LOW WINTER SUN just kept going around in circles.  The most characteristic hour of its season may have been its penultimate one, which aired as the first half of a 2-hour season (very possibly series) finale.  (Hour 1 was written by Co-Executive Producer Rolin Jones and directed by Anthony Hemingway; the final hour was […]

  If there was a way to turn its premise into a TV series worth watching, TOUCH didn’t find it.  The show tried very different approaches in its two seasons, but FOX’s cancellation notice this week closed the door on any further tries. In its first season, Touch was built around the feel-good idea that […]

  When a show that’s clearly been losing its way creatively suffers in the ratings, like Revenge, it’s understandable.  But ONCE UPON A TIME has run out of steam this season much faster than ABC likely anticipated.  Late last season, Once was regularly getting a 3 rating in 18-49s, but this season’s average dipped to a […]

  As this new era of television drama has developed, people have talked wistfully about the broadcast networks airing shows with the distinctiveness and stylization (and darkness) we now associate with cable, but really that show already exists, and it’s NBC’s HANNIBAL.  It may very well be the damnedest thing to appear on one of […]

  The idea of planting Mary, Queen of Scots in the middle of the CW line-up, a 16th century monarch among the network’s assortment of wisecracking vampires, werewolves, demons and other supernatural creatures, seemed half-crazy when the network picked up REIGN last fall, but the series has built strongly through the course of the season […]

  I’M DYING UP HERE certainly wasn’t the worst show of the summer, but it did make one wonder how it had made its way through the development process and onto Showtime’s air.  Series creator Dave Flebotte’s take on the nonfiction book by William Knoedelseder was almost defiantly uncommercial.  The book detailed the 1970s LA […]

  Barring unusual financial or political considerations, David E. Kelley’s MONDAY MORNINGS–which has had wretched ratings since its debut–aired its final episode on TNT with tonight’s technically season finale, so we won’t spend a lot of time poking around the body.  Returning to the show after its first month of episodes, hardly anything seemed to […]

  In a way, COVERT AFFAIRS typifies the uncertain place where USA Network finds itself these days.  The series began in 2010 as one of USA’s mostly light-hearted “blue-sky” procedurals.  It centered around young, naive language expert Annie Walker (Piper Perabo), who was literally seduced into joining the CIA on a beach vacation, and who […]