UNDER THE DOME:  Monday 10PM on CBS The broadcast networks don’t get much in the way of pleasant surprises these days, but last summer’s UNDER THE DOME was an exception.  CBS’s “event” adaptation of Stephen King’s massively long novel was intended as an ambitious entry in the quiet world of summer programming, and it […]

  GLEE:  Friday 9PM on FOX Among the many wrongheaded decisions made by FOX over the last several years, one was giving GLEE a two-year renewal–just as the bottom was starting to fall out of its ratings.  Last year, things went from bad to ghastly, not only in the ever-worsening ratings but creatively, as the […]

  KILLJOYS:  Friday 9PM on Syfy – If Nothing Else Is On… KILLJOYS is yet another sparse, grungy Syfy Canadian cheapie, although it has a bit of B-movie verve.  It concerns a pair of galactic bounty hunters, the beauteous yet deadly Dutch (Hannah John-Kamen) and her more easygoing junior partner John (Aaron Ashmore).  They work […]

  THE AFFAIR:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime THE AFFAIR was one of last year’s most confounding shows.  It was at once carefully observed and gimmicky, precise and willfully vague, compulsively watchable and annoying. The problem wasn’t so much the show’s format of telling its overlapping events repeatedly, from the often conflicting perspectives of adulterous Noah […]

  POWER:  Sunday 9PM on Starz Although Starz has embraced the classy Outlander as the face of its original programming, recently giving it a 2-season renewal, the network’s bread and butter is Courtney A. Kemp’s  hip-hop crime saga POWER, which is by far its highest-rated original.  This season, Starz is using the 3rd stanza of […]

  BETTER CALL SAUL moves with the assurance of a series that knows exactly where it’s going to end up–and so do we, since we’re aware that sad sack attorney Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) will ultimately wind up as slick Saul Goodman in the world of Breaking Bad (and then as a woeful Cinnabon manager […]

  INHUMANS:  Friday 9PM on ABC (starting Sept 29) – Change the Channel In this world of Peak TV, it’s harder for a new series to break through the clutter than it’s ever been, and that thicket will be a veritable forest during the fourth week of September, when the major broadcast networks will follow […]

  LA TO VEGAS:  Tuesday 9PM on FOX – In the Queue Broadcast TV kicks off its new scripted series year with FOX’s well-paced LA TO VEGAS, a mostly retro workplace sitcom with a small twist:  Lon Zimmet’s series takes place almost entirely on the roundtrips of the titular run, operated by the Southwest-like Jackpot Airlines. The […]