Innovative camera work and occasional sound effects throughout add distinctive elements to the series. [9 Jan 2000]

Mad Men remains a brilliant, perfectly designed and visually exciting series--one of the very best the medium has to offer--whether you take it at face value or find the experience of watching the TV series enriched by tracing the modern echoes.

Like the best TV shows, Ed has a profound point beneath its silliness. It seems it's always possible to return to Stuckeyville, the hometown we carry around inside, and see new possibilities. If we let go and embrace a magical dramedy that dares to dream, we may feel somehow ennobled. [5 Oct 2000, p.E-03]

The level of comedy is again superlative, with Appleby and Zimmer carrying the cynicism and viciousness to new levels.

Dunham succeeds in making viewers uncomfortable while proferring a new (sharp, slightly bitter) flavor of introspective female comedy.

While it's not fun entertainment (lacking the tragicomic notes of, say, "The Sopranos"), it is an amazing dramatic entry. It's only January, and only four episodes were available for review, but True Detective sets the bar for 2014's TV newcomers.

Remarkable on many levels - as an interpretation of history, spotlighting what many consider to be the defining event of the 20th century, and as a tribute to heroism. Emotional and starkly realistic, it's not an easy 10 hours of television...The film also is notable as a collection of superb performances and, pragmatically, as an unimaginably expensive television production: $ 120 million. [6 Sept 2001, p.F-03]

Gorgeous, high-minded, beautifully acted and sluggish, it may be a stretch for those more accustomed to the Olivia Pope-Doug Stamper-Ray Donovan versions of fixers.

The engrossing, beautifully cast and well acted Masters of Sex is at once the tale of an odd couple and the story of a culture coming of age.

This reprise won’t eclipse memories of the film, but it shouldn’t be automatically discounted. It’s a longer, slower study, suited to a different medium and hitting the same gruesome and all-too-human notes.

Simon offers a challenging six-hour miniseries that contains social and political echoes of "The Wire" but that feels amazingly topical, too, given recent events in Ferguson, Mo.; Baltimore; and Charleston, S.C.

What Nashville on ABC and "Arrow" on the CW have in common, is appealing characters in well-plotted stories.

Judging by the first five hours of the second season, it successfully broadens the storylines of several key characters. The cast is first-rate; only Elizabeth McGovern? occasionally rings a false.

As was the case with the controversial "In Treatment," those with no patience for self-analysis or a psychologically minded view of relationships may find The Affair slow going. But the mystery element should keep even impatient viewers guessing.

The best comedy you're not watching.... Laurie Metcalf ("Roseanne"), Alex Borstein ("Family Guy") and Niecy Nash ("Reno 911") simply kill it as an ensemble, doing justice to the sharp writing of Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer.

The characters interact, the camera observes. And we marvel--not only at the technique and the acting, but at the fullness of each individual point of view, detailing who these people are and how they got there.

[John] Ridley, the creator-writer-producer, has delivered a 10-episode series that is provocative not just in terms of clever scriptwriting but in what it asks of the viewer.

[A] well-researched film.

Prepare for top-notch dramatic writing, exceptional camera work and complex characters. [27 Oct 1996]

The new season contains more laugh-out-loud funny moments, the characters are well defined and the male characters get more prominence.

The resulting Scorsese film is just like its subject: often frustrating but always compelling. [25 Sep 2005, p.F1]

Assuming you aren't a programmer and don't plan to invent the next killer app, you may at first find HBO's Silicon Valley more pathetic than amusing.... By the end of the second episode, however, the personalities take off, the humor sharpens and there's no need to reboot.

Producer Terence Wrong once again delivers fast-paced, narration-free, riveting footage, thanks to video crews who spent four months, unescorted and unhindered, with hospital personnel and patients at crisis points in their lives.

This is put-your-feet-up, pour-a-brandy television, a tasty import that's good company for a culture undergoing its own sometimes dizzying shifts.

The story is as relevant as ever, cinematically more stunning and historically more accurate than the original. The casting is again superlative--Forest Whitaker as “Fiddler,” Jonathan Rhys Meyers as villain Tom Lea, James Purefoy, Anika Noni Rose and Laurence Fishburne are just the start.

The camera is discreet, cutting away at the very end, giving privacy when taste requires. The families involved are brave in ways not required of ordinary "reality TV" subjects. Even when they appear to be speaking for the camera, the situations are not manipulated. The impact is quite powerful.

A superbly acted and exquisitely rendered gem.

It would be naughty to call it dry. But the lack of personalities leaves the viewer groping for an angle. The overwhelming nature of the event begins to feel overwhelming on the couch, too.