TEACHERS:  Wednesday 10:30PM on TV Land (pilot airs 11PM on January 13, also available via on-demand & streaming) – Change the Channel In its continuing effort to cultivate a younger image, TV Land will follow Season 2 episodes of Younger with the new TEACHERS.  Both are female-oriented, but they could hardly be more different […]

  SECRETS & LIES – Sunday 9PM on ABC – Change the Channel Everything about the return of ABC’s SECRETS & LIES feels a bit off.  Even the scheduling of the quasi-anthology series (different stories and characters, except for the connecting presence of Juliette Lewis as stern lead detective Andrea Cornell) is odd–the series took […]

  HAPPY TOGETHER:  Monday 8:30PM on CBS Even though CBS’s HAPPY TOGETHER is inspired by a period in Executive Producer Harry Styles’s actual life, it’s one of those sitcoms where no one in front of or behind the cameras appears to have spent much time on Earth.  The contrivance that serves as the plot has […]

  THE LOUDEST VOICE:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime The rise of Fox News through its dark visionary Roger Ailes, and the resulting effect on media, politics and the world at large, is one of the most important sociopolitical stories of this era, but on the basis of its opening hour, Showtime’s 7-hour limited series THE […]

  PURE GENIUS:  Thursday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel One of the oddities of CBS’s medical drama PURE GENIUS is that its setting–a wildly overfunded institute that boasts the ultimate in cutting edge technology, regularly offers miracles to its patients, and is backed by an arrogant billionaire mastermind–would ordinarily be revealed as the […]

  FALLING SKIES:  Sunday 10PM on TNT FALLING SKIES had a premise that seemed like it should be able to run indefinitely:  a war against alien invaders fought mostly on the ground, as an allegory of the US Revolutionary War, with its main hero Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) a historical scholar, family man (it’s a […]

  ANIMAL KINGDOM:  Tuesday 9PM on TNT ANIMAL KINGDOM has been a key part of TNT’s rebranding as a hipper TV destination than the home of Major Crimes and The Last Ship, and tonight’s Season 2 premiere promised more of the same, with plenty of FX-level sexuality and general grittiness on display.  The key change, […]

  GRIMM:  Friday 9PM on NBC Although it’s technically in the action genre, action hasn’t turned out to be what GRIMM does best, which made tonight’s rat-a-tat Season 3 premiere feel somewhat off-brand.  Over its two years on the air, the series has transitioned nicely from a demon-of-the-week supernatural procedural with a fairly wooden lead, […]