BILLIONS:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime (pilot available via VOD and streaming) – Potential DVR Alert There’s a gag in The Big Short where an esoteric piece of financial information, crucial for understanding the mortgage meltdown but hard to communicate without an audience’s eyes glazing over, is illustrated by having it explained by Margot Robbie […]

  THE BLACKLIST: REDEMPTION:  Thursday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel THE BLACKLIST: REDEMPTION is for all those who longed to see what The Blacklist would look like without James Spader, a group that could probably fit into a medium-sized elevator.  Ordered by NBC when the network still thought The Blacklist was going to […]

  BEYOND:  Monday 9PM on Freeform (Preview Tonight at 9PM), also available on VOD/streaming – Change the Channel Add BEYOND to the growing pile of genre shows that have failed at Freeform since Pretty Little Liars became the network’s signature series, joining Guilty, Twisted and Dead of Summer.  (Shadowhunters returns on Monday but with new […]

  TRAINING DAY:  Thursday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel If the idea that CBS, of all networks, could turn the dark, ruthless police drama TRAINING DAY into a TV series seemed counterintuitive–well, they haven’t.  There’s a show with that title on the network schedule, and the general outlines of the character dynamic and […]

  FALLING SKIES:  Sunday 10PM on TNT After a falsely cheerful minute or two, the Season 4 premiere of TNT’s sturdy post-apocalyptic alien war saga FALLING SKIES set to work establishing its lines of battle for this summer.  By the end of the opening sequence, the script, by new series showrunner David Eick, had jumped forward by […]

WILFRED – Thursday 10PM on FX   WHERE WE WERE:  Ryan (Elijah Wood) is a burnt-out young lawyer who’s quit his job and is in such a state of depression that he attempts suicide.  One day an attractive new neighbor, Jenna (Fiona Gubelmann) moves in next door with Wilfred, her Australian sheepdog.  Ryan has an […]

  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 […]

  BATES MOTEL:  Monday 9PM on A&E BATES MOTEL has lit up its Vacancy sign for a second season, and it’s retained its particular blend of soap, black comedy and horror thriller.  The strength of Bates is that even if we didn’t recognize its protagonist’s name, and know what lies in his Hitchcockian future, the […]