RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime It’s a bit surprising that RAY DONOVAN has been a steady performer for Showtime, considering that its tone tends toward the glum and monotonous, but next to Homeland, it’s one of the network’s more consistent titles.  Despite that success, Showtime deposed series creator/showrunner Ann Biderman at the end […]

  MAGIC CITY:  Friday 9PM on Starz You’d have thought, after the low-rated, little-buzzed first season of MAGIC CITY, that both Starz and series creator Mitch Glazer would have recognized the series needed to return with some extra oomph for Season 2.  But it wasn’t to be found in tonight’s season premiere, and the result […]

  A MILLION LITTLE THINGS:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC ABC’s A MILLION LITTLE THINGS is about as ambitious as broadcast TV intends to get this season, which in this case means This Is Us by way of The Big Chill.  As in the latter, the show revolves around a group of old friends, Eddie (David […]

POWER:  Saturday 9PM on Starz POWER, like Empire, revolves around an African-American drug dealer who seeks respectability in the music business., but who will still commit murder when necessary to protect his interests.  Although the shows are quite different in tone–Power is presented more as a crime drama than a family soap, with drugs in […]

  BROADCHURCH:  Wednesday 10PM on BBCAmerica – Potential DVR Alert BROADCHURCH suffers a bit, through no fault of its own, from murder fatigue.  Since The Killing, we’ve seen quite a few of these extended mysteries, tracing a single crime (usually against a child or other innocent) throughout a season, from The Bridge to Top of […]

  HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  Sunday 10PM on AMC The first season of HALT AND CATCH FIRE realized late in the game that it had been telling the wrong story about the wrong characters, and tonight’s Season 2 premiere was burdened to an extent by the aftereffects of that fact.  The original protagonists were the […]

  THE GIFTED:  Monday 9PM on FOX – In the Queue FOX’s THE GIFTED exists in the X-Men region of Marvel’s mythology, which in corporate terms means that it (along with Fantastic Four) belongs to 20th Century Fox rather than Disney.  Fox has been more adventurous in its part of the superhero terrain than Disney, […]

  UNDATEABLE:  Thursday 9PM on NBC – Change the Channel UNDATEABLE, whose episodes NBC is burning off two at a time on summer Thursday nights, may not be quite bad enough to earn the obvious “unwatchable” or “unbearable” labels its title seems to demand–not at the tail end of a season in which NBC gave […]