Jamie is our heroine, the one we're supposed to like and care about, but as played by British actress Ryan ("EastEnders," "Jekyll"), she's a mopey blank, badly upstaged every time Sackhoff makes one of her all-too-brief appearances as Corvus.

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.

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

Heroes may be better this year than it was last year, but it's still a very dumb show that just wants you to think it's smart.

In Plain Sight is a definite for any summer TV To-Watch list; don't cross it off until you've seen at least one.

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.

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.

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.

Melrose does a better job integrating its two casts, and it embraces what it is: a trashy remake of one of the most memorably trashy hits in primetime history. It's still not good, mind you, but it's more honest and enthusiastic about its badness, you know?

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.

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

As with many a Patterson thriller, the breathless pace and spine-tingling what-ifs make it easy to get caught up despite your well-founded reservations.

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.

Brothers is not anything you might classify as "good."

Into The Badlands thrills in its nimble genre fusion a la "Kill Bill" and "Firefly" (though, it must be said, without the humor). Even more striking is its impressionistic world-building, skillfully painting a feudal society a few centuries beyond our own, outfitted with Studebakers and Saarinen chairs and dressed in bowler hats and bustles.

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

Unlike "Life on Mars," the concept seems elastic enough that the show could run for a long time, but first its American producers would need to work on storytelling basics like pacing and developing interesting characters.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A gimmick in search of a show.

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.

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.

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]

Any show that's willing to go to such a silly place, to have its main character utter a line of dialogue that's like a parody of a parody of stuff these guys were writing two decades ago on "thirtysomething," is not a show I have time for, even if other shows won't be back until April.

The longer you watch the show (I've seen all eight episodes of its first season), the emptier and more frustrating it becomes, to the point where even the brief running time begins to feel too long.

It's effective at quickly making us care for these docs and particularly at orchestrating the cases of the week to an emotional (and emotionally manipulative) crescendo.