MR. MERCEDES:  Wednesday 8PM on Audience Network (DirecTV) – DVR Alert It’s been quite a week for the splintering of television.  FX announced that it, like AMC, would launch a pay version of its service, allowing viewers on certain platforms to watch its shows without commercials for a monthly fee.  Then Disney dropped a […]

  HAPPY! – Wednesday 10PM on Syfy – In the Queue HAPPY! counts as one of Syfy’s infrequent big swings, although its ultra-violent grunge aesthetic gives it a look and feel that isn’t all that different from the network’s usual diet of micro-budgeted co-productions.  This one, though, has a name star in Christopher Meloni, and […]

  REVERIE:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC In recent seasons, original summer dramas on the broadcast networks have tended to cluster in two varieties:  straightforward procedurals like Rookie Blue and The Night Shift, and fantasy-thrillers like Under the Dome and Extant.  NBC’s new REVERIE, created by Extant‘s Mickey Fisher, tries to mix the genres, with indifferent […]

  BLACK MONDAY:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Showtime and Don Cheadle didn’t look far afield for their follow-up after 5 seasons of the network’s House of Lies.  In that series, Cheadle played a fast-talking, rule-breaking business consultant whiz, while in the new BLACK MONDAY… he plays a fast-talking, rule-breaking Wall Street whiz.  (For its part, […]

> FX’s Elmore Leonard-inspired crime drama JUSTIFIED really hit its stride in its second season last year, and now it’s back, trying to build on that very solid success. WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  The redoubtable Mags Bennett (Emmy-winner Margo Martindale) has gone to her grave, and so has her corrupt sheriff son.  (Her other son, […]

  The political comics of America owe a heartfelt “thank you” to Mitt Romney for his “47%” bungle that became public this week.  (So do the Democrats, but that’s another story.)  Jon Stewart has been going to town on it all week, and tonight’s inaugural SNL WEEKEND UPDATE THURSDAY of the season used it as […]

  DON’T TRUST THE B– IN APT 23:  Tuesday 9:30PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  New York City, where naive midwestern arrival June shares an apartment with street-smart, manipulative Chloe (Krysten Ritter).  Their neighbor, and Chloe’s best friend, is James Van Der Beek, playing the same kind of version of himself that Matt LeBlanc does […]

  VEEP:  Sunday 10PM on HBO You wouldn’t expect Armando Iannucci’s VEEP to change much from season to season, and you’d largely be right.  Notwithstanding its four-letter words and bustling cinema verite screwball style, Veep is the most conventional of HBO’s comedies, a workplace sitcom about a group of mostly officious idiots that happens to […]