Posts Tagged ‘serialized drama’
 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Black Sails”

  Once again, Starz has had to stand by and watch as other cable networks, not just its paycable competition HBO and Showtime, but smaller players like BBCAmerica and Sundance–and now even streaming services–ge...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “The Bridge”

  THE BRIDGE:  Wednesday 10PM on FX THE BRIDGE was simultaneously one of the best and most frustrating series of last season.  Loaded with atmosphere, superbly acted by an expansive cast headed by Demian Bichir and Diane...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Under the Dome”

  UNDER THE DOME went rather bonkers in its second season, apparently flummoxed by the fact that it existed at all.  Dome had originally been conceived as a limited summer series that, like the Stephen King novel which in...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Hell On Wheels”

  HELL ON WHEELS:  Saturday 9PM on AMC In its 5 seasons on the air, HELL ON WHEELS has never achieved a sustained stability, shifting tones and narrative thrust on an almost seasonal basis as a perpetual bubble show in th...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Pilot + 1 Review: “How To Get Away With Murder”

  HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Previously… on HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER:  At Middleton College, the brilliant, daunting law professor and criminal defense attorney Annalise Keating (Viola Da...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “The Vampire Diaries”

  At the close of its 6th season, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES finds itself at a crossroads.  The ratings are way down, and for the first time since it premiered, the series isn’t one of CW’s biggest hits, but just a m...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “Murder In the First”

  MURDER IN THE FIRST:  Monday 10PM on TNT – If Nothing Else Is On… Steven Bochco practically invented modern television with Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, so even though it’s been a while since his g...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “The Affair”

  THE AFFAIR:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime THE AFFAIR was one of last year’s most confounding shows.  It was at once carefully observed and gimmicky, precise and willfully vague, compulsively watchable and annoying. Th...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Rookie Blue”

  ROOKIE BLUE:  Thursday 9PM on ABC It’s quite an accomplishment for a scripted summer series on one of the broadcast networks to last five seasons on the air, and the ABC/Canadian co-production ROOKIE BLUE is now...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Black Sails”

  From the viewpoint of its newly-concluded third season, the first 2 years of Starz’s BLACK SAILS feel like a very long and somewhat misguided prologue to where the series is now.  With Michael Bay as its leading E...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “The Night Shift”

  One of NBC’s many puzzling decisions this year was the choice to hand over its most important timeslot for launching dramas, the post-The Voice hour on Mondays, to the merely serviceable summer medical soap THE NI...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “The Walking Dead”

  THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC At this point in its massively successful run (massive enough to allow AMC to renew the superb but low-rated Halt and Catch Fire last week, so hurray!), THE WALKING DEAD can well aff...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale: “Fargo”

  FARGO was great television of a kind we’ve never really seen before.  Neither a prequel nor a sequel nor a remake, not even a true spin-off, this was more like a reincarnation of the Coen Brothers’ classic m...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SEASON PREMIERE REVIEW: “Hell On Wheels”

  HELL ON WHEELS – Saturday 9PM on AMC Season 3 brings an upwardly mobile turn for HELL ON WHEELS.  Hero Cullen Bohannon’s (Anson Mount) dark mission of vengeance for the death of his wife during the Civil War...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Dark Matter”

  DARK MATTER:  Friday 10PM on Syfy – Change the Channel You can easily imagine the first episode of Syfy’s new DARK MATTER as being the pitch that sold the series, and it also sounds like the start of a joke:...
by Mitch Salem