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 […]

  CSI:  CYBER – Wednesday 10PM on CBS – If Nothing Else Is On… Nobody tunes into a CSI show to be surprised.  The franchise has been spectacularly successful for CBS, and even now, 15 years into its run, the mothership series does a fair number each week (better than Battle Creek, which replaced it […]

  DEVIOUS MAIDS:  Sunday 10PM on Lifetime – If Nothing Else Is On… Technically, DEVIOUS MINDS isn’t a spin-off of Desperate Housewives–there are no significant shared characters or storylines.  But Maids, like Housewives, hails from writer Marc Cherry, and it follows the Housewives tone and pattern so closely that it often feels like at any […]

  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 […]

  WHITE FAMOUS:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime – Change the Channel Showtime’s shaky new comedy WHITE FAMOUS is spectacularly ill-timed for the week after the downfall of Harvey Weinstein.  The premiere half-hour has as its comic centerpiece a sequence where a famous Hollywood figure meets with an aspiring young performer in his trailer, sitting so […]

  DYNASTY:  Wednesday 9PM on CW – In the Queue The new DYNASTY isn’t the fall’s worst new show, but it’s the most puzzling.  Was there really a surge of interest among CW’s 18-34 target demo for a revival of an ABC soap that went off the air 28 years ago?  The show has a […]

  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 […]

  HELIX:  Friday 10PM on Syfy – If Nothing Else Is On… Just about every network, cable and broadcast, is in the science-fiction business these days in one way or another, and weirdly enough the only one that seems to have been left behind is Syfy, which has been waiting a long time for its […]