DESIGNATED SURVIVOR:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC – In the Queue ABC’s DESIGNATED SURVIVOR takes great pains to distinguish its version of Kiefer Sutherland from 24‘s Jack Bauer.  The show’s Tom Kirkman spends most of the pilot clad in a formless gray Cornell-insignia hoodie, and wearing horn-rim glasses.  Sutherland speaks in a diffident tone, and […]

  LETHAL WEAPON:  Wednesday 8PM on FOX – Change the Channel By the time the LETHAL WEAPON movie franchise reached its 4th installment, it was virtually a TV series anyway, so there’s no reason for moral outrage that it’s now been turned into one.  But FOX’s small-screen reboot fails in the most obvious way:  it […]

  SCREAM QUEENS:  Tuesday 9PM on FOX There didn’t seem to be a pressing need for a second season of SCREAM QUEENS.  The ratings for Season 1 were meager, even in the young female demo the show was courting, and the reviews were worse.  But FOX as a whole had bigger flops to cancel, plus […]

  THIS IS US:  Tuesday 10PM on NBC (moves to 9PM on 10/11) – If Nothing Else Is On NBC’s THIS IS US was created by Dan Fogelman, and the pilot was directed by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, the same team that wrote and directed the 2011 feature Crazy, Stupid, Love.  That movie, you […]

  BULL:  Tuesday 9PM on CBS – Change the Channel CBS’s BULL is, from its title down, almost completely insufferable.  Loosely inspired by the pre-TV professional life of Dr. Phil (billed here as “Dr. Phillip C. McGraw” for maximum pretentiousness), and co-created by McGraw and industry veteran Paul Attanasio (a co-creator of the great Homicide […]

  THE GOOD PLACE:  Thursday 8:30PM on NBC – In the Queue Originality, imagination and sheer strangeness are rare network TV commodities these days, so it seems fair to give NBC’s THE GOOD PLACE some time before deciding whether it’s actually, you know, good.  It’s the creation of Michael Schur, who gave us Parks & […]

  KEVIN CAN WAIT:  Monday 8:30PM on CBS (thru 10/17, then 8PM) – Change the Channel Sometimes when a TV star returns to the tube, it’s to try something excitingly different.  Think of Rob Lowe’s second career as a comic actor, or Kyle Chandler’s move from the heroic coach of Friday Night Lights to the […]

  YOU’RE THE WORST:  Wednesday 10PM on FXX Acrid TV comedy is no longer a surprise–in fact, on cable and streaming services, it’s more the rule than the exception.  What makes Stephen Falk’s YOU’RE THE WORST distinctive among shows like Netflix’s Love and HBO’s Girls is how cheerful, romantic and often just plain hilarious its […]