There are guilty pleasures and then there are ones for which you just feel guilty about sacrificing your valuable time. Revenge is the latter.

Castle Rock shows a tremendous investment of time and creativity. It’s worth your walk on the dark side.

There’s such a richness of story and character here, and the visual and sound people do some great work cranking up the creep factor.

Fear resorts to the dumbest of jump scares and runs in circles. You’ll get impatient for a walker to come chomping by. You might be disappointed when one does. An action sequence that caps the extended premiere is choppy and amateurishly directed.

A&E reboots the legend of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” but Bates Motel plays like a slow-burning riff on David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” sparked by some fascinating, nuanced performances.

You can keep “The Alienist” at arm’s length because it is set more than 100 years in the past. No such luck with “Bellevue.” The brutality, shock and outrage ring all too true.

Deschanel is utterly con-vincing as this off-kilter gal, and of the supporting cast, Wayans sparks the most as Coach.

Once Upon a Time gets off to a bewitching start.

Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous is a clever riff on the fanaticism and cynicism inspired by the network’s own reality slate, including “Teen Mom,” “16 and Pregnant” and “Buckwild.

The Newsroom manages to be both precious and irritating at the same time, and Sorkin’s characters still have that habit of talking over each other, which might be realistic, but makes it hard for viewers to understand what the heck they’re sparring about.

[Caviezel] and Emerson make for one of fall's most formidable odd couples.

Cult is a condemnation of the truly “deplorable” among us as well as a witty skewering of liberal correctness run amok.

Sister Wives practically twists and breaks its back assuring viewers how gosh-darn normal everything is. Still, there are some cracks in the crackpots.

Come for the mystery, stay for the performances.

It's impossible to tell by the uneven debut episode if the tone of the writing will be consistent. ... The dramatic portions of the show flow easily... But the writers seem unsure how they want to portray the violence in "Platinum," of which there is plenty in the first episode. [11 Apr 2003]

Set aside the stunt casting worthy of a CW series and the detour into Lifetime territory. History’s Sons of Liberty, a three-night, six-hour scripted miniseries, crafts a compelling look at the men and the skirmishes that ignited the American Revolution.

The drama ultimately arrives at the destination you knew it would right from the opening moments. By trying to tell everyone’s story, “The Red Line” forgets to tell one good one.

Expanse’s look is typical Syfy. The lighting is used to bathe the sets in shadows to hide the lack of money in the budget. The cast and the sheer complexity and depth of story, however, are worthy of premium cable.

A mind-boggling drama doesn't always make for compelling television. [12 Sep 2003]

It’s too easy to think of this family as sharks. Sharks are much kinder to their young. Animal Kingdom bites hard and doesn’t let up.

Young viewers disappointed at ABC's soggy sitcom version of the movie "Clueless" will find in Sabrina an appealingly fresh, funny show that delivers plenty of laughs. [27 Sept 1996, p.42]

This is dark material, yet Faris balances it with a genuine winsomeness, able to wring laughs out of the most innocuous lines.

O'Connell glides through the show on his smile. Belushi isn't as bad as one might expect, which, granted, isn't much of a compliment. He reins in the comic buffoonery, and if the scripts get better, he might prove to be up to a dramatic role.

The makers of the "River" deserve credit for spilling so much of their "X-Files" myth-ology from the start, but there's not enough reason to book passage on this voyage of the bland.

At times, the show careens from black humor to near tragedy and then back again.

While we don’t know the identity of Jane Doe yet, the pilot drops some hefty clues, ones that only touch the surface of what looks to be a compelling conspiracy thriller.

While some of the best dramas can dovetail a character's work and personal lives, Prime Suspect might be better off, at least in the beginning, focusing on solving the weekly case.

When it comes to Sun Records, the hook is there, but it can’t sustain the beat.