HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  Saturday 9PM on AMC The links between AMC’s HALT AND CATCH FIRE as a television series, the stories it tells, and its characters have gone unusually deep.  The positive part has been that as series creators Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers have grown steadily more assured and ambitious in each […]

  STILL STAR-CROSSED:  Monday 10PM on ABC – If Nothing Else Is On… The idea of a Shonda Rhimes-produced sequel to one of Shakespeare’s classics sounds like something that might air on a satirical network, but STILL STAR-CROSSED is real, albeit relegated by ABC to its summer minor leagues.  (The actual series creator/showrunner is Heather […]

  BROADCHURCH – Wednesday 10PM on BBCAmerica One of the first things shown in the Season 3 premiere of BROADCHURCH is a looming close-up of a tear rolling down a crime victim’s face, so we know little has changed in that perpetually brooding Dorset town.  However, while Season 2 of Chris Chubnall’s series was a direct […]

  SNOWFALL:  Wednesday 10PM on FX – In the Queue It used to make sense to judge a new TV series based on its pilot, because the pilot was a template of all the episodes that would follow.  In the serialized, bingeable TV era, though, an opening hour is often just an introduction to the […]

  ANIMAL KINGDOM:  Tuesday 9PM on TNT ANIMAL KINGDOM has been a key part of TNT’s rebranding as a hipper TV destination than the home of Major Crimes and The Last Ship, and tonight’s Season 2 premiere promised more of the same, with plenty of FX-level sexuality and general grittiness on display.  The key change, […]

  REVERIE:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC In recent seasons, original summer dramas on the broadcast networks have tended to cluster in two varieties:  straightforward procedurals like Rookie Blue and The Night Shift, and fantasy-thrillers like Under the Dome and Extant.  NBC’s new REVERIE, created by Extant‘s Mickey Fisher, tries to mix the genres, with indifferent […]

  ROADIES:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime – In the Queue Showtime’s ROADIES is the first small-screen project from Cameron Crowe (he wrote and directed the pilot, and is showrunner with My So Called-Life‘s Winnie Holzman), and it’s very much a distillation of everything that makes his filmmaking exhilarating and frustrating.  There’s the wholehearted affection he […]

  RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime When a car crashes into a Los Angeles wall in the Season 4 premiere of Showtime’s sizable if somewhat inexplicable hit RAY DONOVAN, it doesn’t just crash into a wall:  it crashes directly into a giant mural of the Virgin Mary.  That’s the way Ray Donovan rolls, its […]