If the first season of THE FOLLOWING stands for anything, it’s that the significant difference between the best cable dramas and the vast majority of their network counterparts hasn’t been about the ability to depict extreme violence.  The Following was as relentlessly violent as anything this side of The Walking Dead (and much more […]

  REVOLUTION was sort of a sad story.  The lights-are-out sci-fi adventure was NBC’s top priority in Fall 2012, promoted like crazy and given the network’s prized post-The Voice timeslot.  At first the show looked like the hit NBC desperately needed, but once it started dropping in late fall it didn’t stop, and by the […]

  Replacing a show’s creator with a new showrunner isn’t the preferred way for a series to proceed, but the change did some good for Season 3 of RAY DONOVAN, although tonight’s season finale didn’t necessarily showcase that fact.  it wouldn’t exactly be accurate to say that David Hollander, taking over for creator Ann Biderman, […]

  Despite all the blood-drinkers, vengeful ghosts and homicidal maniacs on hand, the most frightening aspect of AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOTEL may have been the sight of Lady Gaga picking up a Golden Globe for her blank imitation of a performance as the hotel’s Catherine-Deneuve-in-The Hunger-like mannequin murderess.  (Gaga, it turns out, is sadly Madonna-like […]

  If Ryan Murphy’s goal with the second season of AMERICAN CRIME STORY was to demonstrate the breadth of the show’s anthology branding, not just in subject matter but in style and structure–unlike the relative consistency of his American Horror Story, with its repertory company of writers and stars–well, mission accomplished.  Murphy handed the keys […]

  It helps, when watching CW’s BEAUTY & THE BEAST, not to think too much about “Beauty and the Beast”.  Not the 1987 TV show, and certainly not the movies and other adaptations of the story.  Jay Ryan’s Vincent Keller just isn’t much of a Beast–he’s not even much of an Incredible Hulk, and he’s […]

  BONNIE & CLYDE saved its most idiotic inspiration for the end.  Up until its last few minutes, the second half of the Lifetime/A&E/History miniseries was perhaps marginally better than its first (which we dealt with in yesterday’s review).  There was less chatty posthumous narration from Clyde (Emile Hirsch) this time around, a greater role […]

  Starz’s SURVIVOR’S REMORSE took some confident steps forward in its second season, even if that wasn’t reflected in the lackluster ratings.  Season 1 was mostly content with being a sports-driven Entourage clone (a position now occupied by HBO’s Ballers) about basketball star Cam Calloway (Jessie T. Usher) and his family basking in free agency […]