It's a bit of a jumble and not particularly compelling.

This is a smart, simmering human-scale crime drama that transcends the superhero genre.

While Sinatra die-hards may find all this too familiar, there are still intriguing revelations throughout.

Younger, with its fizzy sensibility and sexual frankness, is a not-so-veiled attempt to lure younger audiences to the network, but there's a caginess to the humor, poking fun at both the younger generation, whose self-worth seems irrevocably tied to the strength of their Instagram following, and the pop cultural obliviousness of Liza's generation.

Even if you are familiar with the contours of the controversy over Scientology, Gibney's documentary, which won raves at Sundance in January and airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on HBO, is worth watching, particularly for the personal stories of former members.

Mendelsohn is superb as Danny, who shifts between vulnerability and venality with a swiftness that will leave you breathless. And there is an authenticity to the interplay between these adult siblings, freighted with unspoken accusations, long-held grudges, bitter rivalries and yes, even love, hinted at in flashbacks and fleshed out in a shocking flash-forward.

A cheeky mash-up of police procedural, screwball comedy, and horror parody with lots of heart. And, yes, lots of brains.

While The Royals swings wildly from satire to sentimentality, from romance to raunch, and from camp to, well, crap, and only in the latter does it find its footing.

It's not a talky show; there's as much to be gleaned here in what is not said as what is. The moodiness of the production also goes a long way in helping us suspend our disbelief.

It's funnier than most of what's on television these days, but it never coalesces into something spectacular.

A penetrating, demanding examination of race, faith, the pitfalls of self-righteousness and limits of parental love.

CSI: Cyber is perfectly serviceable television, with nothing distracting--David Caruso dramatically interrupting his own cheesy ripostes to don his sunglasses, say--to take you out of the story, but not a whole lot to keep you breathless for another.

The cases-of-the-week here are not groundbreaking but some are a bit wacky (death by maple syrup), and Battle Creek promises at least one grand mystery--if Duhamel's FBI agent is such an ace, what did he do to rate a posting in beleaguered Battle Creek? Agnew is chomping at the bit to find out, and so are we.

It's a fairly mundane mystery populated by cardboard characters with poor decision-making skills, starting with Ben, who immediately becomes the prime suspect, and his wife Christy.

Even though the show moves confidently and hilariously in a new direction in the second episode, at the same time it feels like the first half of a very smart, sharply edited feature film, not a sitcom with weekly obligations.

This show does nothing interesting with the premise, relying almost entirely, it seems, on the brand to break out.

NBC's new miniseries The Slap is a heavy-handed, button-pushing, endlessly irritating drama about a family that slowly unravels after a man slaps another's obnoxious child at a family party.

How will Better Call Saul play for those unfamiliar with "Breaking Bad"? It still works, provided they're content with Gilligan's trademark loopiness and the show's leisurely (but confident) pace.

The set-ups are disparate enough [from "The Americans"], and Allegiance's twisty allegiances, are promising enough not to dismiss the show out of hand.

Watered-down or not, the immigrant/culture clash storylines are the freshest things about Fresh Off the Boat, which is a pastiche of other ABC sitcoms (thankfully, the good ones).

Fortitude's allure is its off-puttingness; those making a home there must indeed be tenacious, and with Fortitude, the same tenacity is required of its viewers.

Backstrom isn't edgy; he's a formulaic anti-hero with too much emphasis on the anti- and very little evidence of the hero.

On Best New Restaurant, [Tom Colicchio] is less guarded and more engaged with the chefs and restaurateurs, learning how their experience, management style and personalities interplay in the kitchen and in dining room. A delightful surprise of the premiere are those seemingly genuine, not pumped-up-for-the cameras personalities.

He started off with a strong opening monologue.... But the heart of the show is supposed to be a panel discussion between Wilmore, one of his contributors and a guest panel that Monday night featured U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, hip-hop artist Talib Kweli and comedian Bill Burr, but eight minutes wasn't enough time to get any sort of meaningful (or funny, for that matter) dialogue going.... What did work was the "Keep It 100" segment, in which Wilmore posed a tough question tailored to each of his panelists, which they had to answer as truthfully as possible.

It's different enough from the original that you may be better off looking at it fresh, as a promising and more straightforward (okay, relatively straightforward) sci-fi adventure series with the requisite shadow conspiracy and, for those in the past, a looming Armageddon.

Yaya DaCosta ably embodies Houston's grace, confidence and teasing good humor--but she isn't given much to work with.... [Whitney's] music remains timeless, though, and that's when Whitney comes to life.

The four lead characters don't come off as deliberately, purposefully awful. In fact, they're so likable that their self-sabotaging almost adds to their charms. You're rooting for everyone, even when they're at cross-purposes.

What makes a marriage work, and what sacrifices are worth its maintenance and upkeep, are plumbed here with surprising dexterity.

The Newsroom is as insufferable as ever.

Ryan, a Welsh actor little known on these shores, is the best thing about the pilot. Second best are some genuinely creepy special effects and scares, but the plot itself is a muddle.

This is definitely promise ring material.

The premiere episode is riveting--the best pilot I've seen this fall. (That admittedly is not saying much.)

The CW has done an impressive job building a snappy show out of one of the goofier heroes of the DC universe.

Both Feldman and Milioti are appealing, but the show doesn't feel particularly fresh, and there's probably one gimmick too many.

The show wallows in lowest common denominator jokes that more often than not don't land.

The show comes from Kevin Williamson, who created the more equal-opportunity torture porn "The Following," which at least has a literary sheen and some effective scares. Here there are just trope.

The worst that can be said for Manhattan Love Story is that it's bland.

There's the usual assortment of quirky neighbors/co-workers, none of whom register as more than caricatures in the pilot, and the social media buzzwords sprinkled with abandon throughout the pilot comes off as hashtag desperate.... Selfie is actively grating.

The law students are an assortment of not yet very distinctive ambitious types, with the exception being audience surrogate Wes Gibbons (Alfred Enoch)

The jokes are tight, and Anderson, whipsawing between smooth playa and high-pitched dismay, is a very likeable lead. There is is a feel-good resolution, although not quite as sappy (and sappily effective) as those on "Modern Family."

The city--neon-washed, Chanderlesque, somewhat anachronistic--is itself also a character, and it turns what could be "Law & Order: Gotham" into something infinitely more layered and watchable.

Eddie Kaye Thomas is fun as the occasionally felonious brainiac psychologist, but the rest of the characters are pretty one-dimensional, that one dimension being their social awkwardness.

Solid but a bit staid.

Gruffudd's characterization is a bit uneven; sometimes he's gruff and aloof and still pining over the loss of his World War II-era love, yet he's able to turn on the charm when he wants to.

The show is soapy for sure, but only at the end of the premiere does it descend into the borderline sappiness that could have been its calling card. It helps that the entire cast has charisma to spare--even the kid in the coma.

It's a bizarro comedy-cop procedural-mommy drama that does nothing well, and the murder mystery exceptionally badly.

Silly as it is, the show works as pop-mythic eye candy. The pilot alone a motherlode of iconic pictures. [3 Oct 2003, p.53]

It's a cheesy-looking, indifferently plotted, repetitious piece of work. ... The creature effects don't pass muster in the Spielberg era, the pacing is slack, the dialogue is dull, and the whole thing looks washed out and feels rushed and poorly thought out. [28 Nov 2002]

Fortunately, Ritter is such a seasoned pro at this sitcom thing that he makes "8 Simple Rules" vaguely watchable, and at times actually funny, when in lesser hands it would be thoroughly unpleasant. [17 Sep 2002]

It's pretty grim stuff — but quite engrossing and worth your time.

When the drama comes, shall we say, to a head, you'll be hard-pressed not to burst into laughter.

Part of the excitement of "Watching Ellie" comes from wondering whether the people who made it can get around the creative obstacles they created. [26 Feb 2002]

"Ellie" has gone from being an avant-garde failure to a very average failure. [15 Apr 2003]

While it's great that series like these can find a home on pay cable, it's a shame they feel the need to live up to the adult reputation most cable series have. "Soul Food" the series continues the unfortunate R-rated tradition of "Soul Food" the movie. [26 Jun 2000]

Magnificent Seve" can't hold a candle to its cinematic predecessor, or to most of the old TV classics like Gunsmoke. But in a world where all the cowboys rode off into the sunset decades ago, we'll take a watered-down Western just fine, ma'am. [3 Jan 1998]

The macabre, marvelous Penny Dreadful does nothing halfway. As the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound.

It's dull and predictable and makes that old '60s time-travel series Time Tunnel look like the work of Robert Heinlein. [22 Sept 1997, p.33]

For the most part, it's an eye-opening look at the business of show, with a lot of Hollywood color throughout. [29 Nov 2001, p.57]

For fans of the original movie, there are a number of callbacks to savor.... We're looking forward plenty of long, cold winters.

The writing is sharp, and laughs are both low (Ehrlich commissions a Latino graffiti artist for a street-cool logo that turns out to be incredibly, hilariously vulgar) and high (in the same episode, Ehrlich's repeated attempts to avoid coming off as racist come off as racist).

Like "Queer as Folk," The L Word is essentially a mediocre soap opera in soft-core porno drag. There's lots of hot, sweaty, half-naked bodies, but the heads attached spend so much time droning on and on and on about their mundane lives and loves that the sex scenes just feel like an intermission in between all the tepid girl-on-girl dialogue. [16 Jan 2004, p.55]

Las Vegas is definitely watchable; the pace is so fast that it's as if the filmmakers are fast- forwarding so you don't have to. But the plot is so tangled it's almost incomprehensible, the grace notes are laminated beneath visual slickness - and throughout, it's hard to shake the feeling that you've seen it before and don't need to see it again. [22 Sept 2003, p.35]

The pilot offers a number of interesting swerves, and Anderson and Mulroney are always watchable, but Crisis shares sustainability issues with CBS' "Hostages."

The pilot is at its best when Cuaron's visual choreography takes center stage; at its worst, when any of the characters open their mouths.

The ABC show is more blandly cast and written [thanrench import "The Returned"], but it's still capable on occasion of hitting you in the gut emotionally, if not scrambling your brains.

The deliberate pacing and slow revelation of key motivations and certain relationships don't make it easy on viewers, but you didn't tune in for "Law & Order: Mahwah."

Only intermittently funny but unceasingly crass.

The writers try to imbue the narration with a sense of heartfelt nostalgia that came so naturally to a show like "The Wonder Years," but the contemporary setting and banal plotlines works against it.

Produced by Jason Katims ("Friday Night Lights," "Parenthood"), About a Boy is snappy with some well-observed one-liners, but it's a fairly conventional sitcom about an unconventional family.

I doubt any gay person will see him- or herself represented on Queer as Folk with absolute realism and accuracy. It's basically a trashy soap opera with a veneer of social criticism a gay, sexually explicit "Melrose Place." But it's fun all the same addictive, suspenseful and sometimes moving, a populist glimpse of a subculture that pop culture rarely examines. [1 Dec 2000, p.F1]

The show, stylishly shot and strongly written, throws a lot at the wall in the premiere.

What could be a relentlessly grim procedural (again, "The Killing") is instead a compelling drama that works (so far, at least) on a number of levels: as a mystery, as an idiosyncratic buddy story, and as a textured sociopolitical treatise. But don't let the latter scare you off.

It's shot single-camera, mockumentary style like "Modern Family," but the set-ups aren't as outrageous and the writing, while funny, is not quite as sharp.

Sanders' husband (Tate Donovan) and teenaged kids are each shielding their own secrets, uncovered by Carlisle and his crew--and covered up by them as well. Unfortunately, they're fairly pedestrian.

The humor is generally broad, although Wilson doesn't always play it that way, and when she showcases a bit of wry, knowing wit we remember from "Pitch Perfect," I see glimmers of hope.

The mythology comes on hard and heavy in the first hour, but like ABC's blink-and-you-missed-it spring thriller "Zero Hour," it's ponderous yet silly.

The grand, star-crossed romance between Alice and Cyrus is promising, and turning Alice into a willful Victorian riot grrl is a move that will resonate with many viewers. As in "Once," the computer-generated landscapes and creatures don't quite work--they look do look unworldly, but in a cheesy way.

It is all very campy and salacious (the young ladies are quite overcome after witnessing a bedding, although the resulting masturbation scene was trimmed from the pilot shown to the press), and historical accuracy takes a backseat to hair product and a driving contemporary soundtrack. But the show seems to be a bit aware of its own absurdity, which is more than one can say for some of the dreck the networks have served up so far this season.

The pilot (only the first hour was sent for review) is well made with strong leads and several intriguing hooks. Almost Human is almost there.

Sometimes it seems that Darabont is more in thrall to the rise of the West Coast mob than to the story he's allegedly trying to tell.

Enlisted is not groundbreaking comedy, but it's dependable and heartfelt--and sometimes that's all you need in your foxhole.

True Detective keeps you on your toes, and will keep you glued to the screen.

The pilot is carried on Kinnear's rascally charm and is heavy on quirk.

The era is a rich vein to mine, and to their credit, the creators are light on pirate cliches--I do not believe one "aargh!" is uttered--but at the same time, there's a little too much emphasis on pirate economics and labor disputes than is necessary, and the sprawling cast and hierarchy a little hard to keep straight.

In an ideal world, Katims and Nutter would have taken the best elements from their previous series: the keen insight into teen behavior of "My So-Called Life" and the inventive storytelling of "The X-Files." Unfortunately, Roswell gets it backwards, using both the self-importance of the former and the paper-thin characterization of the latter. [6 Oct 1999, p.73]

Outside of McGee, the new season suggests that Rescue Me has gone as far as it can go as a comedy/drama hybrid. Almost all of the best scenes are the funny ones - or the ones that start dark, then turn funny, like Tommy brainstorming with Mike (Mike Lombardi) on the best way to euthanize his ailing mother.[12 June 2007, p.41]

Murphy's writing has never been especially fond of subtlety - give him a fly to kill, and he'll ask for a brick of C4 - but this version of Nip/Tuck more closely resembles the show the fans fell in love with instead of the one they thought they wanted with The Carver story. [5 Sept 2006, p.27]

For a show that's so scornful of our national obsession with beauty, Nip/Tuck seems awfully comfortable staying skin deep. Its wild collage of sexual and surgical plot twists creates the appearance of meaning, but very rarely does the show hold up to close scrutiny. In the moment, it's dazzling, but when you step away from the set, it's oddly forgettable. [20 Sept 2005, p.33]

If FX's other signature drama "The Shield" is a fine example of how cable's relaxed content restrictions can lead to more compelling drama, Nip/Tuck is a symbol of that freedom run amok. "The Shield" is heavy on shock value, but those shocks are there to serve some kind of larger purpose. When the Nip/Tuck writers throw in something raunchy or disgusting, it's simply because they can. [21 June 2004, p.27]

Nip/Tuck is the right show at the right time, a pointed, funny attack on the body biz and another winner from the cable channel that brought us "The Shield" and "Lucky." [21 July 2003, p.25]

And then, near the end of the premiere, something happened that put a dull ache in the pit of my stomach. I won't spoil it here - henceforth, it'll be referred to as The Bad Thing - but it seemed so tonally wrong, so in violation of everything that made the show and the particular characters involved so great, that I knew - I knew - this had been imposed on the production team by the suits at NBC. [5 Oct 2007, p.55]

The greatest dramatic series in the history of American television. [6 Mar 2005, p.1]

The sheer amount of cussing is so great that even the unoffended may be too distracted by it to pay attention to anything else in Deadwood. That would be unfortunate, because lurking just behind the wall of profanity is a magnificent, fire-breathing work of art - an amazing meditation on violence, social order and the cruel reality of the Wild West. [21 Mar 2004, p.1]

It's definitely not sunshine and lollipops, but series creator David Hollander manages to push the right emotional buttons. [25 Sept 2001, p.33]

But what's amazing, maybe even revolutionary, about The Corner is this: as its narrative plays out in six laid-back, detail-packed, one-hour installments, you come to see that all the major characters don't belong in this place, in this life. [16 Apr 2000, p.1]

Some episodes and moments have such undeniable dramatic power that you may weep; others may just leave you scratching your head. [9 Sept 2001, p.1]

Frankly, Da Ali G Show, which begins its second season this week, is a huge embarrassment. [18 July 2004, p.8]

The funniest and most romantic new show this fall. [24 Sept 1997, p.31]