Posts Tagged ‘Showtime’
 

 

THE SKED: “Ray Donovan” Fixes Itself A 2d Season

  Showtime’s RAY DONOVAN survived Sunday’s arrival of The Newsroom on HBO with minimal damage (down by 0.1 in 18-49s to 0.5, and by 100,000 total viewers to 1.45M), and the network rewarded the Liev Schreiber d...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED PILOT REPORT: Showtime’s “Homeland”

> Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques sh...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED’S SUNDAY CABLE SCORECARD – 11/25/12

  AMC:  With one week to go until its fall finale, THE WALKING DEAD was of course at the top of the night, with a combined 7.0 (up 0.3 from last week) for its two primetime airings.  As has become traditional, this was o...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SERIES FINALE REVIEW: “Weeds”

  A suburbanite with money troubles gets into the drug business, gradually becoming corrupt, paranoid and power-hungry, increasingly alienated from family and former life… Not to take anything away from Breaking Bad,...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED’S SUNDAY SCRIPTED CABLE SCORECARD – 4/1/12

> There’s almost an embarrassment of riches on Sunday night cable, enough good shows to overload a DVR.  Since many of these series are among the most talked-about (and honored) on all of television, we’re goin...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “House of Lies”

  Showtime’s HOUSE OF LIES was a bit more ambitious in its second season, and that was a good move, even if the results were uneven.  In its initial season, House was all too clearly a companion piece for Californic...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED SEASON PREMIERE REVIEW: “Dexter”

  DEXTER:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime WHERE WE WERE:  In a frozen instant of time, as Detective Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) watched her adopted brother Dexter (Michael C. Hall), a blood spatter expert on her own forens...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SERIES FINALE REVIEW: “The Big C: Hereafter”

  Even though death is part of the daily menu of our television and movies, dying–lingering, fatal illness–is much rarer.  We prefer our deaths to be mere starting points for police investigations, or the bypr...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED: Another Toke of “Weeds”

> Showtime has announced that the network’s stalwart WEEDS, now in its 8th season (and, honestly, probably a bit past its prime) and relative newcomer EPISODES will return to the schedule on Sunday July 1, running in the ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SUNDAY SCRIPTED CABLE SCORECARD – 8/5/12

  Any negative ratings effect due to the Olympics seems to have subsided, as the numbers were generally up for cable on Sunday night. HBO:  TRUE BLOOD, of course, was in the lead, with a 2.7 rating that was up slightly fr...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Nurse Jackie”

After 3 seasons of telling more or less the same story, Season 4 of Showtime’s NURSE JACKIE took a leap that revitalized the show.  Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco), having successfully concealed her drug addiction, her adulte...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Dexter”

  Although there was plenty more going on–too much, in fact–it was fitting that Season 7 of DEXTER came down, in the end, to the women in Dexter Morgan’s life.  One could even say that this season might ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Billions”

  Showtime’s BILLIONS has cultivated one of the most recognizable signatures on television, from its rudely epigrammatic dialogue, to its love/hate relationship with its ruthless, narcissistic characters, to its very...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED: It’s Not HBO; It’s Showtime

> Showtime is having a very good season.  Subscriptions are up, HOMELAND has, for the first time, put the network in HBO’s orbit of prestige, and the reburbished Sunday night line-up of SHAMELESS, HOUSE OF LIES and C...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED SEASON FINALE REVIEW: “Homeland”

  What kind of show, in the end, is HOMELAND?  Focus groups are often asked simply to describe whatever it is they’ve just seen, and Homeland has tried to be a romance, a thriller, an action adventure, a story about...
by Mitch Salem