Dark’s acting is serviceable, the musical choices questionable and the location shooting in Berlin is ominous. The jump scares are out of an ’80s slasher film and get tiresome.

Serves up spine-tingling chills with its moody, noirish visuals and grimly efficient leads. [22 Sep 2004]

Go beyond the in-your-face, outrageous title here, and you'll find a somewhat sweet show struggling to create some real laughs.

The story is a little too Dark Phoenix, and the series’ pacing can be maddening. But you have to love an action-packed finale that rips from a kid’s birthday party at a bowling alley (little Kenny is never getting over that one) to a concert hall on the cusp of the apocalypse. The climax is an ending and a beginning. Umbrella Academy is just getting started.

There’s a real disconnect in this telling. With the exception of Sara and two junior detectives, fraternal twins ostracized on the force because they are Jewish, the story seems as dry as a box of Wheat Thins. The scenery is set. The people are dressed for their parts. But The Alienist rarely gets moving.

Depending on your memories of high school, ABC's new drama... is either one of the most honest or most troubling small-screen depictions of teen angst. [7 Oct 2004]

Johnny is easily a Leary/Tommy Gavin stand-in, 
Theresa is Janet (Andrea Roth) with a badge, and Bigley could be Mike Silletti’s (Mike Lombardi) brother. Don’t bother with the alarm. When it comes to 
Sirens, you know this drill.

Despite some graphic moments of heads exploding, BrainDead is neither comic nor thrilling.

You'll worry the Big Apple will swallow them up. Mostly, you'll wonder how Breaking Amish will turn next.

Wedding Band is frequently vulgar, and few punch lines can be quoted here, but it has such affection for all its characters that you might be troubled that you can't return the love.

Bell, who started out as a child actor, has matured into a compelling leading man and he seems capable of conveying Abraham’s troubling journey into the underbelly of the war effort.

Dreyfuss somehow refrains from chewing the scenery, though the script at times would have him leaving only flecks of drywall. Scolari has heartbreaking moments as he flounders with guilt. More focus on the personalities of Ruth and Mark, who killed himself on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest, would have fleshed out this story.

Ricci serves as an executive producer and delivers the best work of her career. ... Z is helped by an unusual format--the drama unfolds in 10 half-hour episodes, making it especially binge-worthy. More providers should try half-hour dramas. They don’t feel like endurance challenges, as many one-hour shows do.

The premiere prologue gives away too much, and the mini’s pacing­ drags at times.... It’s a tale that never gets old.

It’s a series that zips along in one direction, suddenly accelerates in another and veers out of control into a swamp of sugar and schmaltz.

No one expects "The Good Wife," but if the show is aiming for balance, it needs to step up its court game.

Flint is an admirable salute to the power of grass-roots activism as well as a laudable public service message.

Most of the characters, however, are written and behave as if they are 14, and not 20-something graduate students. That said, the first episode ends on a terrific cliffhanger, when a creature from another realm--a man with a swarm of moths flitting around his head--attacks. A good three minutes does not excuse the hour that came before it. And the resolution is presented so poorly in the next episode that it sabotages any good will the first episode earned.

The Passage teases a disaster on an even grander scale yet backtracks several times over in its first three episodes and still manages to rush its most crucial relationship.

The Last Ship is a naval recruitment ad for the apocalypse, and these waters look shallow. Careful before sticking your toe in.

Leary is perfectly cast as the middle-aged wastrel with a modicum of talent and an ego the size of the Trump Tower.... Much of the show can’t be quoted. Many of the jokes you can see coming at you from the Zakim Bridge. They’re still funny.

Mad doesn't stray far from "Mother's" formula

In true Bluth fashion, what you think you know about the Bluths you don’t know at all.

If The Lottery can keep up the promise of its premiere, it will punch a winning ticket.

It all seems so ridiculous until you remember we lived through it. At times, “Loudest Voice” plays like a white collar version of “The Sopranos,” as when Ailes orders his PR guy and fixer Brian Smith (Seth MacFarlane, “The Orville”) to take care of a leaker. Crowe, covered in mostly great prosthetics and looking as if he is wearing a fat suit that ate another fat suit, wheezes with every waddle and authentically underplays a human volcano.

The problem with building an action drama around a sniper is that the work by its nature requires people to be several yards away from each other. A climactic gunfight in the season finale goes as far as to show the math--the mental calculations the shooters have to do to make their shot--to juice up the action. It doesn’t work. Shooter excels in one area--grotesque head shots.

The only show with kinky father-daughter conversations. And no, that's not a good thing. [24 Sep 2001]

It makes for good TV. [21 Feb 2003, p.S35]