> Thursday night brought a mother lode of returning serialized dramas to broadcast TV, with both ABC and CW returning to duty.  Let’s start by looking at ABC’s 10PM PRIVATE PRACTICE, airing a fresh episode for the first time since a 2-hour special on November 17. WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  As usual, there was all […]

  BRAND X WITH RUSSELL BRAND:  Thursday 11PM on FX – Change the Channel Russell Brand has been more or less flailing around for the past several years, trying to find a place in American pop culture.  His introduction to most domestic audiences came with his role as the comically dissipated rock star in Forgetting […]

  GOTHAM:  Thursday 8PM on FOX Coming off its most satisfying season to date, the first where it seemed to have some control over its sprawl, GOTHAM has been given a new timeslot on Thursdays for its 4th season, and the subtitle “A Dark Knight.”  It is indeed creeping ever closer to the territory of […]

  NEW GIRL:  Tuesday 9PM on FOX NEW GIRL returned for its fourth season tonight with something to prove.  Rarely has an acclaimed, popular comedy plunged so quickly and so badly, both critically and with viewers:  the series that premiered in 2011 with a 4.8 rating had lost three-quarters of that audience by last May, […]

  THE FOSTERS:  Monday 9PM on ABCFamily THE FOSTERS ended its first season on a near tidal wave of melodrama, and along the way it lost a great deal of the modest charm and believable emotions that had made it work in the first place.  Although tonight’s Season 2 premiere picked up on those storylines, […]

  WILL:  Monday 9PM on TNT – If Nothing Else Is On… TNT’s WILL, a gloss on the early life of William Shakespeare (and an unacknowledged one on the movie Shakespeare In Love), would seem like an extreme oddity if we hadn’t just had ABC’s Romeo & Juliet gloss Still Star-Crossed, which has already been sent […]

  THE INBETWEEN:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC The flow of broadcast summer product continues with NBC’s workmanlike paranormal procedural THE INBETWEEN.  The show was created by Moira Kirland, previously a writer/producer on Medium, Hawaii 5-0 and Madam Secretary, among other shows.  It’s the first of those that counts here, as The InBetween is very much […]

  THE REAL O’NEALS:  Tuesday 8:30PM on ABC – Change the Channel Whatever its other ailments, over the past few years ABC has had an extraordinary run of diverse, smart family sitcoms,–an area where other networks have struggled badly–with Fresh Off The Boat, Black-ish and The Goldbergs building on Modern Family and The Middle.  (Even […]