TRIAL & ERROR:  Tuesday 9PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… NBC’s TRIAL & ERROR is a cluttered joke-book of a sitcom that parodies true-crime docuseries like Making A Murderer and especially The Staircase.  As in the latter, the accused murderer, here named Larry Henderson (John Lithgow), is a figure of some […]

  CODE BLACK:  Wednesday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel CBS’s new CODE BLACK is a mini-film festival of medical show cliches.  It’s set in a notoriously busy emergency room at a Los Angeles hospital, which frequently reaches the point where the patients needing immediate treatment swamp the resources available to treat them–designated “Code […]

  MAGNUM, P.I.:  Monday 9PM on CBS As everyone knows, the 2018-19 CBS TV season has turned out to be the final one overseen by Les Moonves, the longtime network mogul ousted after allegations of sexual misconduct.  It’s fitting that the first new series of his last season is that definitive Moonves-ian object, a rebooted […]

  BIG LITTLE LIES:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – DVR Alert We no longer blink when movie stars sign on for TV work, and this week’s arrivals are Oscar winners Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, not to mention Shailene Woodley, whose 7-hour HBO project BIG LITTLE LIES is so star-heavy that Adam Scott, Alexander Skarsgard […]

  VICE PRINCIPALS:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – In the Queue Your feelings about HBO’s new VICE PRINCIPALS are likely to be determined by your instinctive reaction to the name Danny McBride.  For a decade now, since the indie movie The Foot-Fist Way, McBride and his writing/producing/directing partner Jody Hill have been turning out variations […]

  LIMITLESS:  Tuesday 10PM on CBS – If Nothing Else Is On… LIMITLESS is the second new series in two days to reverse the basic point of the movie it’s based on and turn its premise into an excuse for a sci-fi tinged procedural. The CBS Limitless is as bland as FOX’s Minority Report, but […]

  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 […]

  ONE BIG HAPPY:  Tuesday 9:30PM on NBC – Change the Channel Have you heard the one about the guy who makes a pact with his lesbian best friend that if they’re not with anyone else when they turn 30, they’ll have a baby together?  Have you heard the one about the guy who meets […]