Showrunner Julian Fellowes knew he had to spice things up, apparently, so he employed a lazy, “shocking” plot device that will leave fans sickened, indignant and wondering why Fellowes just didn’t give his beloved characters something worthwhile to do instead. That offensive event aside, this season’s repetitive tropes, recycled conflicts and predictable heartbreak are not worth the trouble this time around.

'24' continues to distinguish itself as the most original show on television. [27 Oct 2003]

Ripper Street was clever enough not to hang its hat on the over-examined killings of the five Ripper victims, and clever fans of police procedurals will relish spending eight hours with cops who have to invent the crime-solving tools at their disposal.

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

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.

The show’s recycled vampire mythology fails to justify this level of bloodletting, which even fans of “The Walking Dead” might find gratuitous.

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

An out-of-the-gate triumph.

Warehouse 13 has always been a hodgepodge of other people’s ideas and gimmicks, but the magic is how they’re thrown together here.

I worry about Chuck. I see it moldering before my eyes. And it’s nobody’s fault

Rocha, combined with the new format of The Face, creates a real threat to the Tyra empire.... [But] The Face, with a focus on posing, strutting and styling in its first few weeks, has room to fall.

In the end, I had to give in to sheer enjoyment. My wife and I couldn’t load the next episode into the DVD player fast enough.

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]

How it all goes awry is the question that provides Caprica with its ripe potential. Unfortunately, a serious storytelling mistake in the early going has left me with doubts about whether it has the wherewithal to get there.

It’s an atmospheric, pinned-to-your-seat winner.

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.

An example of the pay cable channel at its finest.

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.

The result is a challenging psychological thriller within a gripping crime procedural.

The core of the show is its characters, who are vividly drawn and well cast, and its tangle of provocative story lines. [22 July 2003, p.E8]

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

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

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

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.

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]

Ignore several adolescent sexual references and you have a sitcom willing to poke fun at the trauma of growing old in a culture that reveres youth. And while Shepherd is not God's gift to TV sitcoms, she holds her own as an island of near-sanity in a sea of hedonism. [30 Dec 1994]

"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.

A viewer-friendly diversion.