YOUNGER:  Wednesday 10PM on TV Land TV Land’s flagship original series YOUNGER began to shake itself up at the end of Season 3, and the Season 4 premiere fruitfully continued that process.  Stories about Big Secrets, whether they’re being kept by superheroes or 40-year old publishing employees pretending to be in their 20s, reach […]

  BROKE:  Thursday 9:30PM on CBS Even brand-new episodes of CBS multicamera sitcoms can have a tendency to feel like reruns, and the network’s new midseason series BROKE brings that to the “but this is ridiculous” level.  Broke is built around virtually the same premise as NBC’s midseason sitcom Indebted.  (The two shows even air […]

  THIS IS US:  Tuesday 9PM on NBC Last season, THIS IS US was the artisanal brewery of network TV.  It didn’t fit into any of the conventional franchise genres, which made it feel hand-crafted and special.  Instead, it mixed the old-fashioned sentiment of a family soap with state of the art trickery derived from […]

  ALMOST FAMILY:  Wednesday 9PM on FOX Whether we like it or not, the strongest lead-in on broadcast television right now is The Masked Singer, which makes it somewhat surprising that FOX has given the precious slot afterward to the mess that ALMOST FAMILY appears to be.  Even more surprising is that the lead producer […]

  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 […]

  FEED THE BEAST:  Tuesday 10PM on AMC – Change the Channel There’s not much on the menu of AMC’s new FEED THE BEAST, which previewed tonight in advance of its regular timeslot debut on Tuesday.  The show is based on a Danish format, and perhaps that version had more meat on its bones, but […]

  THE STRAIN:  Sunday 10PM on FX The decision to make Season 4 of FX’s THE STRAIN its last (a year earlier than the originally announced plan) meant that there was a lot of story to cram into 10 hours, and tonight’s season premiere was all plot and set-up.  The show’s canvas has become wider […]

  THE ARRANGEMENT:  Sunday 10PM on E! – If Nothing Else Is On… E! stays on-brand with its second scripted series THE ARRANGEMENT, which plays off the rumors that surrounded Tom Cruise’s marriage to Katie Holmes.  It’s got celebrity and the heat of a scandal roman a clef, but it completely lacks the saucy, junky […]