Professional sports are so central to American culture, and so particularly critical to the television business, that it’s surprising the area had been largely ignored as the locale of a series until USA’s NECESSARY ROUGHNESS debuted.  Of course, since Roughness is a USA show, it’s mostly been content with superficial light drama, without any […]

  Would ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND have fared better if scheduled as originally planned, in the role of Sunday 8PM filler between the two half-seasons of its parent Once Upon A Time, instead of being sent to fend for itself on Thursdays?  In the short term, probably so, as Once fans might well […]

  The idea of applying a deep coat of existential angst to thriller conventions isn’t new–every Sundance Film Festival has at least a couple of examples of the sub-genre, and there are even sub-sub-genres of the form, like Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge, which add surreal humor to the mix.  With 8+ hours […]

  With its endless governmental and quasi-governmental conspiracies and its sci-fi technology, NIKITA has always flirted with sheer silliness, and in its Season 3 finale the show went all the way.  Its ratings have also flirted with cancellation, and that came close to happening too:  the series will barely be coming back, for an as-yet […]

  Starz’s DA VINCI’S DEMONS was unsatisfactory in just about every respect, all the way through to tonight’s Season 1 finale, a cluster of cliffhangers that resolved almost nothing.  Watching the end of Season 1, it was fairly clear that this had been envisioned and probably budgeted by Starz and its production partner the BBC […]

  For all that HBO’s WESTWORLD is deliberately obscure and oblique, one thing has become increasingly clear through the course of its second season:  series creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy expect viewers to decide for themselves what aspects of the show are features and which are bugs.  Most obviously, Westworld has no interest in […]

> The title “Best Drama On Network Television” used to mean a lot more than it does these days (what’s the competition?  Parenthood has lovely moments but also its share of contrivances; Fringe and The Vampire Diaries are terrific niche shows), but for whatever it’s still worth, THE GOOD WIFE continues to own the crown.   […]

  LEGENDS OF TOMORROW‘s destiny as the goofball discard pile of CW’s DC/Greg Berlanti universe may have reached its apotheosis with tonight’s Season 3 finale, written by co-creator/Executive Producers Matt Guggenheim and Phil Klemmer.  It featured a family-sized box of former series regulars and guest stars from throughout the run of the series, but its […]