FBI: Tuesday 9PM on CBS Dick Wolf and CBS have always seemed as made for each other as the leads of a rom-com. And as in that genre, only outside interference has kept the King and Network of Procedurals from falling into a passionate airport-gate embrace before now. In this case, it’s been their […]
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: Tuesday 8:30PM on ABC THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT is ABC’s 9th family sitcom currently on the air (10th if you count the quasi-family of Single Parents), which puts it in a meta position not unlike its focal character Timmy Cleary (Jack Gore), the middle child of eight Catholic sons and […]
ONCE UPON A TIME: Friday 8PM on ABC This season’s Version 2.0 of ONCE UPON A TIME exists because of dwindling ratings, which led to a reduced budget and consequently a cast dump. (The show was also moved to a less demanding Friday night slot.) The potential advantage of that hardship was that after 6 […]
THE ROOKIE: Tuesday 10PM on ABC THE ROOKIE is mostly a standard-issue police procedural, not surprisingly most reminiscent of ABC’s long-running summer series Rookie Blue, but with one big difference: it’s unmistakably a star vehicle for Nathan Fillion. He’s one of those actors who seems to have spent his entire adult life starring in […]
TAKE TWO: Thursday 10PM on ABC ABC’s TAKE TWO has an unusually classy set of auspices for a summer broadcast series. Its co-creator is Andrew W. Marlowe, who gave the network its long-running hit Castle (his writing partner on the new show is Terri Edda Miller, a Castle writer/producer and also Mrs. Marlowe), and […]
INTO THE BADLANDS: Sunday 10PM on AMC – If Nothing Else Is On… The first 5 minutes of the pilot for INTO THE BADLANDS tell you pretty much all you need to know. There’s an opening narration placing us in one of those post-apocalyptic, neo-western futures, the kind where “Barons” rule, aided by sworn […]
HOUDINI & DOYLE: Monday 9PM on FOX – Change the Channel Paranormal procedurals have been fertile ground for FOX since at least The X-Files, recently with Lucifer and Sleepy Hollow (and the rebooted X-Files). The network’s early-arrival summer series HOUDINI & DOYLE, though, is a plodding, uninspired miss in the subgenre. As the rules […]
MURPHY BROWN: Thursday 9:30PM on CBS MURPHY BROWN was Prestige TV comedy before that concept really existed. When it went on the air 30 years ago, it was a year before the arrival of Seinfeld, and 5 years ahead of Frasier, and while there were other intelligent, funny sitcoms on the air, Diane English’s […]