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

Part of the excitement of "Watching Ellie" comes from wondering whether the people who made it can get around the creative obstacles they created. [26 Feb 2002]

"Ellie" has gone from being an avant-garde failure to a very average failure. [15 Apr 2003]

While it's great that series like these can find a home on pay cable, it's a shame they feel the need to live up to the adult reputation most cable series have. "Soul Food" the series continues the unfortunate R-rated tradition of "Soul Food" the movie. [26 Jun 2000]

Magnificent Seve" can't hold a candle to its cinematic predecessor, or to most of the old TV classics like Gunsmoke. But in a world where all the cowboys rode off into the sunset decades ago, we'll take a watered-down Western just fine, ma'am. [3 Jan 1998]

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

It's dull and predictable and makes that old '60s time-travel series Time Tunnel look like the work of Robert Heinlein. [22 Sept 1997, p.33]

For the most part, it's an eye-opening look at the business of show, with a lot of Hollywood color throughout. [29 Nov 2001, p.57]

For fans of the original movie, there are a number of callbacks to savor.... We're looking forward plenty of long, cold winters.

The writing is sharp, and laughs are both low (Ehrlich commissions a Latino graffiti artist for a street-cool logo that turns out to be incredibly, hilariously vulgar) and high (in the same episode, Ehrlich's repeated attempts to avoid coming off as racist come off as racist).

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]

Las Vegas is definitely watchable; the pace is so fast that it's as if the filmmakers are fast- forwarding so you don't have to. But the plot is so tangled it's almost incomprehensible, the grace notes are laminated beneath visual slickness - and throughout, it's hard to shake the feeling that you've seen it before and don't need to see it again. [22 Sept 2003, p.35]

The pilot offers a number of interesting swerves, and Anderson and Mulroney are always watchable, but Crisis shares sustainability issues with CBS' "Hostages."

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 ABC show is more blandly cast and written [thanrench import "The Returned"], but it's still capable on occasion of hitting you in the gut emotionally, if not scrambling your brains.

The deliberate pacing and slow revelation of key motivations and certain relationships don't make it easy on viewers, but you didn't tune in for "Law & Order: Mahwah."

Only intermittently funny but unceasingly crass.

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.

Produced by Jason Katims ("Friday Night Lights," "Parenthood"), About a Boy is snappy with some well-observed one-liners, but it's a fairly conventional sitcom about an unconventional family.

I doubt any gay person will see him- or herself represented on Queer as Folk with absolute realism and accuracy. It's basically a trashy soap opera with a veneer of social criticism a gay, sexually explicit "Melrose Place." But it's fun all the same addictive, suspenseful and sometimes moving, a populist glimpse of a subculture that pop culture rarely examines. [1 Dec 2000, p.F1]

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

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.

It's shot single-camera, mockumentary style like "Modern Family," but the set-ups aren't as outrageous and the writing, while funny, is not quite as sharp.

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.

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 mythology comes on hard and heavy in the first hour, but like ABC's blink-and-you-missed-it spring thriller "Zero Hour," it's ponderous yet silly.

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 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.