SEAL TEAM:  Wednesday 9PM on CBS – In the Queue CBS’s entry in the fall’s military drama sweepstakes, SEAL TEAM, has several advantages over NBC’s The Brave. It’s been put together by a team of veteran craftsman:  series creator Benjamin Cavell has been a senior writer/producer with Graham Yost on Justified and Sneaky Pete, co-showrunner Edward […]

  SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE had one of the quietest off-seasons in its recent history, with the addition of featured player Jon Rudnitsky as its only major change, so for better and worse, tonight’s Season 41 premiere felt as though it could easily have aired last season. There were a few indications that time has passed.  […]

  LONGMIRE:  Monday 10PM on A&E LONGMIRE may be the best CBS show not to air on CBS.  A cleanly-executed, straightforward procedural that skews old (3/4 of its viewers are over 50), it’s a show that knows what it wants to accomplish and doesn’t try to reach for more.  The Season 2 premiere, written by […]

  PSYCH:  Wednesday 10PM on USA It’s sort of fitting that PSYCH, a show now a little past its prime, kicked off its 8th and perhaps final season with a parody of late 1990s Guy Ritchie lad thrillers like Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels–movies even Ritchie doesn’t make anymore, now that he’s knee-deep in […]

  GETTING ON:  Sunday 10PM on HBO – Worth A Look It’s probably safe to assume that when a network launches a short run of a new series to air only during the holiday season, and that show isn’t at all holiday-related, the show isn’t prominent in the network’s long-term plans.  HBO is turning its […]

  TRIAL & ERROR:  Tuesday 9PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… NBC’s TRIAL & ERROR is a cluttered joke-book of a sitcom that parodies true-crime docuseries like Making A Murderer and especially The Staircase.  As in the latter, the accused murderer, here named Larry Henderson (John Lithgow), is a figure of some […]

  SCANDAL:  Thursday 10PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  Washington DC, where Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) is the best fixer around.  Not a lawyer (although she has a law degree), not a publicist (although she’s expert at manipulating the press), and not a lobbyist (although she’s been known to influence public policy), she’s the one […]

  AMERICAN GODS:  Sunday 9PM on Starz – Potential DVR Alert It seems only fair to note upfront, upon the arrival of Bryan Fuller’s new Starz series AMERICAN GODS (created with Michael Green, and based on the novel by Neil Gaiman) that I was not among the congregation that worshiped Fuller’s Hannibal.  I admired the […]