ELEMENTARY:  Thursday 10PM on CBS For those of us mildly obsessed with BBC’s superlative Sherlock, it may have been unwise for CBS’s ELEMENTARY (which all concerned agree is not, legally, a knock-off) to bring its updated Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, in its Season 2 premiere, to London.  Kept on their separate continents, Jonny […]

  CODE BLACK:  Wednesday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel CBS’s new CODE BLACK is a mini-film festival of medical show cliches.  It’s set in a notoriously busy emergency room at a Los Angeles hospital, which frequently reaches the point where the patients needing immediate treatment swamp the resources available to treat them–designated “Code […]

  THE X-FILES:  Monday 8PM on FOX With its densely serialized mythology and mostly pre-internet rabidly enthusiastic fans, THE X-FILES was a key signpost on the road to today’s pop culture.  By the time it left the air in 2002, though, it was limping badly, with David Duchovny barely participating and ratings that were low, […]

  CALL ME KAT:  Thursday 9PM on FOX   There’s been widespread hope that a change in calendar pages would reverse the traumas of 2020, and that 2021 would bring in gusts of new air to blow away all that’s been awful in the world.  Sadly, the arrival of FOX’s CALL ME KAT, the first […]

  WYNONNA EARP:  Friday 10PM on Syfy – Change the Channel Syfy has recently been trying to burnish its schlocky image with some more ambitious projects, most notably the time-travel thriller 12 Monkeys and The Magicians, a show with plenty of flaws but also lots of imagination.  The network’s economics, though, probably demand that a […]

  BLESS THIS MESS:  Tuesday 9:30PM on ABC The six-episode order ABC gave BLESS THIS HOUSE (after FOX had passed on the project) is about as small as any network show can get.  That doesn’t leave much time for series creators Lake Bell (who also stars and directed the pilot) and Elizabeth Meriwether to show […]

  SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE had one of the quietest off-seasons in its recent history, with the addition of featured player Jon Rudnitsky as its only major change, so for better and worse, tonight’s Season 41 premiere felt as though it could easily have aired last season. There were a few indications that time has passed.  […]

  LUCIFER:  Monday 9PM on FOX – Change the Channel It’s fun to imagine the development meetings that preceded FOX’s order of the new procedural LUCIFER: Series Creator Tom Kapinos:  The Devil, Satan himself, is the show’s main character. FOX Executive:  Wow!  So what does he do? Kapinos:  He runs a nightclub, and he consults […]