WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS:  Wednesday 10PM on FX The deadpan vampire mockumentary cult hit WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS is the latest piece of IP to find eternal–or at least extended–life on the small screen.  In some ways, it seems like that was where it belonged all along, since the format […]

  THE NEVERS:  Sunday 9PM on HBO The arrival of HBO’s THE NEVERS introduces a continuing series that’s also, in a sense, a limited one.  It was initially meant to be the latest original franchise from creator/auteur/showrunner Joss Whedon, the inventor of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe and director of the first two Avengers […]

> WHERE WE WERE:  Reeling from the news that Don Draper (Jon Hamm) had proposed to his French-Canadian secretary Megan (Jessica Pare).  In other cubicles at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, Joan (Christina Hendricks), pregnant by Roger Sterling (John Slattery) and not her doctor/soldier husband, had decided to keep the baby after all, assuming hubby wouldn’t […]

  2 BROKE GIRLS:  Monday 9PM on CBS WHERE WE WERE:  At a Brooklyn diner, where Max (Kat Dennings) is a loudmouth waitress from the streets, and Caroline (Beth Behrs) is a former Manhattan socialite, down on her luck since her father was arrested for Madoff-like swindles; in the logic of TV comedy, naturally the […]

  The cul de sac has moved south along the dial, but aside from that, there’s nothing very different about the TBS version of COUGAR TOWN, transported last night pretty much intact from its prior home on ABC.  (It’s possible that later episodes could show more of a shift, since although series co-creator and original […]

  If Netflix is going to be the 21st-century version of a “network,” its content will eventually have to include all sorts of genres–and the quality, inevitably, will vary as well.  There may be high-class, award-caliber dramas like House of Cards, but there will also be crap. HEMLOCK GROVE is the crap. Horribly written (Hours […]

  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 […]

  ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND:  Thursday 8PM on ABC – Worth A Look ABC ordered ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND to series on the basis of a 20-minute presentation, which was then expanded to one-hour (with commercials) length for tonight’s series premiere.  That may explain why the initial section of the premiere, […]