While capturing all this with seemingly unfettered access, Wrong finds the little dramas that provide insight into what it's like to be a resident at one of the world's premier teaching hospitals.

Like “True Detective,” The Knick benefits from a consistent vision and stellar cinematography. Its turn-of-the-century sets and costuming will transport viewers into the past more vividly than any stuffy sitting room in “Downton Abbey.” But it requires dedication to stick around with The Knick until the action gets going a few episodes in.

Warburton is spot-on perfect as Tick. [8 Nov 2001, p.E1]

Elevate[s] the state of TV drama with fine writing, convincing acting and compelling stories. [16 Sep 1994]

With its demented story lines, idiotic characters, out-of-control banter and fantastic send-ups of a spy genre that had seemingly been overspoofed already, Archer is destined to put another feather in the cap of FX.

Thanks to its excellent cast, led by Nat Faxon and Judy Greer as Russ and Lina, Married rises above its cliched setup.

The results aren't much different from a video game, for the violence on Chuck is pretty cartoony, but after watching two episodes I’m hooked. This is a fun escapist show.

Penny Dreadful is a smart, self-referential Dracula vs. the Wolf-Man vs. Frankenstein concept delivering the scares, chills and laughs that summer TV needs.

It’s Gretchen and Jimmy’s repartee, their unrelenting need to voice their awful thoughts, that makes Worst worth watching.

Smallville roped me in. The most intriguing premise is that young Clark is only starting to grasp the enormity of his arriving on Earth a dozen years earlier. [16 Oct 2001, p.E1]

I'm happy to report that, much like the disembodied head of Richard Nixon (who shows up in the second episode), it's the same barrel of laughs it always was.

Not only is it funnier than its lead-in, it’s improved on its impressive (and sadly truncated) first season on ABC.

As a comedy, it’s surprisingly entertaining....But what ultimately kept me watching, through every screener Showtime provided, was this audacious bit of acting from Collette.

It feels like Haggis and Moresco are picking up right where “EZ Streets” left off.

It’s definitely not the same-old same-old, for which ABC is to be congratulated.

It brings its own style of spine-tingling dysfunction to the screen.

This just feels like the show "CSI" should have been all along. [23 Sep 2002]

The indie-director touches do not narrow the appeal of Louie. It is, however, strictly for adults.

The freshest take on the single-camera mockumentary since “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Walton and Stockham are a seamless comedy team straight out of the gate. Their banter is more salty and cynical than sappy, but that’s how it gets to you.

You will regret tuning in even a minute late for the premiere.

Torchwood is so much more tricked-out with talent and visual wizardry, moves at such breakneck speed and makes such demands on its viewers that it leaves most American TV shows in its dust.

If "Popular" can do for social stratification what "Party of Five" did for addiction, it may have a chance. [29 Sept 1999, p.F1]

I'd seen a tape of Cohen's UK show and wasn't impressed - but as with so many TV stars, being on HBO just seems to improve him. [18 Feb 2003]

The show is sometimes strained and tends to be a bit sappy, but Family Ties has some good writing. [22 Sep 1982, p.2B]

This behind-the-scenes look at the American presidency from the creator of "Sports Night" (Aaron Sorkin) gets off to a bumpy start tonight when viewers realize that the supposedly liberal chief executive played by Martin Sheen - who in real life is an actual fire-eating Hollywood liberal - has no minorities in his inner circle. (The first black face seen in the premiere episode is a traffic cop who pulls over one of the show's regulars.) [22 Sept 1999, p.F10]

Time will tell whether this spin-off of NBC's cops-to-courts standby can lure an audience to Mondays. There's plenty here to work with. The question is, in what direction will creator Dick Wolf move it all? [20 Sept 1999, p.E1]

Deception borrows a lot from that show and others, ending up more fun than challenging.

It’s a hoot.

Mr. Selfridge really gets rolling in its third and fourth episodes, when its interlocking stories and Piven’s outsize performance settle into place.

Whether Chance has any actual superpowers might be a point worth debating if watching Human Target weren’t so much fun.

Lead writer Daniel Knauf, who created HBO’s “Carnivale,” has tweaked Bram Stoker’s classic tale in delightful, if heavy-handed ways.

A goofy and likable new comedy.

It’s an ambitious and ever-shifting examination of the lack of foresight in a culture addicted to rapid change.

The Lost Valentine ultimately succeeds for two reasons: It is an engaging if somewhat convoluted little yarn. And White takes emotional command of the movie.

Mostly a hoot. [4 Feb 2005]

"The Riches" reminds me a bit of "Big Love" the first time I saw it. I wasn’t sure whether to like these people or despise them, whether I bought the premise or not. And yet, at the end of the hour, I wanted to see more.

The series hits its stride a few episodes in, when Lowe and Blackbeard finally get on a boat together to fight a common enemy, knowing they’re each just waiting for the right moment to kill the other. Their dynamic evokes the tense partnership between Al Swearengen and Sheriff Bullock in "Deadwood."

The first hour of Scream is an efficient fright-delivery system wrapped inside a teen drama, but it’s meta-commentary that makes it worthwhile. That, and the pilot’s promise to spread out its jump scares more slowly and deliberately.

Sexy and stylish. [4 Oct 2003]

While I prefer the British Mars, the show's premise is so strong that this decent execution of it is hard not to recommend.

It's an engaging set-up for what will likely be a hit, since it was obviously designed to complement the social-service minded "Judging Amy." [25 Sept 2001, p.E1]

Samantha Who? actually gets better as it goes along. There’s a lot of table-setting in this first episode, but I found myself enjoying a later episode, and Applegate is a big reason why.

All those ingredients make for a stew that, initially anyway, needs salt....Having seen two more promising later episodes, I say give Dollhouse time. And in the meantime, enjoy the set, the so-called dollhouse.

If Trump keeps showing us that success has not gone completely to his head, this should be a good season. [9 Sep 2004]

It’s a smart series with a pacing that sometimes takes your breath away. Still, once the action pauses, will viewers want to spend time with a bunch of amoral characters?

After the nerve-jangling first episode, I predict you’ll be hooked.

The new version bears less of a resemblance to “ER”-styled medical drama of the 2000 “Hopkins” than it does to “The Hills,” the MTV sensation that introduced a whole new visual vocabulary to unscripted TV. The stories still involve people being treated at Hopkins, of course, but what’s striking is how much time is spent outside the hospital with the docs and their families.

Because "Traffic" is filmed like "24," you can experience the excitement of a whole season of Fox in just three nights. [25 Jan 2004]

Montage of Heck achieves its goal of intimacy almost too well. It’s such a tightly cropped portrait that criticizing it feels like criticizing Cobain. But it’s too long and a bit repetitive, and it keeps trying to explain its subject through his own scribblings long after his soul has been laid bare by more direct means.

I like Gary Unmarried. It’s like other sitcoms I’ve seen of late involving newly broken-up households (remember when the sitcom single dad was widowed instead of divorced?).

A year after the Rosie Larsen case ended, this new chapter is compelling enough to earn some fan forgiveness.

A gripping, one-of-a-kind drama.

The show is entertaining enough, but the American Hood, played by Rufus Sewell, won't remind anyone of Patrick Stewart.

Some critics called the book incisive and addictive, while others dismissed it as pulpy and juvenile. Under the Dome checks all those boxes in Monday’s pilot episode.

If Grey's Anatomy falls short of being the next "ER," it's because it's too slickly produced. It comes with the kind of heart-tugging music and exquisitely lighted contemplative moments you might expect to see on, say, "The O.C." But the writing and acting, if not the staging, helped pull me through surgery. [26 March 2005, p.E3]

No one will mistake this for cutting-edge comedy but it is well-cast (especially Lithgow) and good-natured enough to please most viewers. [8 Jan 1996]

After a nine-month hiatus, one of the best new shows of last season returns from the undead with a bit more of the deviled edge that made it so great when it first emerged from the crypt in the fall of 2007.

Sleek, action-packed and heavy on the acting talent.

Death Comes to Pemberley, on paper and the small screen, is not as satisfying as a newly discovered Austen novel would be.

Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher may not captivate like Peter Falk's Columbo, but she'll do quite nicely until something better comes along. [28 Sep 1984, p.2B]

An entertainingly raunchy spoof of reality TV. [23 Jul 2003]

Surprise! It’s not nearly as bad as I thought.

The pilot is plodding at times, the result of a few too many heart-to-heart discussions among the characters. Still, Williams, Holliday and Heard create such fresh, memorable characters that it's impossible to get bored. [16 Sept 1995, p.E7]

There is a distinctly 2002 feel to this season of 24....But you know what? It all manages to hold together.

It’s a pleasure to watch Bean fall into his “legends,” or fake identities, even as the show pushes the boundaries of what TV audiences might accept when it comes to instantaneous computer heroics.

Fringe does a pretty nifty job of balancing the demands of the paranormal genre against the viewer’s need for some comic relief.

Carey, a stand-up comedy veteran, has great timing and expression. It's easy to relate to his working-class persona. Now if someone could just make his friends a little funnier, "Drew Carey" could be a winner. [13 Sep 1995]

Thanks to the fact that Starz is pay cable and can say and show pretty much whatever it wants, this show ramps up the dramatic tension quickly and effectively.

Compelling if not entirely satisfying. [29 Oct 2002]

The latest re-imagining of Daniel Defoe’s classic tale of a man shipwrecked on an island far from home has already earned its keep.

Of all the new mystery-driven dramas aspiring to be this year’s “Lost”... “Invasion” is the most absorbing and least hokey.

In other words, don’t hate it immediately just because it isn’t “Curb,” because if you love “Curb” you might eventually like Bored to Death.

A good, potentially great, show.

It’s not near HBO quality but certainly better than that “Sleeper Cell” tripe that Showtime put on last year.

Heche really shines in this role.

The constant toing-and-froing of “Mrs. Harris” might have gotten tiresome, as an earlier HBO effort at revisionist biography, “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” did. Bening, though, is somehow able to conjure up a completely new mood for each time and setting.

Once you get beyond the show’s homages, both to 1970s style and “Desperate Housewives,” this proves to be a groovy little summer soap opera.

For all those who are not confirmed “CSI” fans, this is worth a look.

It’s not that The Leftovers isn’t great storytelling, because it is. It’s just befuddling, violent and sad--more and more all the time, with no satisfaction in sight. Theroux is flat-out fantastic and Emmy-worthy in this role.

Those who accept it for what it is--a funny, manipulative soap that relies on historical upheaval to frame its scarce plots--should be happy to hear that Downton’s new season is better than its last.

Mr. Rhodes is the funniest of the new season's comic-playing-a-maverick-teacher-fighting-a-school-bureaucracy sitcoms. [30 Sep 1996]

The Following, compelling and frustrating from its opening credits, sets viewers up for a season-long, blood-soaked rematch between an evil intellectual and his law-enforcement nemesis.

The effects-laden pilot of “Painkiller Jane” is certainly watchable.

True, Cannavale and Paulson take some getting used to, at least among those of us who remember Piven and Marshall. But the premise still has miles more appeal than a “CSI” knockoff.

If [Sorkin] intends to preach off-key sermons every week, “Studio 60” is going to get old fast.

Unlike "The Office," Backstrom hasn't yet fleshed out the supporting characters to water down Wilson's well-oiled obnoxiousness generator. Once it stops explaining everyone's backstory--why is he so bitter? why is she so naive? why are the firefighters evil?--Backstrom might turn into a decent chase for the bad guy of the week.

Like young Jaime, it's going to take awhile for this show to find its artificial legs.

Unlike the previous Hanks-Spielberg efforts, each of these men is really on his own journey, and the changing shift of focus doesn’t help us build affection for the characters, either. The other problem with “The Pacific” is not really its doing. We’re in two wars now; comprehending a third seems a tall order for most people.

In the tradition of "The Day After" and "My So-Called Life" comes The Big C, an important show premiering Monday that's not necessarily a great show.

A viewer-friendly diversion.

It’s a grim two hours... But it’s not overly explicit, and the script and talent are better than most Lifetime films.

It will take awhile to figure out whether Sons of Anarchy was worth the investment of our time.

[It] makes defense work look as sexy as anything on the high-tech "CSI."

Unfortunately, whoever developed this show couldn't trust the audience to accept Piper Perabo's character as strong enough to get out of a pickle or two without male intervention. I won't reveal how, because the first episode is otherwise very enjoyable, thanks to a solid supporting cast including "O.C." dad Peter Gallagher, Kari Matchett and former WB/UPN heartthrob Christopher Gorham.

There’s no doubt Life is blessed with a fine lead actor, an intriguing premise and better writing than most new shows this fall. It’s just that viewers aren’t going to find that promising TV drama buried underneath all the crime procedural.

“Prison Break” could be the fall’s breakout hit, but only if other actors can bail out Miller.

It works because the three regulars--Zach Braff, Donald Faison and especially John McGinley--are all over these episodes, and the four newcomers are kept in their place.