Newark Star-Ledger's Scores

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For 511 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average TV Show review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 The Handmaid's Tale: Season 1
Lowest review score: 0 In the Motherhood: Season 1
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 270 out of 270
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 270
  3. Negative: 0 out of 270
270 tv reviews
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  1. American Dad!: Season 1
    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]
    • Newark Star-Ledger
      • Posted Jul 10, 2013
  2. Summer Heights High: Season 1
    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.
  3. Confirmation
    Confirmation could have used a lot less C-SPAN and a lot more theater.
  4. The Bronx Is Burning: Season 1
    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.
  5. Secrets and Lies: Season 1
    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.
  6. John Adams: Season 1
    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.
  7. Powerless: Season 1
    Powerless has a high-flying concept indeed. Too bad it fails to take off.
  8. The Making of the Mob: New York
    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.
  9. The Young Pope: Season 1
    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.
  10. Nip/Tuck: Season 4
    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]
    • Newark Star-Ledger
      • Posted Jan 21, 2014
  11. Manhattan Love Story: Season 1
    The worst that can be said for Manhattan Love Story is that it's bland.
  12. 8 Simple Rules: Season 1
    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]
    • Newark Star-Ledger
      • Posted Jul 3, 2014
  13. Miss Guided: Season 1
    There's nothing annoying about it, but there's also nothing memorable.
  14. Glee: Season 1
    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.
  15. Grace and Frankie: Season 1
    They're clearly going for a raffish "Thelma & Louise" charm here, but the wind-up is strictly "Golden Girls."
  16. Tarzan: Season 1
    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]
    • Newark Star-Ledger
      • Posted Aug 7, 2014
  17. Emerald City: Season 1
    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.
  18. Hairspray Live!
    Uneven performances and technical issues stopped the show connecting with viewers like 2015's superior "The Wiz."
  19. The Dresden Files: Season 1
    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.
  20. The Riches: Season 2
    Even though the performances, the writing, directing, etc., are uniformly strong, The Riches is just too unpleasant to make a weekly commitment to.
  21. Believe: Season 1
    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.
  22. Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Season 1
    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.
  23. Weeds: Season 3
    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]
    • Newark Star-Ledger
      • Posted Jul 11, 2013
  24. The L Word: Season 1
    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]
    • Newark Star-Ledger
      • Posted Apr 3, 2014
  25. The Sarah Silverman Program: Season 1
    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.
  26. Reaper: Season 2
    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.
  27. Flashpoint: Season 1
    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.
  28. Scorpion: Season 1
    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.
  29. Tin Man: Season 1
    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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore: Season 1
    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.
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