To find a network drama that bears sustained comparison to ABC's Kingdom Hospital, you'd have to go all the way back to 1990, when the same network premiered David Lynch's "Twin Peaks." Alternately random and brilliant, the 15-hour, limited-run series "Kingdom Hospital" has a similarly indescribable vibe. Set in a huge Maine hospital, it plays like a cross of "M*A*S*H," "Six Feet Under" and "The Shining." King, his talented ensemble cast and his capable director, Craig R. Baxley, have created one of the creepiest locales in TV history. But they don't limit themselves to mere spookiness. They go wherever they please, and their brazen confidence demands that we follow along. [3 March 2004, p.39]

This is the most uncompromising and stylistically innovative approach to TV drama since "NYPD Blue" maybe since "Hill Street Blues" 20 years ago. [30 March 2000, p.57]

Son of the Beach is everything you'd expect from a TV comedy executive produced by Howard Stern - and more. It's unbelievably vulgar - and one of the best bits of dopey humor television has featured since "Police Squad!" [13 March 2000, p.15]

Odd as The Beat may seem on first glance, it's of a piece with the rest of Fontana's work, which aims to shake up TV storytelling by any means necessary. [21 March 2000, p.37]

The biggest rap against Hollywood dramatizations is that they treat history as a series of white-hot personality conflicts when it's really about slowly building waves of collective action. "From the Earth to the Moon" is a rare exception. There are recurring characters and motifs, but none that appear in every episode, and the writers have resisted inventing an audience surrogate to guide us through the maze. [5 Apr 1998]

American Gods is a bit too packed with these intriguing jaunts, and the narrative sometimes feels like it will run out of gas long before reaching its destination. (The first 8-episode season reportedly covers only the first third of the fantasy epic.) But that doesn't mean you won't enjoy the ride.

Atwood's spare narrative is haunting in the horrors it only hints at. The Hulu adaptation is 10 episodes (and judging from the gripping first three, hopefully there will be many more). The narrative is more fully fleshed out, and obviously more visceral, but it still leaves a lot to the imagination.

This is supposed to be a cat-and-mouse game, but it's more like a kitten with a ball of yarn.

The basic structure is compelling enough--viewers don't even know who the identity of the murder victim is through much of the series, and the layered performances keep us in flux over who we'd like to kill off, and who we wish would do the killing.

The Missing is a feast--albeit the most chilly, emotionally devastating feast ever--for armchair sleuths.

[Legion is] produced like a cerebral art house version of a superhero series, thrumming with precision and emotion where the genre usually calls for shock and awe, and assembled with an entrancing period aesthetic (it seems to be set in the early 1970s, but that could just be a side-effect of David's fragile mental state) and stunning, occasionally horrifying visual effects.

Newcomers to the franchise--there may be a quite a few, as 24: Legacy gets the prime spot right after the Super Bowl--may get sucked in, mostly thanks to Hawkins' charisma, although Miranda Otto is also very watchable as Rebecca Ingram, the tough CTU director who is leaving the agency to help her husband, played by Jimmy Smits, run for president.

Riverdale is not only coherent but often enthralling, an effectively moody and sometimes perverse melodrama that manages to revel in the high school tropes that Archie helped define decades ago while simultaneously subverting them.

The metaphorical gloom and doom of Taboo is likewise dense and relentless but so enveloping you can't help but be sucked in.

The first episode is not as edgy (or, quite frankly, as funny) as it thinks it is. Olson is a gifted physical actress but the woman-behaving-badly shtick starts off a bit toothless. The second episode is sharper.

A sumptuous, stately but never dull look inside the life of Queen Elizabeth (Claire Foy).

Like the park, Westworld operates on many levels, and the ones that take place below the park are less successful than the vibrant but violent world the programmers have built above. ... The saving grace is the interplay between Ford's sensitive second-in-command Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright), obsessed with tweaking the code to imbue the hosts with ever more humanity, and the hosts, particularly Wood's Dolores, who can shift from sunny self-denial to clinical self analysis at a word from Lowe.

The procedural element is smartly done, the stakes realistically high, and Atwell's chemistry with Cahill's D.A. compelling.

It's an infectious, engaging hour that sets up the rules of this universe efficiently and effectively (i.e., they can't double back to anyplace they might meet themselves), and the cast gels quickly.

The expensive-looking pilot episode, with its frequent use of unusual camera angles to suggest a world gone askew, effectively establishes the sinister vibe, with some genuine scares and plenty of gore. Daniels is particularly magnetic as the older, put-out-to-pasture priest haunted in more ways than one.

The show feels realistic in the locker room, on the field and in the media circus that surrounds her. (The synergy with real-life Fox Sports commentators and on-screen graphics provides more verisimilitude.)

This Is Us (from "Crazy, Stupid, Love" screenwriter Dan Fogelman) methodically weaves four seemingly disparate stories into a believable and emotional whole through tiny telling details, relatable moments, and conversations and confrontations that are funny, tender or painful, or all three at once.

This is the best network comedy of the season (yes, that's a caveat), with its deceptively easy balance of heart and snark.

Designated Survivor has got a dynamite premise, but the premiere episode flounders when it leaves the White House for the ruins of the Capitol, where FBI agent Hannah Wells (Maggie Q) is spearheading the investigation.

The first episode starts out whimsical and veers into freakish by the end, but I'm already invested in seeing where it goes from there.

Better Things is one of the messiest portrayals of motherhood on television today--which pretty much makes it the most real.

How Naz's religion (he's the American-born son of Pakistani immigrants) becomes a factor in the case is a natural part of the narrative but never feels like a polemic--The Night Of is too subtle for that. Its brilliance is in the way, thanks to the moody, unrushed direction and pointed, spare dialogue, everything feels freighted with meaning.

Outcast is incredibly visceral, both in its scenes of demonic possession and in the punch-happy tactics of the titular amateur exorcist. But it's also a tense, meditative psychological drama about trauma, redemption and belief, with nuanced performances throughout and a grim but arresting visual style that is not without flashes of humor.