SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE:  Saturday 11:30PM on NBC Opinions may differ–sharply–on whether Donald Trump is good for the US, but there’s no question that he’s been great for SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, which returned tonight for its 43rd season, hot off its most popular and acclaimed session in years, and with a bunch of Emmys to […]

  MERCY STREET:  Sunday 10PM on (many) PBS stations – Potential DVR Alert PBS isn’t accustomed to acting like a conventional “network,” and so it took the service until the very last episodes of Downton Abbey to do what any normal network would have done years ago:  use Downton as a platform to launch a […]

  ORPHAN BLACK:  Saturday 9PM on BBCAmerica – Potential DVR Alert BBCAmerica’s second foray into original scripted drama, ORPHAN BLACK, while less inherently prestigious than Copper–lacking as it does that show’s historical setting and Tom Fontana auspices–is at least in its first hour a considerably more diverting entertainment. The first sequence is a grabber.  Petty […]

  THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC THE WALKING DEAD has never been prized for its subtlety, and it didn’t attempt any with the title of its crossroads Season 9 premiere:  “A New Beginning.”  Which it definitely was, as the first episode under new showrunner Angela Kang (who was promoted up through the writer/producer […]

  BLUNT TALK:  Saturday 9PM on Starz – If Nothing Else Is On… For Jonathan Ames, the creator of Starz’s new comedy BLUNT TALK, the sweet spot is the intersection of addled (male) self-delusion and yearning.  His HBO series Bored To Death never found much of an audience, but it was rewarding for those who […]

  HIT & MISS:  WEDNESDAY 10pm on DirecTV Audience Network – Worth A Look   HIT & MISS is considerably less sensationalistic than its premise and first five minutes might lead you to expect.  By the end of the first episode’s opening credits, we’ve watched Mia (Chloe Sevigny) calmly shoot a man for money, then […]

  AMERICAN HORROR STORY – ASYLUM:  Wednesday 10PM on FX WHERE WE WERE:  Doesn’t matter.  It wasn’t clear until late in Season 1, but the gimmick of AMERICAN HORROR STORY is that each season will offer a completely new setting, storyline, and group of (mostly doomed) characters, although some of the actors return in new […]

  DEFIANCE:  Friday 8PM on Syfy The second season of Syfy’s DEFIANCE was often jarringly different from its first, shifting from its initial post-apocalyptic-western procedural form to a heavily mythological storyline that broke up the central father-and-adoptive-alien-daughter relationship of Nolan (Grant Bowler) and Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas) for much of the season, while embracing a mystical […]