Posts Tagged ‘serialized drama’
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Nashville”

  NASHVILLE doesn’t make more than a gesture these days toward having very much to say about the music industry, or the place of country music in American culture.  It’s simply a soap, and often an effective o...
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
 

 

 

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
 

 
 

THE SKED Fall Pilot Report: FOX’s “Gracepoint”

  GRACEPOINT:  Thursday 9PM on FOX starting October 2 – Potential DVR Alert PLAYERS:  Broadchurch, the wildly successful limited (and now continuing) British TV series, of which Gracepoint is a remake.  Broadchurc...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Pilot + 1 Review: “American Crime”

  AMERICAN CRIME:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Previously… on AMERICAN CRIME:  In Modesto, California, former serviceman Matt Skokie was murdered in his home, and his wife Gwen was viciously injured in the attack.  The l...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Shades of Blue”

  Over the course of its season, NBC’s SHADES OF BLUE muddled its way from being a broadcast network-lite version of a gritty cable cop drama to a more conventional heist thriller.  It was flawed in both contexts, b...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Masters of Sex”

  MASTERS OF SEX:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime MASTERS OF SEX was one of television’s best surprises last season.  Despite a title and premise–the groundbreaking study of human sexuality by Dr. William Masters an...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Mr. Mercedes”

  MR. MERCEDES:  Wednesday 8PM on Audience Network (DirecTV) – DVR Alert It’s been quite a week for the splintering of television.  FX announced that it, like AMC, would launch a pay version of its service, a...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Mistresses”

  MISTRESSES:  Monday 10PM on ABC Tonight’s season premiere of last summer’s guilty pleasure MISTRESSES referenced the old line about not fixing what ain’t broken, which was odd, because under showrunner...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Grey’s Anatomy”

  For the most part, Shonda Rhimes and the Season 10 finale of GREY’S ANATOMY kept its Cristina Yang Farewell Extravaganza confined to a 20-minute chunk in the second half.  The opening half of the hour, written by ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Halt and Catch Fire”

  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 a...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Fall Finale Review: “Scandal”

  The concept of a “finale” as an event calling for special plot revelations and narrative shockers is almost irrelevant to SCANDAL, where every episode brings massive twists.  This is a show, after all, set i...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Finale Review: “The Astronaut Wives Club”

  THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB never achieved much in the way of lift-off, and although ABC knew it was coming–there was a reason it was pushed to a summer run as the lead-in to Mistresses–the show’s flat qua...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Fargo”

  Noah Hawley handily retained his status as the Third Coen Brother with a second masterful season of FARGO.  This go-round may have been even more ambitious than the first:  not only did Hawley once again capture the sp...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “The Originals”

  The first season of THE ORIGINALS has been entertaining, if a bit more sprawling than it needed to be.  A good season finale makes up for a lot, and tonight’s climactic hour, written by Co-Executive Producer Diane...
by Mitch Salem