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 ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB never achieved much in the way of lift-off, and although ABC knew it was coming–there was a reason it was pushed to a summer run as the lead-in to Mistresses–the show’s flat quality must have initially taken the network by surprise. On paper, the show seemed like it was exactly […]
John Ridley’s ABC anthology series AMERICAN CRIME has always worn its sackcloth and ashes in plain sight, but Season 3 was especially brutal. It was eight hours of unceasing human misery, enough to make the insides curdle of even the most earnest devotee of serious TV drama. Understandably, viewers fled, pushing the show’s ratings […]
The ratings for BALLERS have more than justified its renewal by HBO, but the pieces of the series have yet to fit together. Most of the show’s creative team hails from Entourage, and Ballers embraces the same bimbos-and-bling lifestyle porn and breezy pace, but having Dwayne Johnson as its central attraction has proved to […]
When a show is as successful as AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD, it can afford to spend virtually the entire back half of a season as little more than a lead-up to the next. But can it also provide no satisfaction at all when it reaches the end of the season finale? Of course, Walking […]
The first season of YELLOWSTONE was a feat of auteurship. Every episode of the recently-rebooted Paramount Network’s prestige series was written and directed solely by series creator Taylor Sheridan, something not even David Lynch or Sam Esmail can claim. The result was 10 hours of television that qualified, to an extent rarely seen, as […]
In real life, serial killers are not infrequently foiled by mistakes as mundane as unpaid traffic tickets, and while Hannibal Lecter may be eternal, the NBC television series version of Hannibal–despite an inexpensive license fee and critical adoration–was finally brought down by low ratings, the show’s online streaming deal, and series creator Bryan Fuller’s […]
We’ve all had reason to remember over the past few months that the experience of watching a TV show or movie doesn’t necessarily reflect the experiences of those behind the scenes. Still, it’s nice to think that the writers room on Showtime’s BILLIONS could be the happiest place on Earth (Adult Division). Under the […]