Posts Tagged ‘serialized drama’
 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Shameless”

  It made plenty of strategic sense for Showtime to reclassify SHAMELESS in its 4th season as a Comedy for Emmy Award purposes, since television is now swamped with contending dramas, but if the plan works, the result will...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “The Fosters”

  THE FOSTERS seemed sturdier in the first half of its season than in its second.  Series creators Brad Bredeweg and Peter Paige loaded up so strenuously on sudsy, often ham-handed melodrama that it’s threatened to ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Pilot Report: “Crisis”

  Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here and Midseason Pilot Reports here. CRISIS:  Sunday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else is On… Funny story.  Remember how last fall, there was a serialized thriller about a high...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

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 Pilot + 1 Review: “Black Sails”

  BLACK SAILS:  Saturday 9PM on Starz Previously… on BLACK SAILS:  In 1715, Nassau and the waters around it weren’t yet controlled by any government, and existed instead as the domain of independent pirates a...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “Black Sails”

  BLACK SAILS:  Saturday 9PM on Starz – Worth A Look The pirate action-adventure BLACK SAILS is Starz’s latest attempt to swing for the fences with ambitious original programming and finally be taken as seriou...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Betrayal”

  All the way to the very end, BETRAYAL couldn’t get it right.  Although it hasn’t technically been canceled (as a matter of policy, networks don’t give up their legal rights to shows until the last poss...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “The Fosters”

  THE FOSTERS:  Monday 9PM on ABCFamily In its first half-season, THE FOSTERS pulled off a feat of considerable difficulty.  Its saga of multi-racial lesbian couple Stef (Teri Polo) and Lena (Sherri Saum) and their mixed...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Shameless”

  SHAMELESS:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime The Gallagher family is undergoing transitions as Season 4 of Showtime’s SHAMELESS begins, and the tone is considerably less rambunctious than in previous seasons.  That’s...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Justified”

  JUSTIFIED:  Tuesday 10PM on FX JUSTIFIED is pure dark pleasure to watch.  Other cable series are more thematically or structurally ambitious (which is why Justified is unfairly ignored at awards time), but Graham Yost...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Hostages”

  The failures of HOSTAGES were many, and they separate into two dimensions.  One–the more important to CBS–was commercial; the show proved to be dead in the water from the night it premiered against the launc...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Downton Abbey”

  DOWNTON ABBEY:  Sunday 9PM on PBS In its fourth season as the most successful regular series in PBS history, DOWNTON ABBEY operates as smoothly as a well-staffed ancestral estate.  Even though the larger subject of the...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Series Finale Review: “Treme”

  TV is a little poorer for the loss of TREME, a series that never fully received the appreciation–from viewers or critics–that it deserved.  Even a bit watered down from its usual density in a last season of ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Masters of Sex”

  Michelle Ashford’s series MASTERS OF SEX has been the extraordinary surprise of the fall television season.  It seemed, on its face, to be dauntingly unpromising.  In telling the story of sex researchers William ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Fall Finale Review: “Revenge”

  Improved isn’t the same as good, and the first half of REVENGE‘s third season has languished in the gulf between those two.  Under new showrunner Sunil Nayar (who replaced series creator Mike Kelley), Reveng...
by Mitch Salem