Can we please have a moratorium on voice-over narration? This lazy device is being overused to convey what simple dialogue should. In John Doe, the title character's innermost thoughts won't stop. [19 Sept 2002, p.48]

'The Closer' may be the first TV series to mimic ['Desperate Housewives''] ability to present women with textured, complicated lives. [12 Jun 2005]

The dark tone might be the greatest barrier at first to viewers, but the cast rolls with the wisecracks.

Spoils takes its murder mystery too seriously. While this isn’t as dour an affair as Ferrell and Wiig’s recent Lifetime debacle, “A Deadly Adoption,” a little bit more nuttiness would make this mini more a treat and not so much an endurance challenge.

Your appreciation will rise and fall on your enjoyment of seeing Boston and its people portrayed as profoundly racist and corrupt.

The first episode spends much of the time establishing the series, and it's not particularly edge-of-the-seat scary. But the paranormal special effects are good and the acting holds up. How the action unfolds is questionable - the constant touching, gasping and seeing visions could get old. [16 June 2002, p.A07]

What separates this cast from just about every other real-ity show is that these people are chasing something larger than themselves, more vital to them than fame or money--that brief moment of perfection onstage, achieved after years of study and practice.

Almost every moment here is staged to scream, “Look at me! I’m arty!” Lindelof, burned mightily by the backlash over “Lost’s” ridiculous finale, has all but told reporters that the mystery central to The Leftovers will never be explained. That leaves you with a show wallowing in smug self-importance, melancholy and drear week after week.

If you dwell on time-travel paradoxes too much, you’ll go mad, and that advice holds for this show: Come for the ride, enjoy the appealing cast and the sheer adventure.

Happy! captures the tone “Marvel’s the Punisher” should have aspired to: grisly, gross and nutty without abandon.

The first two cases, involving a gang of murderous thieves and the death of a personal trainer, are ho-hum. McDonnell, a fine actress, finally has a chance to inject some dry wit into her stoic investigator.

Despite some shaky attempts to build a convincing world, The Rain has much in common with “The Walking Dead.”

Thornton seems to be playing against script. His Billy seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself, despite the dire circumstances he finds himself in. It’s about the only surprise in Goliath. By the end of the second episode, it becomes obvious there are forces in play that will stop at nothing to thwart Billy’s quest for answers.

It's not a Comedy Central spoof, but it skews ridiculously close to one.

The first episode teases an exciting dynamic, with the possibility of forcing viewers to root for one monster over another.

The whole enterprise dissolves too quickly into a '90s version of "White Shadow," with teacher Johnson as the angel of mercy sent to rescue her "at-risk" minority students from the forces of evil. [30 Sept 1996, p.34]

The series is so funny, it reeks of a setup.

This little sitcom reminds you how rare female friendship is on prime time TV--and just how much fun it can be.

The castmates aren't polished performers, but they know how to work a joke fast and move on. [4 Aug 2005]

He seemed to suffer from “Jimmy Fallon-itis”--he laughed too much at his own jokes.... The show pretty much stayed on point, with almost every joke leading back to Noah. He got to make the show all about him, and that’s OK--for one night, anyway.

So long as the dinos roam, Terra Nova has a future.

Unfortunately, it’s the law of diminishing returns.

TV Land's first original sitcom is the surprise of the summer, a sparkling, breezy comedy, in no small part due to the casting of this year's It Girl, 88-year-old Betty White as a cantankerous caretaker.

The ninth and final season premiere of NBC's The Office definitively answers a few key questions about the cogs at the middling paper company Dunder Mifflin--if anyone out there is still interested in the once smart, now just silly sitcom.

After watching the first five episodes, I don’t recommend watching “Now Apocalypse” every week. I do suggest waiting to the end of the season and downloading the series in one sitting. Now Apocalypse plays like the kind of show that can only benefit from a decadent binge.

Right now, Up All Night is the TV equivalent of a glass of warm milk.

For a fleeting moment, the show hints it might venture into some saucy territory. Then it gets all “Family Ties” saccharine and goes in for the squishy hug.

If the show can strike a balance between chuckles and capers, Covert Affairs won't be a secret. It will be USA Network's biggest hit.