If the "Shark" writers feel the need to, in the very first episode, soften their hero in a way the "House" writers haven't had to do in two-plus seasons, how warm and fuzzy will the character be by November sweeps, let alone the end of the season?

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

Basically, it's a dumber version of "The Shield." Swayze's performance and the always-memorable Chicago locales are frequently undercut by dialogue that's clumsy and/or spells out things we can see for ourselves, and by model-turned-actor Fimmel, last seen on the WB's deservedly short-lived "Tarzan" remake.

Doherty and Milano, together with some silly dialogue and plots, promise some good campy fun. The problems come whenever their third sibling, played by Holly Marie Combs ("Picket Fences"), is on screen. You see, Combs can actually act, and whenever she starts to emote, she gives the trashy proceedings a bit more reality than they can handle. [7 Oct 1998, p.39]

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.

Fringe is just good enough to watch with or without the ads. But with Abrams, you expect more than "just good enough."

The guys are so polite and harmless that it's hard to dislike them even when they repeat themselves in such a short span.

Katic has the more thankless role, as the actress in this scenario inevitably does, but the necessary sparks fly when she and Fillion are on screen together swapping barbs, and hopefully as time goes on, she'll get more to do than play kindergarten teacher to Castle. How much you like the series will depend almost entirely on how you enjoy watching these two spar; for me, that was enough.

Despite a wonderful cast put to good use, a very well-designed parallel world and some marvelous turns of phrase, I can't help admiring Kings more than I actually liked it.

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

Bored to Death (created by real-life novelist--but not private dick--Jonathan Ames) as a whole is so dry in its comedy that there's very little margin for error. (Like the "Star Trek" movies, I found myself enjoying the even-numbered episodes and struggling through the odd-numbered ones.)

"Write what you know" is a cardinal rule of writing, and Fey certainly knows this world better than Sorkin -- even if "The Girlie Show" is lame, I believe it exists in a way I don't with "Studio 60" -- but the history of failed behind-the-scenes sitcoms and dramas is so long and ugly that she would have been better served using a different setting altogether.

The performances by the three lead actresses (and by Amanda Seyfried as Paxton and Tripplehorn's eldest daughter) are so strong, and the nuances of life in such a complicated relationship so endlessly fascinating, that I'll suffer through the rest for a few episodes at a time before Bill's unsettling stare or Roman's calm, criminal sense of entitlement chases me off again.

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]

One of the better -- if stranger -- comedy debuts the networks have put out this year.

It's still as detailed, opaque and confusing as ever. [8 Jan 2005]

Margulies is a potent enough screen presence that this part of the show could be interesting, but Canterbury's self-destructive streak gets overshadowed by all the Leg Show material and the overheated courtroom theatrics.

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.

Conan was simultaneously reassuring his fans that he wasn't going to change too much in the new gig, and telling the traditional Tonight audience what they might expect from the new landlord. This was the smart, and really only, play Conan could make on night one of such a high-profile job. I just wish the execution had been a little better.

"The value of what's in the briefcase might not be in the money." That's what creator Dave Broome, the man behind "The Biggest Loser," clearly wants us to ponder, but The Briefcase also preys upon our judgmental side as we watch the couples attempt to justify keeping all the money.

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.

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.

This show will run on poisonous rivalries, hidden agendas, and unbridled ambitions. And something about a Mormon temple. Blood & Oil doesn't dig deep enough.

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

The leads are fine, but the amount of disbelief that must be suspended for an anonymous woman with hinky body art to become an adjunct FBI agent beggars belief.

There's a minimum of gore--these walkers are slow and more intact at this stage--though there are a few zombie fake-outs. But instead of building tension these sequences merely underscore the tedium.

It's relatively engaging and slickly produced, with effective visuals showcasing Brian's new talents, but the side effect of this show may be fatal blandness.

A workmanlike space opera.

A sometimes-promising, sometimes-frustrating, always-overpopulated new sitcom that kicks off this season's odd new trend of shows about relative strangers who become best pals in a hurry.

If you're not expecting much, you'll come away satisfied. But compared to a good episode of "Family Guy" - or even a mediocre "Simpsons" episode - it's pretty thin gruel. [28 Apr 2005]

Much as I admire Lilley's ability to pull off a sort of one-man Christopher Guest movie, only one of the three Summer Heights High leads is funny on a consistent basis.

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

As epic as Reggie vs. Billy or Billy vs. George were on the sports pages in the summer of Sam, it doesn't feel like quite enough to fill eight hours of scripted drama.

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.

There are moments when John Adams stirs up the passion its author clearly had for the subject -- Adams firing off a rifle in the middle of a battle at sea with a British warship, the first public reading of the Declaration, George Washington (David Morse, in the second-best piece of casting other than Giamatti) whispering his oath of office at his inauguration -- but too often it's just as muddy and dull as its subject was accused of being.

Powerless has a high-flying concept indeed. Too bad it fails to take off.

Because of the episodic nature of the reenactments, and abetted by merely competent acting and bland writing, they fail to gain momentum. This lack of urgency in the production is ironically heightened by a heavy-handed percussive score that never lets up.

With its over-the-top plot and rococo themes, it just comes across as Eurotrash--intellectually pretentious, but it sure is pretty to look at it.

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]

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

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]

There's nothing annoying about it, but there's also nothing memorable.

They're flashy and can be briefly shocking or funny or even moving, but the more they go over-the-top, the less impact they have for me.

They're clearly going for a raffish "Thelma & Louise" charm here, but the wind-up is strictly "Golden Girls."

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 just as muddled as "Once" often is, and too ridiculous to be taken seriously as an epic as "Thrones," which is not surprising, given the show's long stay in development purgatory.

Uneven performances and technical issues stopped the show connecting with viewers like 2015's superior "The Wiz."

It isn't until the werewolf-themed fourth episode that "Dresden Files" finally gives you a trick worth applauding. Hopefully, there's more of that to come.

Even though the performances, the writing, directing, etc., are uniformly strong, The Riches is just too unpleasant to make a weekly commitment to.

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 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 has so much going for it on paper -- notably Mary-Louise Parker as a pot-dealing soccer mom -- but the series' creators remain so pleased with themselves that they're rarely as funny as they obviously think they are. [13 Aug 2007]

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]

I like her a lot, but the shaggy-dog nature of the storytelling... made the comedy miss about as often as it hit for me.

Reaper takes several steps back--and a few steps sideways--suggesting a drunken all-nighter may be in order, if it hasn't happened already.

The Flashpoint pilot is competent, but very retro (there's an extended sequence of the team driving to a crisis point with their sirens blaring, the sort of thing that went out 15 years ago) and fairly dull.

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.

Some of the performances are good, particularly by Deschanel (who gets to sing near the end, good news for anyone who saw "Elf"), McDonough and Cumming, but solid acting and monkeys flying out of, um, someplace aren't enough to justify spending six hours over three nights on a labored attempt to make a classic children's story seem grown-up and cool.

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.

V has to rise and fall on its story and its characters. Based on the pilot, both of those areas are spotty.

At times "Cold Case" feels like an assembly-line product, slick and shiny but a bit rushed and impersonal. [23 Sep 2003]

It's an odd little show, often more David Lynch than David Milch, and after three episodes I'm still not sure I understand it all.

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.

As usual, it's all too busy, too tonally inconsistent (the scenes with Bill's parents seem to exist not only on a different series, but a different plane of reality) and too often obscures the terrific work being done by Tripplehorn, Sevigny, Goodwin and Seyfried.

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

Sutter's taste for chewy dialogue works well ("Make this a sight for deep memory," instructs Baron Ventris (Brian F. O'Byrne) before a slaughter, and his minions do). But Brattle and his band of rebels are frustratingly one-dimensional; the only character who comes to life is Stephen Moyer's Milus Corbett, the Baron's scheming chamberlain.

The humor in Divorce is so bleak and the characters are so toxic that you may crave a "Silkwood" shower afterward.That's not to say there aren't funny lines or excellent performances by the core cast of Parker, Haden Church, and Molly Shannon and Tracy Letts as the awful friends whose mutual meltdown at a party sparks Parker's Frances to ask for a divorce. Trouble is, they feel like performances from different shows.

Cleveland isn’t an inherently interesting, or, worse, funny, character. His presence allows the writers (many of them white like Henry and Appel) to tell meta jokes about white people in Hollywood producing entertainment for a black audience, and occasionally some of the racial humor lands.

It's not a bad show, but the mechanics of how they're going to abduct their latest target are far less engaging than how the team interacts with each other and how each member fights his or her compulsions.

Defying Gravity--an international production with American actors--feels too slight, or silly, to treat as anything but the cheap, disposable summer programming it is.

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.

If Lie to Me wants to elevate itself above all the other shows like it, it not only needs to beef up the quality of its mysteries, but to spend more time focusing on these unexpected downsides of the power to live a life of absolute truths.

It wants to be a smart-aleck comedy/thriller hybrid in the spirit of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, but the jokes are rarely clever enough and the thrills rarely exciting enough.

While the jokes may be funnier than "King" has been in a long time, the new show also feels more uneven and strained.

"Family Guy" ... consists of almost nothing but pop culture references. ... Now, some of these gags are side-splittingly funny ... but there are way too many of them. [9 Apr 1999]

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.

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

If you've somehow never seen any of the twelve dozen procedural crime shows that CBS does, it might feel a little new, but too often the scenes with Don and his colleagues feel obligatory, like everyone is doing their best to keep the plot moving until Charlie bursts in with the correct digits. [21 Jan 2005]

The sex is all implied rather than shown, as is much of the drug use. It's a very PG-13 approach to potentially R-rated subject matter--and that's the problem.

The satire is sharp, including a scene in which one sister texts with her killer as he's trying to kill her. But the two-hour premiere does itself no favors, so overstuffed with scares, silliness, intrigues and occasional moments of real horror that it fails to coalesce into something resembling coherence.

It was the usual schtick from Leno--which is probably just what his fans wanted to hear after he'd been out of late night for a year and off TV altogether for weeks--with jokes about the Olympics, Dick Cheney, and, of course, the flagging fortunes of the network he's on.

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

Hoffman was replaced by the talented British comic actor Steve Coogan, and I can't fault his performance. I can fault Auslander for writing Thom as a sanctimonious, pedantic, needling, incessantly outraged man of privilege and then expecting us to care about him.

Any evidence of the source material's wit or grit is MIA. We're left with a show that's as cheesy as it is ridiculously improbable.

This is a conventional crime show draped in period trappings when it should be steeped in the era.

Only intermittently funny but unceasingly crass.

With MTV's Scream, anyone who has enjoyed the original is bound to be disappointed here.

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

The CGI is still pretty cool, and some chuckles are wrought from the futuristic premise (Iggy Azalea is considered a classic in 2065), but at its heart Minority Report is a by-the-book cop procedural with turgid writing and complete absence of subtlety.

It tries to deliver a biting geopolitical satire about unconventional warfare with weapons that are depressingly conventional.

The TV series is a rote procedural that dulls the film's premise further by making it an ensemble piece (the monomaniacal nature of Neeson's Mills is the point of "Taken") and has a lead actor, Clive Standen of History's "Vikings," most notable for not being Neeson.

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

The show fails to engage on any level, striving at best for a vague earnestness.

The prospect of jumping from era to era to stop Savage holds promise, but there isn't enough interplay between the characters to add any dimension to the early episodes. If only they could go back in time two hours and make a different show.

Chestnut, a reliably charming presence on screens small and large, is by far the best the thing about this painfully conventional procedural that borrows aethestically from "Miami Vice."

The premise is pretty standard Joseph Campbell, journey of the hero stuff, but the execution is poor.