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]