THE RED ROAD:  Thursday 9PM on Sundance Channel – If Nothing Else Is On… “Ponderousness” is odd branding for a cable network with fledgling original programming to embrace, but after Top of the Lake, Rectify, The Returned and the new THE RED ROAD, it’s pretty clear that Sundance Channel is very comfortable with its […]

  TURN: WASHINGTON’S SPIES:  Monday 10PM on AMC After its initial season concluded, the reruns of AMC’s Revolutionary War drama TURN acquired the subtitle WASHINGTON’S SPIES, presumably in recognition of the fact that the original title conveyed absolutely nothing about what the show was about.  There was the hope that this signaled a Season 2 […]

  FEUD:  BETTE AND JOAN:  Sunday 10PM on FX – Potential DVR Alert It’s a testament to Ryan Murphy’s clout that FEUD:  BETTE AND JOAN even exists.  8 hours set in the early 1960s about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, a pair of Oscar-winning stars in their 50s who were considered has-beens when they made […]

  DALLAS:  Monday 9PM on TNT The ratings didn’t collapse for the reincarnated DALLAS when it had to weather the loss of Larry Hagman and his iconic character J.R. Ewing last season, so the show is back.  Without Hagman, the plot machinations keep churning along, but based on tonight’s Season 3 premiere, it all feels […]

  SHAMELESS:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime The Gallagher family is undergoing transitions as Season 4 of Showtime’s SHAMELESS begins, and the tone is considerably less rambunctious than in previous seasons.  That’s not to say that bad behavior doesn’t still abound, but it’s a less brazen and unfettered, and comes labored with thoughts about consequences. As […]

  PLAYING HOUSE:  Tuesday 10PM on USA – If Nothing Else Is On… Created by and starring real-life best friends Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham, PLAYING HOUSE is, as sisterhood comedies created by and starring real-life best friends go, less edged and genuine than HBO’s recent Doll & Em (which was the work of […]

  WANDAVISION:  Episodes 1 & 2 available now on Disney+, remaining episodes drop 12:01AM each Friday   WANDAVISION mixes the old and the new in ways both self-conscious and not.  COVID delays on other projects led to it becoming the first genuine piece of MCU content created for the small screen.  (Earlier series like Agents […]

  FOSSE/VERDON:  Tuesday 10PM on FX A pair of shadows loom over FX’s limited series FOSSE/VERDON.  One is the ultra-meta fact that its story has to some extent been told by Bob Fosse himself, in his barely fictionalized 1979 masterpiece All That Jazz, all about a chain-smoking, pill-popping, self-destructive womanizer who was also a brilliant […]