AGENTS OF SHIELD:  Tuesday 8PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert Even without any connection to the multi-billion-dollar entertainment monolith that is Marvel (and behind it, Disney), the arrival of a new TV series from Joss Whedon would be an event.  Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a bedrock not just of the TV […]

  CHASING LIFE:  Tuesday 9PM on ABCFamily – Change the Channel ABCFamily is launching all its summer shows over the next week or two, so it appears to be luck rather than careful planning that’s resulted in its new CHASING LIFE, about a lovely young woman diagnosed with cancer, just a few days after the […]

  SELFIE:  Tuesday 8PM on ABC starting September 30 – If Nothing Else Is On… PLAYERS:  George Bernard Shaw.  (And Lerner & Loewe, whose My Fair Lady made Pygmalion into a fixture of pop culture.)  Series creator Emily Kapnek, of Suburgatory.  Stars John Cho and Karen Gillan.  Pilot director Julie Anne Robinson.  Warner Bros. Television. […]

  SECRETS & LIES:  Sunday 9PM on ABC – If Nothing Else Is On… How much do you find yourself missing Gracepoint?  Not Broadchurch, mind you, the brooding and powerful BBC child-murder mystery (which is returning to BBCAmerica next week), but the flat US remake that came and went on FOX last fall?  ABC hopes […]

  DEAD OF SUMMER:  Tuesday 9PM on Freeform – If Nothing Else Is On… Freeform’s DEAD OF SUMMER arrives with A-list auspices.  Two of its co-creators, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, are also the creators of Once Upon A Time (the remaining co-creator and series showrunner, Ian Goldberg, is a former Once writer/producer), and Horowitz […]

  MANHUNT: UNABOMBER:  Tuesday 10PM on Discovery – In the Queue Discovery’s 8-hour docudrama miniseries MANHUNT: UNABOMBER features its Ted Kaczynski (Paul Bettany) only in the final sequence of its opening 2 hours, a decision that gets the show off to an unfortunately pedestrian start.  As the title indicates, the focus isn’t on the charismatic […]

  UNSOLVED: THE MURDERS OF TUPAC & THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. – Tuesday 10PM on USA – Potential DVR Alert The progeny of The People vs. OJ Simpson continue to arrive.  This season we’ve had the (so far) enormously disappointing American Crime Story follow-up The Assassination of Gianni Versace, as well as Dick Wolf’s even worse […]

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and content of the […]