SECRETS & LIES – Sunday 9PM on ABC – Change the Channel Everything about the return of ABC’s SECRETS & LIES feels a bit off.  Even the scheduling of the quasi-anthology series (different stories and characters, except for the connecting presence of Juliette Lewis as stern lead detective Andrea Cornell) is odd–the series took […]

  9JKL:  Monday 8:30PM on CBS – Change the Channel We usually do actors the favor of evaluating their work on a project separately from the quality of the project itself, willing to take their performances on their own terms.  But Mark Feuerstein doesn’t just star in the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad new […]

  THE JIM GAFFIGAN SHOW:  Wednesday 10PM on TV Land – If Nothing Else Is On… Doofus dads are a staple of TV sitcoms, and THE JIM GAFFIGAN SHOW is an affable addition to the canon.  Gaffigan has made a modest industry out of recounting his life as a stand-up comic squeezed with his wife […]

  WESTWORLD:  Sunday 9PM on HBO No one would ever accuse HBO’s WESTWORLD of being straightforward, but by the time Season 1 ended, series creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy had placed at least some of their cards on the table.  We were told, barring a surprise or two, who the human characters were and […]

  WATCHMEN:  Sunday 9PM on HBO The Damon Lindelof/HBO WATCHMEN provides a new wrinkle to the world of IP exploitation.  It’s not an adaptation of the classic Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel (a la Zack Snyder’s all-too-reverent 2009 film) or even a reboot, but a newly conceived work that’s more like a spin-off or a […]

  LOUIE:  Thursday 10:30PM on FX WHERE WE WERE:  In the mind of Louis C.K.  It’s a place where a moderately successful working stand-up comic named Louie shares custody of two daughters with his ex-wife and lives a mostly lonely life punctuated by gigs in comedy clubs.  But it’s also a world that can encompass […]

  ABOUT A BOY:  Tuesday 9:30PM on NBC This much is clear:  doula is the current sitcom profession of choice.  Just days after the second episode of Mulaney revolved around the hero’s discomfort with his girlfriend being one, ABOUT A BOY has returned with the news that Fiona (Minnie Driver), the show’s clueless mother, has […]

  CAMP:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… If drive-in theaters hadn’t been superseded by multiplexes, NBC’s new CAMP would be the TV equivalent of a drive-in movie, a throwback to B-movie 80’s comedies like Meatballs, Summer School and One Crazy Summer.  (It would prefer to be a throwback to better […]