THE GREAT INDOORS:  Thursday 8:30PM on CBS – Change the Channel Fall TV has a mystery even greater than exactly what’s going on at Westworld:  Joel McHale’s presence in the cardboard CBS sitcom THE GREAT INDOORS.  It’s one thing when multi-camera veterans from the 1990s like Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and Kevin James come […]

  BEAUTY & THE BEAST:  Thursday 8PM on CW BEAUTY & THE BEAST has been demoted about as far as a CW series can go, from its original mid-week, regular season perch to Fridays, and now to summer (after being off the air for 11 months) with a reduced order of 13 episodes.  The speculation […]

  OUTLANDER:  Saturday 9PM on Starz OUTLANDER hasn’t been the ratings breakout for Starz that Power has been, but it may be something even more important:  the network’s first real buzz show, one that’s put it on the drama map with its fellow cable networks, and is perhaps poised for a ratings jump in Season […]

SUITS – Thursdays 10PM on USA   WHERE WE WERE:  On a precipice.  Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) was a hustler with limited formal education but a photographic memory.  He used his talents, among other things, to take tests for those who paid him–including the bar exam, which he passed many times.  Fate brought him […]

  MANIFEST:  Mondays 10PM on NBC Of all the Lost rip-offs we’ve seen over the years, NBC’s MANIFEST seems from its pilot to be the laziest, and perhaps the worst.  Creator Jeff Rake (he has the eminently forgettable The Mysteries of Laura to his credit) has replaced the dense mythology of Lost with a set-up […]

  UNDER THE DOME:  Thursday 10PM on CBS UNDER THE DOME has become increasingly dopey as it’s tried to justify its existence as a continuing drama after being launched as a limited series adaptation of Stephen King’s novel.  Tonight’s Season 3 premiere revealed some secrets, but with solutions that had apparently been hatched after the […]

  THE LAST SHIP:  Sunday 9PM on TNT The world was saved at the end of THE LAST SHIP‘s second season.  Not only was a cure found for the virus that had caused a nearly apocalyptic pandemic, killing off most of Earth’s population, but the dearly departed Dr. Scott (Rhona Mitra) perfected a way to […]

  HUMANS:  Sunday 9PM on AMC – If Nothing Else Is On… The sentient robot story gets another workout in HUMANS, AMC’s first import series.  It’s set in a barely futuristic England where “synths” have taken over an increasing number of menial and routine jobs.  They’re housekeepers, nannies, companions to the elderly–and prostitutes–and they’ve been […]