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 […]

  It took some down-to-the-wire negotiations between ABC and production studio Lionsgate, but NASHVILLE made its way to a Season 3 renewal this week.  (And barring further ratings collapse, that makes a Season 4 more likely than not, since ABC would share in the increased revenues from syndication that would follow a 4-season run.)  It […]

  FOX executives have been swearing to anyone who’ll listen that DADS improved greatly after its much-panned early episodes, so it seemed appropriate to check back in with the show on the occasion of its back-to-back season finale half-hours. And the answer is… no.  Dads ended the season just about as awful as it began, […]

  Although there was plenty more going on–too much, in fact–it was fitting that Season 7 of DEXTER came down, in the end, to the women in Dexter Morgan’s life.  One could even say that this season might have been titled Deb, as a great deal of it tracked the journey of Dexter’s beloved adopted […]

  It may not be fair, but it’s awfully hard not to compare the second seasons of KILLING EVE directly with HBO’s Barry, since both were comedies-with-drama/dramas-with-comedy about hired killers that aired on virtually the same Sunday nights.  Many of us watched the latest installments of each series in the span of the same few hours.  […]

  Under new showrunner John Wirth, the third season of HELL ON WHEELS was on the whole uneven, and tonight’s season finale unfortunately wasn’t a very promising way for the bubble show to end its year. Wirth’s biggest change to Hell was to largely abandon the show’s original premise, which had Cullen Bohannan (Anson Mount) […]

  The final hour of PARKS & RECREATION was more conceptual than one might have expected, in a way that made it feel more like an epilogue than a conclusion.  Written by series co-creator/showrunner Michael Schur and star/producer Amy Poehler, and directed by Schur, it was an omnibus of flash-forwards, advancing the action as much […]

  With a full season of experience and audience feedback under its belt, it’s not unusual for a TV series to improve in its second season.  What’s considerably less typical is for the reverse to happen.  Yet whether due to the addition of new showrunner Brad Kern (although series creators Sherri Cooper and Jennifer Levin […]