THE NEIGHBORS:  Friday 8:30PM on ABC THE NEIGHBORS was last season’s reminder that a pilot isn’t the final word on a series.  In fact, neither are the first several episodes.  It took a while for Dan Fogelman’s show to demonstrate that it was more than its inane premise and slapstick gags about aliens living […]

  Season 6 of THE GOOD WIFE has a tough act to follow:  its own dazzling Season 5, which brought the show back from previous signs of subdued middle age and established it once again as one of the best shows on any form of television.  It being a broadcast network series, we have 22 […]

  HEARTBEAT:  Wednesday 8PM on NBC – Change the Channel NBC’s HEARTBEAT differs from most of the post-ER, post-Grey’s Anatomy medical shows that have come down the pike in that it’s an unabashed star vehicle rather than an ensemble piece.  And this isn’t an antihero story, a la House:  Dr. Alexandra Panttiere (played by Melissa […]

  DYNASTY:  Wednesday 9PM on CW – In the Queue The new DYNASTY isn’t the fall’s worst new show, but it’s the most puzzling.  Was there really a surge of interest among CW’s 18-34 target demo for a revival of an ABC soap that went off the air 28 years ago?  The show has a […]

  DA VINCI’S DEMONS:  Saturday 9PM on Starz In its second season, Starz’s DA VINCI’S DEMONS continues to be less fun than it seems like it should be.  The series concerns a “Leonardo Da Vinci” who’s about as historically accurate as “Matt LeBlanc” is on Episodes, an Indiana Jones-ish adventurer who’s hip-deep in mystical skullduggery […]

  HOMELAND:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime The obsessive charts are back up on Carrie Mathison’s living room wall, and while that may not be good news for Carrie, it’s great for the rest of us.  After a divisive second season that turned too much on 24-style action and Abu Nazir’s tortuous plan to make Nicholas […]

  ZOO:  Tuesday 9PM on CBS Viewers who enjoyed the first dumb season of CBS’s ZOO last summer–and there were quite a few of them–should have little quarrel with Season 2.  In fact, based on the two-hour season premiere (Hour 1 written by Supervising Producer Matt Pitts and Producer Melissa Glenn; Hour 2 by Co-Executive […]

  VEEP:  Sunday 10PM on HBO You wouldn’t expect Armando Iannucci’s VEEP to change much from season to season, and you’d largely be right.  Notwithstanding its four-letter words and bustling cinema verite screwball style, Veep is the most conventional of HBO’s comedies, a workplace sitcom about a group of mostly officious idiots that happens to […]