ALPHAS:  Monday 10PM on Syfy   WHERE WE WERE:  Think X-Men without the big special effects, the cool gadgets and the costumes.  Dr. Lee Rosen (David Stathairn) is the shepherd to a group of Alphas, individuals with mutations that give them abilities beyond the normal:  Hicks (Warren Christie) has super-aim, Harken (Malik Yoba) has […]

  30 ROCK:  Thursday 8PM on NBC WHERE WE WERE:  Jack (Alec Baldwin) was divorcing his now-freed North Korean prisoner wife Avery (Elizabeth Banks).  Jenna (Jane Krakowski) was engaged to her Jenna-impersonator boyfriend Paul L’Astname (Will Forte).  Liz (Tina Fey) was, somewhat surprisingly, still with boyfriend Criss (James Marsden), and even more surprisingly, former page […]

  THE CLIENT LIST:  Sunday 10PM on Lifetime No one would include Lifetime’s THE CLIENT LIST on a short (or for that matter, lengthy) list of the highlights of our current remarkable era of cable television drama.  In almost every way, it’s a very standard, run-of-the-mill, unexceptional one-hour domestic piece, with a veteran network TV […]

  COPPER:  Sunday 10PM on BBCAmerica A tale of two low-rated series:  BBCAmerica’s two original scripted dramas COPPER and Orphan Black had comparable ratings in their first seasons.  Copper garnered a higher number of older fans (600K total viewers even after its initially higher-rated first few episodes, compared to just 3-400K for Orphan Black–which in […]

  PARENTHOOD:  Thursday 10PM on NBC PARENTHOOD, like Parks & Recreation, is one of NBC’s little engines that could, chugging along to a fourth season despite mediocre ratings.  (And last night’s series-low-tying 1.6 in its Thursday night debut won’t help any.)  Whatever the network may consider its failings from a bottom-line point of view, creatively it […]

  CHICAGO PD:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… This season, NBC went retro in a big way with its new series, from its Don’t you still love Michael J. Fox and Sean Hayes? comedies to its Doesn’t anyone remember Ironside? dramas (The Blacklist, of course, being the single exception), and […]

  SALEM:  Sunday 10PM on WGN America – If Nothing Else Is On… There’s more than vanity to the desire of just about every cable network to have at least one original scripted series (although that’s part of it).  There’s also a clear dollar and cents value to original scripted programming, which pays off in […]

  UNDER THE DOME:  Monday 10PM on CBS The broadcast networks don’t get much in the way of pleasant surprises these days, but last summer’s UNDER THE DOME was an exception.  CBS’s “event” adaptation of Stephen King’s massively long novel was intended as an ambitious entry in the quiet world of summer programming, and it […]