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

Twists and rule tweaks will only carry a reality show so far by the time you're into the sixth season. The format itself has to be durable, and the casting has to be sharp--both of which seem to be the case in the early going.

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.

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."

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]

Sick, twisted and darkly funny, "Dexter" is easily the best drama in Showtime history.

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.

Lucas' interactions with House are far funnier than any previous pairing of House with a recurring guest star. On the minus side, it's a role so aware of its own quirks that Lucas might wind up being a polarizing figure....As for the returning characters, the mix still isn't right.

The show does such an amazing job of evoking a world not that long-gone, and in a way that makes it equal parts alluring and appalling.

If you gave up on either one because they seemed tired or just annoying in their familiarity, now might be a good time to try a return visit.

It’s a bland, interchangeable bunch, with most of them having a single identifiable trait.

Aliens is very much in the vein of previous nerd comedies like "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Freaks and Geeks," though it's not as explosively funny as either one of them.

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.

For one night, this is the best House, and its leading man, have been in a long time.

Smith's work in "The Eleventh Hour" showed us exactly what Moffat saw in that audition...."Eleventh Hour" is also a great build-up for Karen Gillan's immensely likable Amy Pond, who has by far the most interesting, emotionally resonant backstory of the modern companions.

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

Perhaps recognizing the professional problem, the show's writers return with an episode where the crime has a painful personal connection for Grace. Some of the scenes still drag, but it's stronger than most of the season one episodes.

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.

An earnest, soulful update of the Superman myth. [16 Oct 2001, p.55]

I have no interest in fashion, little inherent fondness for soap operas, and I'm absolutely not the gender this show is targeting. And based on the two episodes I've seen, I'm going to be watching "Ugly Betty" every week. It's that much fun.

Damages offers two superb performances by old pros Glenn Close and Ted Danson.... One thing it doesn't have: a compelling main character. It's a doughnut show: lots of sweet, satisfying goodness around the edges, nothing in the middle.

The Good Wife is confident and polished, and a much better showcase for Margulies than her last legal drama.

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

Thanks to Queen Latifah, we know exactly who Bessie Smith is; the movie itself could have spent more time exploring how she got to be that way.

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).

Has a fine, film noirish vibe and an irresistible mystery hook. [25 Sep 2002]

Nix and company had a very thing going last season, and they've found a way to change the show a little without screwing it up.

The challenges--including a head-to-head competition where pairs of chefs are sent into various New York neighborhoods and told to cook the local cuisine--seem appropriately Big Apple-centric without being silly.

At turns funny, terrifying and moving. [16 Nov 2004, p.73]

Last fall, "Studio 60" would have easily been the best new drama; this fall, it's lucky to squeeze into the top five, and a lot of that is based on potential more than what's on screen.

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.

It lacked, for the most part, the emotional punch and sheer vocal prowess of NBC's recent staging, but the production itself redefined what a live musical could be.

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

Nobody likes a know-it-all - especially when he starts pointing out something you could have figured out by yourself. Let's hope this unusual man gets some equally unusual puzzles in the coming weeks. [11 July 2002, p.35]

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.

Jackie remains watchable because of Falco's no-nonsense, weary performance, and because of the off-kilter comic brilliance of Merritt Wever as Jackie's bubbly, spastic protégé Zoey.

Only the first episode was available for review, but the writing and direction is assured enough that easy to see where this show headed: an uplifting thrill ride that isn't a heavy lift like so many dark superhero dramas.

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.

In the early episodes, the cases are knotty and compelling... and Kelley comes up with some intriguing legal strategies ... But as the weeks go by, those wacky subplots start cropping up again. [4 Mar 1997]

There are shows on television that are smarter than Chuck, deeper, more ambitious, whatever. At the moment, I can't think of one that's more fun.

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

That balance of viewpoints--positive and negative, tragic and comic--is what makes Carrier such extraordinary viewing.

Fishburne doesn't show up until halfway through the episode and mostly stays in the background once he does, letting the intellectual chess match between Grissom and DJK be the focus. And that feels right.

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]

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

Chuck starts a step slower, with more exposition in the first two episodes and no larger-than-life character like Satan to smooth over that, but by episode three, it's just as assured and entertaining in its own extremely similar way.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles happens to contain that show's most interesting character. It just ain't Sarah Connor.

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]

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.

It still has some problems, and may not be able to milk the concept any longer than the Brits did, but the central concept--modern law-enforcement veteran has to deal with a world where forensics science is in its infancy and civil rights are treated as inconveniences at best--is still appealing, and in some ways more so when it's transplanted to the early '70s New York immortalized in cop films like "The French Connection" and "Serpico."

Cranston's performance alone is enough to keep me watching for a while, but I'd like to see something resembling a completed formula, and soon.

It at times seems like a pornographic parody of "The X-Files."

Unfortunately, the idea's a little too thin to support a weekly sitcom.

It feels, at times, like the episodes are trying too hard to be self-referential, with lots of jokes at the expense of NBC and General Electric, and with Baldwin seeming to address the audience directly at the start of the premiere.

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

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.

Muscular writing and powerful performances.... You can get sucked in by the spycraft, but this is also a parable about queerness, and a fascinating character piece for Whishaw.

The Middleman is at once retro and post-modern, the sort of result you'd get if you threw "The Tick" and the '50s black-and-white "Superman" TV show into a blender. And it's quite a lot of fun.

The new edition delivers many of the same thrills and intelligent debate that made the original so exceptional. But the mere act of bringing it back creates problems the original never had to deal with.

The Christmas special Shrek the Halls is fabulous.

It's not everyone's cup of oolong, but it is an idiosyncratic tale bracingly told, generously whimsical but embellished with malevolence.

A show with such a weird mix of tones and subject matters needs a strong cast to even have a hope of working, and for the most part, the ensemble remains sturdy.

Confirmation could have used a lot less C-SPAN and a lot more theater.

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.

On paper, the idea of building a new democracy from the ruins of war while government contractors run amok--in other words, showing what would happen if the reconstruction of Iraq took place in our heartland--is just as strong as the original premise of Jericho. But the execution remains mediocre.

There's loads of potential here; like "The Simpsons," Groening's new effort manages to be edgy and reassuring at the same time, which means it can lead us anyplace and be confident we'll follow with a big grin. [26 Mar 1999]

The new season has a few moments, mostly involving the return from the dead of Jack's old CTU colleague Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard), who now seems to be working for the bad guys. But all the attempts by Jack and his writers to justify every past decision often brings the action to a crawl.

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]

The marquee interviews, taken as a whole, were Colbert's weak point--the Bush interview went longer in reality and felt rushed when edited. And Colbert's talk with George Clooney just fell flat.... What did work was the overall vibe--enthusiastic, encompassing, high-energy and with healthy dose of quirk.

So long as Lewis is around, Life will be several steps above those cookie-cutter police procedurals.

If Guggenheim can deepen the personalities and show how the flash forward really impacted them, then they might have a show here. Because right now, there's an interesting idea, some good production values and a cool cliffhanger, and not much else.

Because the comedy is so strong, the cast is so likable, and everyone involved so obviously has a passion for making the show as entertaining as it can be, there's a sense of joy around "Chuck" that's infectious.

Rarely have I smiled as early and as often at a new series as I have at this one, which manage to be gentle and sweet and lighter-than-air without ever departing from the Earth that we know.

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 show's aura of jungle mysticism is so overblown it's hilarious. I love how the castaways have to kill rats for food and make fire with sticks, but the tribal council meetings take place on a lavish, obviously prefab jungle village set that looks like the Ewok treehouse city in "Return of the Jedi." (The million-dollar grand prize is sitting over in one corner of the set - a pile of cash in an open treasure chest. Very Scrooge McDuck.)...Asinine stuff - and intensely addictive. [2 June 2000, p.37]

Dean's goofy legal maneuverings--we're talking one step up from Mr. Brady's whiplash-busting briefcase toss--may strain the premise eventually, but after last season's wretched record for comedies, a sitcom that consistently amuses is worthy of acquittal.

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.

I've since seen two more episodes, which in some ways intrigued me even more than the pilot. It's not "Battlestar Galactica", in that it swaps out the military components of that show for a bit of teen angst and soap opera intrigue, but I really like the lead performances by Eric Stoltz and Esai Morales (two actors who in previous roles often made me feel like there was something missing), and the social commentary is just as sharp here as it was on "BSG."

As wonderfully played by Kenneth Branagh, Wallander is a fine addition to the tradition of PBS' "Mystery!"

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]

The show feels cold, like it's holding the audience at arm's length.

Californication doesn't have the courage of those movies' ["Shampoo" and "Blume in Love"] convictions. It acts like it wants to tell the story of Hank's comeuppance, his growth from obnoxious man-child to real man, but it can't bear the thought of the audience not liking Hank (and, by extension, Duchovny) right out of the gate.

It's still not more than disposable fluff, and I expect Vince to get his stardom back by season's end, but by making his career a metaphor for what the show had become, Entourage for the first time is more entertaining than Vince's life must be.

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

Ashes to Ashes has a cheekier energy that the original "Life on Mars," one that carries the show even when the police procedural stories are relatively bland.

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.

The three episodes of the new season that I've seen are almost entirely flat. [29 Jun 2006]

You get out what you put into it--even in the episodes that are weaker, I was rarely bored--and it's a consistent scripted oasis in a sea of shows where people take lie detector tests on camera.

For the most part, Oz is an awesome achievement - an alternately crude and elegant attempt to expand the boundaries of the one-hour drama. If it can avoid an over reliance on prison movie clichs, stay focused on the redemption theme and give its powerhouse cast more room to breathe, it could be one of the most important works ever aired on American television. [12 July 1997, p.29]

"Breaking Bad" fans will thrill to the second coming of Jesse Pinkman, and there are Job-like similarities in Paul's tormented Eddie. But Dancy, taut as an ascetic and grimly magnetic, is the one to watch as Cal.

In an episode like next week's, in which Allison spots the ghost of a recently deceased man watching a murder, the twistiness works; in one like tonight's, featuring a complicated web of affairs, betrayals and possible reincarnations, things become so tangled that the story and Arquette can't keep up.

It’s a solid meat-and-potatoes family comedy; next to "Hank," it’s the next "Malcolm in the Middle."

Pacing is a problem for most pilots--so many characters to introduce, meaningful stakes to establish--but Quantico, from "Gossip Girl" producer Joshua Safran, does this effortlessly, with at least one deadly effective twist you won't see coming. Just don't come looking for subtlety.

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]

"Weeds" isn't nearly as shocking or hilarious as it clearly thinks it is. [5 Aug 2005]

Billions is a mostly engrossing but occasionally tiresome tale of financial and legal brinkmanship between Bobby "Axe" Axelrod (Damian Lewis), a blue collar kid turned hedge fund manager with a chip the size of the Bronx on his shoulder, and Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), an ambitious (and silver-spooned) U.S. Attorney known his no-mercy prosecution of financial crimes.

I've seen the pilot episode at least four times already, in whole or in parts, and I laugh just as hard at the jokes now as I did the first time.