL PILOT REPORT: ABC’s “Malibu Country”

Posted July 26, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  MALIBU COUNTRY: Friday 8:30PM starting November 2 on ABC – Worth A Look Disclaimer: Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall. Pilots are often reedited and re-scored, and in some cases even recast or reshot. These critiques shouldn’t be taken as full pilot reviews, […]

Full Story »

Other

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “Mob City”

Posted December 5, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  MOB CITY:  Wednesday 9PM on TNT As a writer and director, Frank Darabont has never been in a hurry.  His The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Majestic and The Mist all run over 2 hours (Green Mile is over 3), and his initial season of The Walking Dead had as measured a pace […]

Full Story »

Pilot Reports

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Ransom”

Posted January 1, 2017 by Mitch Salem

  RANSOM:  Saturday 8PM on CBS – Change the Channel There’s literally one thing worth knowing about CBS’s new RANSOM, and here it is:  it’s the first scripted broadcast network series in quite a while to be scheduled for initial airing on Saturday nights, as opposed to being dumped there after failing elsewhere on the […]

Full Story »

Pilot Reports

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Ten Days In the Valley”

Posted October 2, 2017 by Mitch Salem

  TEN DAYS IN THE VALLEY:  Sunday 10PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert TEN DAYS IN THE VALLEY is very ABC, in a good way.  Created by Tassie Cameron, who co-created the network’s longtime summer hit Rookie Blue, it’s a purportedly closed-end mystery soap, about a successful TV-producer mother whose 8-year old daughter goes […]

Full Story »

Pilot Reports

THE SKED PILOT REVIEW: “Dallas”

Posted June 14, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  DALLAS – Wednesday 9PM on TNT:  If Nothing Else Is On…   DALLAS is a gusher, all right.  TNT’s disinterment of the 1980s blockbuster soap is loaded with so many emptily portentous glares and melodramatic reaction shots that it might almost be a telenovela. In 1978, the year the original Dallas went on the […]

Full Story »