Movies have the advantage over TV when it comes to telling gimmicky stories, because a movie only has to sustain the gimmick for 2 hours, and then it’s done.  YOUNGER could have been an effortless feature vehicle for [fill in the rom-com star blank], but after 12 half-hour episodes, the effort is already showing […]

  After three sets of series creators and two pilots, THE CATCH certainly zeroed in on its inspirations:  To Catch A Thief plus The Thomas Crown Affair, with a touch of Soderbergh’s version of Ocean’s Eleven.  The Catch longs for fizzy romantic intrigue, with light (but opulent) crime stirred alongside flirtatious banter between glamorous people, […]

  Vampires may live forever, but TV shows don’t, and tonight the coffin closed on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, the pre-superhero champion of the then-fledgling CW network when it debuted 8 years ago.  In truth, the close of business was a season or two past due:  not only were the ratings way down from their peak, […]

  The seventh season of HBO’s blockbuster GAME OF THRONES, its most watched and in some ways most confounding, was shaped by two outside factors, and possibly a third.  Series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, having outrun the completed portion of George R. R. Martin’s series of novels, were in total control of the […]

    The Season 2 finale for CW’s NIKITA was probably shot with the idea that it could well be the series finale–and logically it should have been, considering the show’s ratings.  In recent weeks, Nikita has had a 0.4 rating in 18-49s, making it what has to be one of the lowest-watched shows ever […]

> 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.   […]

  Throughout its first season, COPPER has almost never been as vivid as it seemed like it should be.  The show’s premise and auspices were promising:  the lead producers were Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, who apart from their illustrious solo credits, had combined as a team for the seminal cop show Homicide:  Life On […]

  The second season of Lena Dunham’s GIRLS has been as polarizing as anything on TV since the conclusion of Lost; with its relatively low viewership, it’s sometimes felt as though literally every person who watches the show has been writing about it.  The season finale, written by Dunham with fellow Executive Producer Judd Apatow […]