Posts Tagged ‘espionage’
 

 

THE SKED PILOT + 1 REVIEW: “The Americans”

  THE AMERICANS:  Wednesday 10PM on FX A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weig...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “The Americans”

  FX probably shouldn’t hold its breath for THE AMERICANS to become a wider popular success than it is. The series, for all its excellence, was more grim in its 3rd season than ever–the sun barely even seeme...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Miss Americana,” “Ironbark” & “Scare Me”

  MISS AMERICANA (Netflix – January 31):  There are certainly areas of Taylor Swift’s life that are carefully elided in MISS AMERICANA (her actor boyfriend’s face and name are absent, for example, and th...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Killing Eve”

  KILLING EVE:  Sunday 8PM on AMC/BBCAmerica AMC very much wants KILLING EVE to be its next big thing.  The critical and awards-season darling spent its first season on the network’s subsidiary BBCAmerica service, ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Finale Review: “Homeland”

  No season of Showtime’s HOMELAND ever came close to touching the wild highs of its first, an amazing concoction that managed to combine the tension of a great thriller with constant twists, impossible romance and p...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “The Assets”

  THE ASSETS:  Thursday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel It’s easy enough to see why ABC would like to be in the spy-TV business.  Homeland, whatever its flaws, is a major hit, and The Americans, while not as...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Counterpart”

  COUNTERPART:  Sunday 9PM on Starz Starz’s COUNTERPART is both TV’s most cerebral thriller and its most cerebral sci-fi, a very serious story of espionage that happens to take place between two parallel versi...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Covert Affairs”

  COVERT AFFAIRS:  Tuesday 10PM on USA Last season, Season 4 of USA’s COVERT AFFAIRS took a turn for the dark, with mixed results.  It was a relief to see CIA agent Annie Walker (Piper Perabo) finally act like an a...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Allegiance”

  ALLEGIANCE:  Thursday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else is On… ALLEGIANCE is what happens when broadcast network executives watch cable.  The story of long-term, deep-cover Russian agents is clearly, shall we s...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “24: Live Another Day”

  The idea of a changed format turned out to be something of a pretense:  until the last 10 minutes of the final episode, which jumped forward half a day, 24: LIVE ANOTHER DAY could more accurately have been called 12.  ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “The Americans”

  Last year FX gave THE AMERICANS showrunners Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg a final 2-season order, and from the vantage point of Season 5’s finale, it seems clear that they’ve approached this stretch as a singl...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SEASON PREMIERE REVIEW: “Covert Affairs”

  COVERT AFFAIRS:  Tuesday 10PM on USA   WHERE WE WERE:  At the CIA, where Annie Walker (Piper Perabo), the young, beautiful languages expert who supposedly works for the Smithsonian, is actually an agent.  (She me...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Nikita”

  NIKITA:  Friday 9PM on CW Although the cast, crew and studio would no doubt have liked it to go longer, a 6-episode final season for NIKITA isn’t a bad thing.  From CW’s point of view, it fills in the gap b...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “The Assets”

  THE ASSETS:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Previously… on THE ASSETS:  In 1980s Washington, the hunt is on for a CIA agent who’s actually a mole for the KGB.  But there’s no mystery for viewers, who know that...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “Turn”

  TURN:  Sunday 9PM on AMC Previously… on TURN:  In 1776, apolitical New York cabbage farmer Abe Woodhull (Jamie Bell) is pulled into spying for the colonial cause, inveigled by his old friends Ben Tallmadge (Seth ...
by Mitch Salem