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: “Penny Dreadful”

  If nothing else, this first half of 2014 has been marked as The Year of Eva Green.  Green will probably never be a mainstream Hollywood star–there’s something too feral and broken about her for wide audience...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Ray Donovan”

  RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime It’s a bit surprising that RAY DONOVAN has been a steady performer for Showtime, considering that its tone tends toward the glum and monotonous, but next to Homeland, it’...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “The Originals”

  THE ORIGINALS:  Monday 8PM on CW THE ORIGINALS, that gloomier and more gothic cousin of The Vampire Diaries, essentially revolves around an endless turf war, the territory at issue being New Orleans.  (The show itself ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “The Leftovers”

  THE LEFTOVERS:  Sunday 10PM on HBO Previously… on THE LEFTOVERS:  3 years ago, 2% of the world’s population simultaneously and spontaneously vanished, in what may have been the Rapture (albeit a Rapture tha...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Summer Finale Review: “Chasing Life”

  CHASING LIFE, which aired its not-quite-half season finale tonight, could better have been titled What Not To Do If You Get Cancer.  That, in itself, isn’t a criticism:  a story about a narcissistic idiot who get...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Outlander”

  OUTLANDER overcame a shaky conceptual start to become a thoroughly compelling historical romance, and probably the best original series Starz has aired thus far.  There’s still something fundamentally odd about th...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “The Royals”

  THE ROYALS:  Sunday 10PM on E! THE ROYALS has been, if not much else, an effective demonstration of branding by E!.  Its first scripted series, recounting the antics of a fictional British royal family, fit in well wit...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Grey’s Anatomy”

  GREY’S ANATOMY:  Thursday 8PM on ABC The occasional misguided NY Times profile aside, it’s a good time to be Shonda Rhimes.  With an entire night of ABC’s primetime real estate put into her care, she&...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “Salem”

  SALEM:  Sunday 10PM on WGN America – If Nothing Else Is On… There’s more than vanity to the desire of just about every cable network to have at least one original scripted series (although that’s...
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
 

 
 

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: “Vikings”

  VIKINGS had a strong second season, both in the ratings (despite a move to a new night, and the loss of the blockbuster The Bible as its lead-in) and creatively.  The season, written start to finish by series creator Mi...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Hell On Wheels”

  The fourth (and as it turns out penultimate) season of AMC’s HELL ON WHEELS was its most conventional and choppily focused.  Under showrunner John Wirth (the show’s 3rd in that post), the neo-western has aba...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “The Knick”

  THE KNICK:  Friday 10PM on Cinemax Even at a time of unprecedented quality on television, when the complaint is that there’s just too much good content to watch, Cinemax’s THE KNICK was something special las...
by Mitch Salem