History Channel has been on quite a streak in its last two seasons.  Its first foray into scripted television, the miniseries Hatfields & McCoys, was a surprise smash hit, as was this year’s follow-up The Bible.  This season the network stepped into the continuing series world with VIKINGS, and while not at the same […]

  REVENGE, in its second season, demonstrates the perils of stretching a good thing too far.  (Also being stretched:  ABC’s concept of a “fall finale,” since unlike shows like Revolution and The Walking Dead that won’t be returning until February or March, Revenge will be back after the holidays.) Revenge started with a premise that […]

  SCANDAL is full of characters who take one step over the line of ethics and morality, sometimes for what they’ve convinced themselves are the best possible reasons, only to find themselves in a morass they can’t escape.  The same has come to be true of the series itself, which took its fatal step when […]

  ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK may be the most tolerant show on television (or “television,” or whatever it is we’re calling distributed entertainment content in this new Netflixed world).  All the characters, even those who commit the most heinous acts–inmates and guards both–have their reasons and their frailties.  They’re miserably in love, or living […]

  TNT’s MAJOR CRIMES, like its predecessor The Closer, belongs to the “procedural-plus” subgenre, with a crime to be solved every week combined with a secondary amount of continuing serialized plot.  However, there was very little of the “plus” to be found in tonight’s season finale (really a half-season finale, with the show scheduled to resume […]

> When A GIFTED MAN came onto the scene, it had all the high-class auspices a new series could want.  The pilot was directed by Academy Award-winner Jonathan Demme, was written by Susannah Grant (Eric Brockovich) and had a cast that included such strong actors as Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Ehle, Margo Martindale (who, by the […]

  In its second season, HBO’s SUCCESSION found an exquisite middle ground between Dallas and Shakespeare.  The show is still a somewhat rareified taste–it’s routinely been the lowest-rated show in the network’s current Sunday line-up–but as evidenced by its surprise writing Emmy a few weeks ago, its quality is recognized. The Season 2 finale, written […]

  MTV’s FINDING CARTER is another high-concept series challenged by its concept losing some of its height.  The original impetus for the story was teenager Carter (Kathryn Prescott) being rescued from a kidnapping at the hands of Lori (Milena Govich) that Carter didn’t even know had happened, because Lori had taken her at the age […]