Overall, a meaner, harsher fashion competition, but compelling.

Lacks the hard, uncomfortable edges of [FX's also premiering] "Starved," but it's clear this show wants and intends to do a little damage, too. [4 Aug 2005]

Noah's Daily Show at once felt confident but also oddly tentative. Smoothly delivered but uneven.... Not quite a rocky start, but not an emphatically comforting one for fans either.

The opener is marred by a conventional plot. The producers--who include Steven Spielberg--show almost complete indifference to science (or sci-fi). That said, TV's most ambitious new series has some promise.

A luminous adaptation, with Hawke as one more memorable “Jo” in a long and glorious line of them.

Bored sometimes lags and drags, as if it took a few tokes, too. But when it's funny--and Bored certainly can be--it's a winner.

Good idea and better cast squandered on a slapdash premise, weak writing and South Florida cliches.

Hot in Cleveland is a by-the-numbers sitcom with a couple of laughs, an inoffensive premise and four seasoned actresses who make the material much better than it is.

The results so far are very (very) funny.

[The stories] mostly do stand on their own. Some are better than others.... a winning cast.

Insanely violent, but, yup, often beautiful and intoxicating. A mind-bender that can be worth the bender.

Unfortunately, they've settled on far-too-easy and facile answers for the most part.

Champions wants to be liked, and it is likable, but maybe just a little too eager to earn points.

Anyone who wants to take a walk on the wild side and lose an appetite in the process, your show has arrived.

Smart. [23 Aug 1998, p.D10]

A well-rounded, nicely mature comedy.

We aren't just viewing this "Real World" from an objective point of view - watching people behave - but participating in a fresh way. Sorting through all those first-hand viewpoints, we're coming to understand where these diverse people are coming from and why they act the way they do. [19 May 1992]

It all flows from the heart in a way few shows do, unfolding with the ease of being surrounded by people you've known forever already.

The inside jokes pile up — a few of them actually funny — and there's an undeniable pleasure in revisiting this show and this cast. Except, of course, it's not the real "show" or "cast," but a bunch of actors pretending to be themselves, and probably wondering in the meantime whether the paycheck will be worth the aggravation.

It's a mildly enjoyable sports comedy that could have been more.

Get past the mawkishness (if you can) and there's a sweetness here, and geniality. The Michael J. Fox Show needs to be much more, but love is hard to shake.

Lewis is such a commanding presence that Sarah Shahi is rendered little more than an accessory as Dani. There's nothing going on between the partners at the outset, but this is subject to change.

I'm punchy after an hour-and-change of lame chases, inane dialogue, ludicrous plot twists and absurdist acting techniques. But by the end of this, I pretty much had a crush on Piper Perabo and Anne Dudek (who plays her sister), so I guess it was worthwhile after all.

Linney is a fine actress, but her material here doesn't match her talents.

Skies fans should be pleased.

Tired, self-amused, occasionally boorish, entirely dull and much (much) more about Ferrell than baseball, Campaneris, or those charities. The joke is a long one.

If you must, watch for the little stuff: Some good performances (Chieng, Yang, Bennet), some funny lines, a clever kicker and that compelling premise. A shame all the rest is a mess.

Work in progress, but at least the progress seems to be in the right direction.

Odd...make that very odd, and not for all tastes--probably very few. But there are some funny bits.

If anyone but Fillion tossed out a line so smothered in schmaltz, you'd either laugh or groan. But Mr. Likable nails it and largely nails this comfy, corny and (yup) likable pilot, too.

The important thing about "South Park" is not what it looks like or the way the characters talk, but what they say. It's a writer-driven vehicle, like most of the better twisted adult cartoons. [13 Aug 1997]

Akerman has to be everything. Good thing she's a nimble actress.... Whitford is always winning, and even the poor exes find wiggle room inside their cliches.

All this is to say, simply, that Passmore is an intriguing screen presence who holds a well-constructed if otherwise boilerplate cop show together.

Nothing scary here, but Hollow is fun enough, and promising enough, too.

The show spurts onto the air like ketchup spewed from an oversqueezed bottle, plopping frenzied mayhem all over everything.

Some very funny stuff, ultimately overwhelmed by the very indulgent stuff.

The first hour manages to feel both mechanical and manipulative, without feeling truly exciting or even grounded anyplace.

Frustrating series that has promise but no payoff. And that series title. Seriously?

There's an almost overwhelming been-there-seen-that feel to the pilot, which doesn't really offer any suggestion of "well, you haven't seen this."

This is a hit, and has been carefully crafted by Disney to become one. The formula may be as old as pop culture itself, but (again) who really cares?

Clear away the soap bubbles, and you'll find ... more soap bubbles. But you won't be bored.

Falco is very good, always is, but her show has gotten tired.

One of the best new fall series and--double bonus points--it stars the great Hugh Laurie and Ethan Suplee, who ruthlessly hijacks his scenes.

There's a vibrancy here, and a clarity, that we haven't seen in network sitcoms in ages. The way ABC's "Lost" reconfigured dramatic storytelling, Showtime's Barbershop so invigorates the humor format that we hate to call it a sitcom. It's entirely its own animal. And that's evolution of a kind everyone can get behind. [12 Aug 2005, p.]

So far, so good. No late night talk show has ever been canceled after one edition--not even Chevy's--while first albeit abbreviated impressions of Conan are promising.

A beautiful, moving film, and Oprah (as usual) brings it.

Smart, intriguing thriller, but the opener is slightly overheated.

Funny, vulgar, for Burd fans only.

These actors are serious sitcom pros, and their show is actually about something genuine--sibling bonding/rivalry, parental button-pushing, relationship-building. It's nice to see some emotional meat in a live-audience staging again, feeding off the energy and reactions of real people.

Respectable, incomplete survey (on TV) Thursday night, but future installments look better.

This is one crazy-paced show, and one smartly crafted comedy.

Frank and Raimy are co-authors of their own personal histories. How they write it together, or mess it up together, could make an intriguing cop procedural.

Science channel publicity materials call the show "a real-life Twilight Zone," and in terms of mood, that's on the mark.

The show is well-conceived, well-written and very funny. [16 Sep 1991]

"The Tudors" could actually use a touch of the over-the-top wildness that undermined the substance of HBO's "Rome." If we could blend the two together somehow, we might have a kickily effective history mash-up.

The new detectives seem so young, eager and fresh-faced that you almost think the Hardy Boys are on the case. Molina's Morales has a bit of that nice New York edge; Howard 's Dekker (in next week's episode) is a little stuffier, duller; he'd probably be better suited to "Law & Order: D.C."

The result is often funny, ridiculous, bathetic and silly. Plus, watchable. Against all odds, this might actually be a good closing season.

It's a bland allegorical satire built on an obvious point that unfolds in outer space where days (or nights) never end, and the passengers are irritating, and the ship is girdled by stiffs and human excreta. ... Lost in space, and on-screen, too.

This is a cool weekly cartoon series from Lucasfilm Animation that finds a fresh new style for depicting the struggle of the Jedi and their army of genetically engineered clones against the seemingly indomitable droid army of evil Separatists.

Genius doesn’t just skate over the science, it ignores it.

Disney should be sent to detention for passing off such aural plasticity [laugh track], unfairly fouling the repute of the live-audience sitcom. But the rest of Girl Meets World does its job of bringing tween-based family viewing into the 2010s.

He's sincere; he rings true. And that is why, in the wasteland of reality and makeover shows, Gunn shines.

A bit melodramatic, a bit manipulative, Touch is still one of the best pilots of the 2011-12 season to date.

"Undercovers" is so content to lapse into genre conventions, that it feels complacent and banal. Worse, Kodjoe and Mbatha-Raw have such minimal chemistry that they seem to be shadowboxing most of the time.

An easily digestible guide to pop culture that can make any water-cooler conversation more interesting (or interminable). But this television adaptation--if tonight's premiere is representative--does not work.

The soul of the show, though, is its conflicted "heroes," truly tortured, in palpable ways, recalling the best, early days of NBC's ill-fated Monday comic book. There's no cartoonery here. Just adult adventure and angst.

And I like programs which show women as competent, caring, intelligent individuals. Young girls who start watching this program Saturday night are more fortunate than those in the 1970s who grew up with "Charlie's Angels" as role models. [9 Sept 1988, p.13]

Too brittle and full of bile to cleanly hit the target.

We know how this ends (he becomes commish) but there's little evidence suggesting how or why that happens, and even less reason why we should care. Meanwhile, the best stuff in Golden Boy is the little stuff--sharp, brittle dialogue, nice performances and a street cred that's a cut above average.

What’s funny in Sheldon/adult is grating in Sheldon/child.

Amid all those speeches, there's beauty, passion, heart and brains in The Newsroom. There's also humor, even more than ever in Sunday's opener.

[A] strongly acted thriller, which seems to add another intense dimension weekly.

The ambition’s an admirable one, and Outsiders clearly has ambitions. But what it doesn’t have is much of a story or all that much conviction in the one it’s telling.

Marry Me is the rarest of commercial TV sitcoms in that it's actually funny, has two standout leads and a superb supporting cast (especially Meadows and Bucatinsky).

The Latina female leads are--to put this in a way that's both politically correct and blandly inoffensive--vivacious.... That trademark Cherry wit, written in acid, is evident here. too.... But the biggest problem here is the sprawl--lots of stories, lots of characters, lots of colors--and not one them going anywhere in a hurry.

It's unclassifiable and unpredictable, in the best possible ways.

A little clunky at times, but otherwise all is well here, thanks especially to Alexandra [Reid (Sigourney Weaver)].

The only thing deep in tonight's Firefly premiere, though, is the well of cliches into which Whedon dips for what passes for plot and exposition. [20 Sept 2002, p.B02]

Nothing is left unspoken in dialogue as blandly obvious as "I am the only other person who knows" and "She had a lot of secrets."

Kind of silly. [11 May 1995]

[Bill Lawrence] scores again here, with an instantly appealing ensemble, from Astin's "soulless upstairs tool" to Rory Scovel as the downstairs dude from "a very competitive community college.

Crisis ultimately gets its priorities straight by giving viewers a reason to care--about the characters, outcome and mystery.

This Fox series is smartly written and acted, and it's even evocatively filmed in New York locations that lend it a gritty city flavor. But.... Less persuasively entwined is a heavy-handed romance whodunit.

A surprisingly revisionist take on one of the most controversial trials of the decade.

Solid cast, intriguing premise, and--best of all--the Old West. Should easily be another winner for AMC.

Not nearly enough fresh information on the Long Island case, and cluttered with tangents that seem to lead nowhere, The Killing Season still makes its case — a terrifying one.

A not-unpleasing comedy that takes time and commitment to grow on you. How long? I started to like it three or four episodes in. Seems like an awfully long time, no?

Has boundless contempt for its characters and their empty lives of not-so-quiet desperation. This would be OK if the satire had bite and wit or the lead character had a single redeeming quality. Instead, Coop is a self-pitying schlub without the brains or moxie to pull himself out of his tailspin.

Glimmers of hope force their way through the fog of noir cliche.

The writing is pointed, the direction tight. But what really makes it work is Tori herself, light, bright and vulnerably likable.

Well-crafted thriller, and a reminder of just how good an actor — and director — Bateman is.

A partially successful reboot, with less music, more story.

More of a continuation than a "remake," this one looks to be a winner.

Nice to finally see a show nailing what it wants to be and say, in continually discerning work from Passmore, Szostak and series creator Sean Jablonski.

[Kit Harington's] a narcotized Jon Snow in a narcoleptic of a miniseries that nods off at times, and seems maddeningly unaware that viewers will be induced to do the same thing. ... A gluepot of a miniseries with good actors and no pulse.

The first "Super Pumped" installment approaches its ripped-from-the-headlines story correctly, and Gordon-Levitt is great.

Absent the overworked conceit of actors glancing at the camera to register annoyance or irony, this has turned into just another well-produced cop show with some excellent actors, like Imperioli or James McDaniel, who plays Det. Jesse Long and played Lt. Arthur Fancy on "NYPD Blue."