It’s impossible to discuss the season finale of NURSE JACKIE–or, as it turns out, its entire fifth season–without talking about its final minute, so I’ll skip to the next paragraph to ward off anyone who unwisely wandered into the SPOILER territory of a season finale review. Here we are.  The question is whether its […]

  As the respect and stature given to TV drama has increased, so has the pressure to deliver a perfect ending.  Series finales are not only expected to satisfyingly end the major storylines and round out the lives of the show’s characters, but to sum up and clarify the themes and overall mission of the […]

  Was this the season that Cinemax’s comparatively low-rent BANSHEE surpassed Justified?  In the subgenre of cop show pulp, the FX series has been the unquestioned class entry, with its distinguished Elmore Leonard auspices and elegantly violent plotting and dialogue.  But with a few episodes to go this season, Justified has felt a bit desultory, […]

  REVENGE made a concerted effort this season to earn back its… well, let’s call it “credibility,” although that word doesn’t have much to do with this series.  Creator and original showrunner Mike Kelley was shown the door, and Executive Producer Sunil Nayar took over, all but banishing the phrase “The Initiative” from the series […]

  Season 4 of HBO’s epic GAME OF THRONES had the good fortune to cover the back half of George R. R. Martin’s third novel in the series, “A Storm of Swords,” which is perhaps the most thrill-packed few hundred pages in the entire saga.  That made for a 10-hour ride with few chances for […]

  One of the ways that, even at a time overwhelmed with quality TV drama, Cinemax’s THE KNICK has proven itself extraordinary has been in its subversion of the accepted TV template.  Conventional wisdom has had it that the auteurs of television are its writer/producers, with the directors as skilled craftspeople devoted to realizing the […]

  The first season of BROADCHURCH was a phenomenon in the UK, one that prompted the ill-fated FOX US remake Gracepoint, and also, back in England, the somewhat controversial decision to renew the series beyond its seemingly self-contained initial season.  Against the odds, though, in Broadchurch Season 2, writer/creator Chris Chibnall wove a more inventively plotted, less monotonously paced […]

  Time-travel tales are everywhere on TV these days–Timeless, Making History, Time After Time  and Frequency will join Legends of Tomorrow next season, and even Game of Thrones dabbled in the genre this year.  But the works that take themselves seriously are fiendishly difficult to pull off, apt to fall into traps of timelines that coexist […]