Michelle Ashford’s series MASTERS OF SEX has been the extraordinary surprise of the fall television season.  It seemed, on its face, to be dauntingly unpromising.  In telling the story of sex researchers William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) in the 1950s, surely it would be smarmy or else dull, too much […]

  It made plenty of strategic sense for Showtime to reclassify SHAMELESS in its 4th season as a Comedy for Emmy Award purposes, since television is now swamped with contending dramas, but if the plan works, the result will be pretty ironic, since this was the season where the actions of the mostly happy-go-lucky Gallagher […]

  The fifth season of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES was great fun as usual, although also a bit sloppier than the norm.  That could well be the result of series mastermind Julie Plec having to spread her time between Diaries, the new Originals, and whatever her duties were on The Tomorrow People, of which she was […]

  A serialized drama without major stars, a familiar genre or a grabby premise simply can’t afford to take half its season figuring itself out.  (Having a title that says absolutely nothing about what the series is about doesn’t help either.)  That almost certainly sealed the fate of HALT AND CATCH FIRE–although it’s AMC, so […]

  Rarely has a TV series crashed as quickly and completely as ABC’s RESURRECTION.  It premiered just 10 months ago with a 3.8 rating in the 18-49 demo, yet last week it managed only an 0.8 (actually up a tenth from the previous week).  In other words, 80% of the audience that was initially enthusiastic about […]

  History will record that on the same night the curtain rang down for Mad Men, THE ROYALS also concluded its season.  As utterly different as the two shows are, The Royals is one of the many cable scripted series that probably wouldn’t exist if Mad Men hadn’t proven how valuable a single drama can […]

  “Interactive TV” is a phrase that’s been used many times in many contexts over the years, and HBO’s WESTWORLD provided a new way to look at the concept.  The first season of Westworld was–more than Lost, more than Mr. Robot, even going back all the way to The Prisoner–an unprecedentedly elaborate series of puzzles.  […]

  BETTER CALL SAUL reminds us that a gripping tale about well-drawn characters can hold audiences even if it’s not the story they thought they wanted to see.  Although it’s an off-shoot of Breaking Bad, Saul rarely has high-octane action sequences to compare with Bad‘s.  Much of the time, it exists entirely outside conventional genre, […]