It's safe to say you've not seen anything like it on network television. And not to put too fine a point on it, but the shock does wear off after a few minutes. [22 Sept 2004, p.F3]

A great first hour gets this comedic drama off to a fine start.

The secret to the show’s success is not any of the overly familiar parts, but the nutty way Leverage throws them together. Also, Hutton is a great actor who generates plenty of crackle between Nate and his fellow fleecers.

With all the crazy gags, pitch-perfect dialogue and a fresh hero at the center, it’s hard not to see “Andy Barker” as the spiritual successor to “Police Squad!”.

Southland is built to be bigger, and in that sense it succeeds immediately, thanks to excellent casting (especially Michael Cudlitz and Regina King as a cop and a detective), gritty location shooting around L.A. and storytelling that doesn’t hold the viewer’s hand.

Things may end badly for Vic, or not, but this I know for sure: The next time The Shield cheats its viewers will be the first.

Rescue Me does everything “Lost” does. It balances character, drama, comedy and suspense while relentlessly pushing a dozen story lines forward.

It's the best drama pilot I saw over the summer.

Whatever the reasons, True Blood has become stranger, more complicated and more satisfying to watch over time.

The dialogue is surprisingly fresh, even to someone who's watched way too many MTV reality shows.

The History channel’s Sons of Liberty miniseries tells a satisfying tale of Boston’s slow burn toward rebellion in the 1770s.

The moral quicksand that made The Americans so compelling for its first two seasons is deeper than ever.

In its second season, House of Cards is just like its main character: clever, ruthless, a bit too self-satisfied and surprisingly powerful.

After four seasons of showing us cosmetic enhancement from every conceivable angle, Nip/Tuck is ready to take its scalpel to something else: the entertainment industry. I’m not saying that it’s going to work or that Nip/Tuck's longtime fans will appreciate the gesture, but tonight’s episode introduces us to a show-within-a-show that is simply dreadful, and that alone (to this TV critic) is worth the price of admission.

This is one smart, funny comedy that deserves better than the anemic time slot it’s getting.

[The pasts of the ladies at Litchfield] are less “Shawshank Redemption” than “Goodfellas,” with every episode using sparse, smartly edited scenes to tell one inmate’s story.

The comedy has a loose, improvisational feel to it, but is still pretty fast-paced. And the four characters are at their funniest just in the room alone, swapping lines with each other, an experience a lot of dudes in their 20s can relate to... or so I’m told.

The fourth season of Friday Night Lights (which already aired last fall on DirecTV) is as rich and dramatic and satisfying as ever.

It has personality to spare, so much that you forgive it for its romantic notion that a bunch of highly paid TV people constitutes a "family." [22 Sept 1998, p.F1]

This extremely promising series combines the human drama of the David Janssen TV show with the stuntwork of the 1992 Harrison Ford movie. And while neither lead has the Hollywood aura of Ford or Tommy Lee Jones, Williamson and Daly are well-matched as the cat and mouse. [6 Oct 2000, p.E1]

It's a more compelling, faster-paced and less frustrating journey than fans were treated to in “A Feast for Crows” and “A Dance With Dragons,” the novels that line up with the current action in Westeros’ winter-is-coming world.

The Slap is rare TV, depicting the kind of drama viewers might find themselves caught up in. It’s nice to see a show shamelessly go about doing its manipulative business.

Yes, Treme is a tremendous document of the period following Katrina, how it shattered not just homes and infrastructure and tourism but, most important, families. All of that is on the surface and pretty accessible.

Orange is scary, smart and relevant, and it will make you wonder why no one thought to give the “Oz” formula a dose of estrogen before now.

While its premise isn’t new--anyone remember “Total Recall 2070” or “Mann and Machine”?--the show’s ambition, solid cast and pure production values make it a worthwhile diversion.

Sometimes slasher flick, sometimes courtroom drama, this Lizzie is a cynically dark, shamefully fun account of an all-American crime.

Breaking Bad is not an easy show to watch. [But] this is the Cranston show, and for those of us who still see reruns of “Malcolm in the Middle” and the red-faced, eye-bulging slapstick that Cranston was put through on that show, he is quite a revelation on Breaking Bad.

Every time the 1943 of Manhattan begins to feel like 2014, it returns to the nostalgia of movies like “The Right Stuff,” where brains and grit make the peace, back to a time when America trusted its fate to the smartest guys we could find.