Self-indulgent but packed with great cameos and kitschy production numbers, the whole affair could have been a tight 90 minutes. Instead it's flamboyantly self-referential and clocks in at four hours.

Fans will enjoy picking out the many sight gags and puns in the dense, multilayered animation. But, on first viewing, and unlike "The Simpsons," the "Futurama" pilot isn't fall-off-the-couch funny. [25 Mar 1999]

Neither [Welcome to Sweden or "Working the Engels"] is awful, neither will make you cancel other plans.... The execution is slick, and sister Amy has cameos, but how many times can they make the sauna jokes?

Neither ["Welcome to Sweden" or Working the Engels] is awful, neither will make you cancel other plans.... A few bright ideas enliven the half-hour. But how many meddling mother jokes can they pile on before we’re weary?

Both [Undateable and "The Night Shift"] are NBC series serving as spring-summer filler, adequate at what they do but not worth scheduling your life around.

Both ["Undateable" and The Night Shift] are NBC series serving as spring-summer filler, adequate at what they do but not worth scheduling your life around.

The cast is inviting.... But the too-prominent, overly obvious voice-over narrator is a truly awful innovation.

The second hour gets into the wrangling with studio bosses, casting decisions and constraints to come. The minutia of line producing may be fascinating in theory, but watching hour after hour is a dreary prospect. [2 Dec 2001, p.F-01]

So far, it's less funny than intriguing, a way to shake up the sitcom.... The series, the first scripted entry from Ryan Seacrest Productions, seems awfully superficial, at least in the first three episodes available for preview.

Unfortunately the storytelling lacks subtlety. The good and evil characters are too starkly one or the other. The camera tends to flag ideas or objects in advance and make points too obviously.

While it's enjoyable enough watching Malkovich sneer and gloat and threaten torture, the overall adventure isn't as enticing as recent frontier/mob/dirty-cop outings.

The subtlety that made [The Good Wife] work is not in evidence here. Nor does this hour demonstrate the sophisticated humor of “Veep,” a better parody that doesn’t need a zombie-like subplot.

Carrie Underwood isn’t an actor and Stephen Moyer isn’t a singer and together they lacked chemistry as Maria and Captain Von Trapp..... The highpoint of the evening was Audra McDonald’s rendition of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” and Laura Benanti as the Baroness lit up the screen.

Darker than "Desperate Housewives," and even less nuanced. [11 Aug 2005]

Darabont certainly proves his love of the period, of pulp fiction and of the dark and moody film technique. He's less convincing when it comes to selling a story.

So far Grey's Anatomy is groping for a balance between over-the-top nuttiness and heartstring plucking drama; it lands awkwardly in the dram-edy category. If it would stop trying to be droll and ironic (this is no "Scrubs"), it just might make the cut. [27 March 2005, p.F01]

The cast is stunning, the music enticing. Yet Black Sails lands too quickly on an island (shot in Cape Town) and the best parts of the spectacle--the open sea vistas and the claustrophobic shipboard scenes--run aground.

Executive producer Melissa Rosenberg has crafted an off-putting start to a series that may have worked better in the Netherlands.

Kind of hilarious. Kind of silly. Mostly a game of spot-the-cameo players and teasing about what moment a certain chainsaw will come in contact with certain bodies.

The cinematography is admirable, and the accounts from historians and academics are sound. But the sight of Burt Reynolds in rose-tinted glasses explaining that George Armstrong Custer “was a hell of a soldier” does little to inform the project.

The series is packed with intriguing characters and great performances in a mostly untapped period. If only we could tolerate watching through covered eyes, cringing and fast-forwarding through the goriest scenes, we'd probably be in for a rich and rough drama.

While it's wonderful to be reacquainted with the various charming characters for the sixth and final season, the series' essential problems remain: A lack of subtlety as plot turns are signaled and then underscored; a tendency to keep certain characters stuck in one emotional state for prolonged periods--how much more angst can Anna and Bates (Joanne Froggatt and Brendan Coyle) telegraph again and again?, and a reliance on our allegiance to certain actors.

The show is fun to watch, but only because Maslany delivers such diverse and precisely defined characters worth watching.

She [Allison Williams as Peter Pan] pulled it off, but the whole was slick rather than enchanting, well rehearsed rather than goosebump-y.

Depending on your tolerance, it's either a ridiculous presentation best suited to a drinking game (take a gulp every time the screen goes black), or a paranormal adventure that owes everything to "Lost."

The series has some work to do to extricate its characters from the hole it dug in season 3.

Both ["Killer Women" on ABC, Intelligence on CBS] feel like paint-by-numbers hours, unsatisfying offerings that are difficult to recall an hour after you've watched them.

Both [Killer Women on ABC, "Intelligence" on CBS] feel like paint-by-numbers hours, unsatisfying offerings that are difficult to recall an hour after you've watched them.