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 […]

  THE CHI:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime – More Mean Streets Showtime’s THE CHI is geographically close enough to the Chicago of its veteran hit Shameless that its characters could bump into Gallaghers at any given moment, but series creator Lena Waithe is influenced more by the work of David Simon, and not so much […]

  AP BIO:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC (regular run starts March 1) – Change the Channel Most of the braintrust behind NBC’s new sitcom AP BIO hails from Saturday Night Live, starting with series creator Mike O’Brien and including Executive Producers Lorne Michaels, Seth Meyers and Michael Shoemaker, so it’s not hard to see why the pilot […]

> Michael Scott is really gone.  Technically, that’s been true since a few episodes before the end of THE OFFICE‘s last season, but with tonight’s season premiere, Office 2.0, the most well-publicized reboot of the new season, began to tell us what it’s going to be.   Which is, for now at least, a somewhat jarring […]

  MISTRESSES:  Thursday 9PM on ABC MISTRESSES lost its marquee star this season, when Alyssa Milano declined to move with the show to its new (cheaper) Vancouver shooting location.  We’ll see what effect, if any, this has on the ratings, but in terms of the show’s substance, by Season 2 Milano wasn’t being featured more […]

> Even diminished from the powerhouse it once was, GREY’S ANATOMY is the foundation of ABC’s drama schedule, and its return to the air after a nearly 2 month absence should lift the network’s Thursday considerably. WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  Things were grim when we last visited Seattle Grace.  Cristina (Sandra Oh) had, unknowingly, operated […]

  HAPPY TOGETHER:  Monday 8:30PM on CBS Even though CBS’s HAPPY TOGETHER is inspired by a period in Executive Producer Harry Styles’s actual life, it’s one of those sitcoms where no one in front of or behind the cameras appears to have spent much time on Earth.  The contrivance that serves as the plot has […]

  INSECURE:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO Issa Rae’s INSECURE became progressively more assured during the course of its first season, and although it wasn’t more than a moderate success, its ratings trended upward through its run, until it was outrating its higher-profile lead-in, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Divorce.  HBO has rewarded it by scheduling Season 2 […]