12 MONKEYS:  Friday 9PM on Syfy – If Nothing Else Is On… Last year, the writer/producer Noah Hawley miraculously inhabited Joel and Ethan Coen’s Fargo, creating something that was original and yet satisfyingly true to the vision of two of the most distinctive filmmakers around. Lightning doesn’t strike that way for Syfy’s 12 MONKEYS. The 1995 […]

  THE BRAVE:  Monday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel In the Age of Trump, and with younger audiences migrating to alternative delivery platforms, the broadcast networks are making a play–some might call it their last stand–for red-state viewers, who may not be premium customers as far as advertisers are concerned, but who show […]

  LEGACIES:  Thursday 9PM on CW CW’s LEGACIES brings the Vampire Diaries extended universe once again close to its roots, after the older-skewing adventures of The Originals.  We’re not only back in Mystic Falls, Virginia, but in a version of high school, although one that looks a lot like Hogwarts.  (The connection is so blatant […]

  WITCHES OF EAST END:  Sunday 9PM on Lifetime The marketing campaign for Season 2 of WITCHES OF EAST END has been working hard to create the impression of a darker, edgier show this time around.  Apart from the odd decision to shoot most of the season premiere in semi-darkness, though, the series appears to […]

  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 […]

  UNFORGETTABLE:  Sunday 9PM on CBS – If Nothing Else Is On… You may already have forgotten UNFORGETTABLE.  It debuted in fall 2011 as one of CBS’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of procedurals, its particular gimmick being that heroine Detective Carrie Wells (Poppy Montgomery) has hyperthymesia, the ability to recall with absolute precision almost everything she’s […]

  ROADIES:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime – In the Queue Showtime’s ROADIES is the first small-screen project from Cameron Crowe (he wrote and directed the pilot, and is showrunner with My So Called-Life‘s Winnie Holzman), and it’s very much a distillation of everything that makes his filmmaking exhilarating and frustrating.  There’s the wholehearted affection he […]

  COMMUNITY:  Thursday 8PM on NBC A few days ago, the NY Times had a fascinating article about Pei-Shen Qian, an artist who is almost but not quite a forger.  He doesn’t duplicate actual paintings of the masters; instead, he paints new works with such precise adherence to their styles that (he claims) unbeknownst to […]