PARKS & RECREATION:  Thursday 8PM on NBC PARKS & RECREATION had a much better time in London than Elementary.  The marvelous never-a-hit comedy, starting its improbable 6th season, brought most of the cast over for a full hour of the show’s trademark mix of crazy and heartfelt.  No one who wasn’t already in love […]

  PSYCH:  Wednesday 10PM on USA It’s sort of fitting that PSYCH, a show now a little past its prime, kicked off its 8th and perhaps final season with a parody of late 1990s Guy Ritchie lad thrillers like Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels–movies even Ritchie doesn’t make anymore, now that he’s knee-deep in […]

  ORPHAN BLACK:  Saturday 9PM on BBCAmerica In an era of non-stop TV drama overhype, last season’s arrival of ORPHAN BLACK was that extreme rarity:  the real thing.  Even its network didn’t seem to know initially what it had on its hands, as BBCAmerica promoted the show, but reserved the bulk of its marketing resources […]

  THE LEFTOVERS:  Sunday 10PM on HBO – Potential DVR Alert Part of the HBO mystique–what helps keep it so not-TV-ish–is the caliber of shows it doesn’t put on the air.  An adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, directed by Noah Baumbach and with a cast headed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ewan McGregor?  Not good […]

  DOWNTON ABBEY – Sunday 9PM on PBS When it started airing 5 years ago, DOWNTON ABBEY was an artifact of nostalgia for a vanished era of British society, one Americans for all our proud egalitarianism have always eaten with a spoon.  Now it feels just as much like a time capsule into a different […]

  MISTRESSES:  Thursday 9PM on ABC MISTRESSES lost its marquee star this season, when Alyssa Milano declined to move with the show to its new (cheaper) Vancouver shooting location.  We’ll see what effect, if any, this has on the ratings, but in terms of the show’s substance, by Season 2 Milano wasn’t being featured more […]

  USA Network has handed its keys to Sam Esmail and MR. ROBOT, and with good reason.  Although it was only a moderate success in the ratings last year, the series gave creaky old USA a jolt of pure critical adrenaline, becoming a zeitgeist show at a time when the sheer clutter of new television […]

  THE AFFAIR:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime The second season of THE AFFAIR took some risks, and they largely paid off.  (Dramatically, if not in the ratings.)  The series widened its universe beyond the viewpoints of illicit lovers Noah Solloway (Dominic West) and Allison Lockhart (Ruth Wilson) to include their respective exes Helen (Maura Tierney) […]