A MILLION LITTLE THINGS:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC ABC’s A MILLION LITTLE THINGS is about as ambitious as broadcast TV intends to get this season, which in this case means This Is Us by way of The Big Chill.  As in the latter, the show revolves around a group of old friends, Eddie (David […]

  DEFIANCE:  Monday 9PM on Syfy – Change the Channel Despite the prestige it earned with Battlestar Galactica, as a network Syfy has never fled from the tackiness of its genre (this is the home, after all, of Mansquito and Dinocroc), and its new series DEFIANCE is all latex make-up (it’s like we never got […]

  THE ROYALS:  Sunday 10PM on E! THE ROYALS has been, if not much else, an effective demonstration of branding by E!.  Its first scripted series, recounting the antics of a fictional British royal family, fit in well with the network’s more established business of depicting the antics of the emptily wealthy in an unscripted […]

  THE LAST SHIP:  Sunday 9PM on TNT The world was saved at the end of THE LAST SHIP‘s second season.  Not only was a cure found for the virus that had caused a nearly apocalyptic pandemic, killing off most of Earth’s population, but the dearly departed Dr. Scott (Rhona Mitra) perfected a way to […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

  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 […]