Great-looking but indistinctive in the early episodes (this review is based only on the first two).

The best part of the new series is that unfussy, effortless way of getting Kate's sexual orientation out of the way, and also Kate herself. She's a bantamweight crusader with lightning moves as opposed to devastating ones. ... What's less-best is the usual reliance on the sort of story that Gotham has undergone countless times before. There are no surprises left here, not even a decent dopey headline in the still-dopey, ever-credulous Gotham newspapers (which still don't have websites).

It's good. Showrunner Tim Doyle, the former executive producer of "Last Man Standing," obviously knows his way around big Irish Catholic American families of the late 20th century.

Carell's Scott may emerge as one of those characters viewers dearly love to hate, but the guess here is that he's too over the top - much more so than Gervais' character was - to be appreciated in doses this large. He'd be more effective as a secondary character - think Danny DeVito's immortally despicable Louie DePalma in "Taxi." [24 Mar 2005, p.B33]

The multi-ethnic cast is appealing and their cyber notions are nice, but it's hard to tell where this curious concoction is headed. They're certainly loading the dice with paranormal possibilities. [6 Oct 2000, p.B51]

Cane" is not a bad show, and it's sporadically a good one. Merely, great expectations have not been met.

This fantasy adventure is actually tolerable now for adults who found ABC's May "Dinotopia" miniseries such an endless festival of special effects with little redeeming dramatic value. [28 Nov 2002]

Even the baby talk offers more variety than you'd think, with Danza frequently encountering friends with their own peculiar outlooks on toddler life (Roscoe Lee Browne voices a stuffy baby-actor in the second show). [8 Mar 1991, p.103]

Engrossing at times and well worth watching, though the writing is often graceless and the direction haphazard.

Band of Brothers thus finds itself in a tricky no- man's land. It's too colloquial and too specific to be valuable in a larger historical sense, like the classic "World at War" series or any of the World War II documentaries that are a History Channel staple. Yet, it's too lacking in dramatic focal points to succeed fully as entertainment like "Private Ryan" or any of the dozens of World War II movies ("Battle Cry," "Battleground") that Hollywood turned out in the late 1940s and '50s. [7 Sept 2001, p.B02]

What may bring even jaded viewers back to "Christy" is Tyne Daly's striking characterization of Alice Henderson, the kind but formidable Quaker who serves as the heroine's mentor. [3 Apr 1994]

The writing is occasionally sharp and observational, but the first episode relied too often on smarmy, anatomically based humor. [19 Apr 1990, p.9]

Tonight's preview/pilot can get so intoxicated with hip-hop scratching - jump-cuts, slo-mo, video backtracking - that it forgets to remember style best serves substance. [14 Apr 2003]

Some of Mamet's dialogue is certifiably awful and some certifiably brilliant, and the dichotomy is breathtaking.

But no one from this new group makes the kind of nails-on-blackboard impression that Omarosa or know-it-all Sam immediately did last year. Initially, they don't seem as interesting as the originals. [9 Sep 2004]

Quinn radiates enough sincerity to make us keep reading this uneven book, just to see how it shapes up.

It was... safe, reasonable, unembarrassing, uninspirational.

While we've got to be grateful that last season's tone-deaf Applewhite saga has seen its end, this year's "DH" still is sounding the occasional flat note, sometimes by repeating its past and other times by ignoring it altogether. [22 Sep 2006]

ABC hasn't provided much in advance to watch--smart network!--but there were some clips for Wipeout, and they were (seriously) hilarious.

A harmless and mostly fun little sitcom.

I like the old "Star Trek" better than the new. I also think the new show is somewhat boring and derivative. ... The new "Star Trek" tries to make the characters "realistic," and they turn out to be unbreakably plastic. [3 Jun 1988]

You get the sense that the filmmakers' vision and Wright's are never quite in sync--or perhaps are in sync too perfectly.

The wit can get a little heavyhanded sometimes - yes, it's another series with voiceover narration (can anybody say "Sex and the City"?) - but its heart, and head, are in the right place.

Murphy's concept in its basics is already beautiful. But he pushes the show to be a breathtaking knockout. Like some plastic surgery patients, Nip/Tuck initially gets such a pleasing result that it doesn't seem to know when to stop.

But my ultimate test for any comedy is - what else? - "Does it make me laugh?" Arrested Development seldom does. Not loudly, anyway...It has neither the liberating audacity of HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" nor the delirious, anything-for-a-laugh energy of NBC's "Scrubs," the two contemporary comedies that consistently crack me up. It's reminiscent of the taboo- breaking 1970s comedy serial "Soap," but drier, more deadpan, and with less endearing characters. Does it deserve a wider audience than it has gotten? Sure. But I can't imagine it becoming a mainstream hit for Fox like "The Simpsons" or "Malcolm in the Middle."

[The episodes are] smarter than you might expect but not quite as clever as they work at being. Like the family unit it portrays, this dark/lighthearted drama tries to have everything at once and struggles under the far-reaching effort.

A pleasant but routine sitcom that uses that decade of significant social change as a hook...The Wonder Years handles its period details - clothing, hairstyles - well. The look of the '60s is rendered with an authentic, evocative feel. Like virtually every sitcom, it has its banal moments, and here and there the gags fizzle. [30 Jan 1988, p.11]

A relentlessly grim and deeply depressing viewing experience.

A reasonably competent soap.

If only the delicacy of these two character actors [Alfred Molina and Michael Keaton], were matched by that of The Company's central figures and the production's overall arc.

Hall lacks Walken's natural aura of strangeness, and he looks a little too well-fed for a guy who has been vegetating for half a decade. But he does manage to make Smith credible and sympathetic. [14 June 2002, p.B51]

A watchable and skillfully made telefilm (Jay Roach of "Austin Powers" fame directed) that is, nonetheless, marred by a melodramatic reliance on Good vs. Evil, and guess which side is which?

"Lost Room" is a shaggy dog story that gets shaggier with every scene. It's a tale as tall as the Empire State Building that threatens to topple in the merest breeze but - miraculously - never does.

We haven't had a good dishy time-waster in awhile. Maybe this is it.

"Flight of the Conchords" isn't brilliant, but it isn't awful, either, just familiar, with two likable stars who seem to be channeling the deadpan dry wit of an old Beatles movie.

I liked it. But not enough to watch it again. [9 Jul 1992]

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.

It's OK, but not great. [20 Sep 1993]

It's too sitcommy ... But I still love the concept of "NewsRadio." ... And most importantly for the future, "NewsRadio" has some strong people in the supporting cast. [20 Mar 1995]

"Brotherhood" is sharply written... Nevertheless, a heavy air of predictability hangs over "Brotherhood," which has a tendency to confirm viewer expectations instead of challenging them.

This isn't "Friends," after all. At its hour length, "Related" asks us to take the Sorelli saga somewhat more seriously. Yet it provides sitcom incidents that can't stand the significance test.

I'm ashamed to admit it in front of my more serious colleagues, but I think the show can be very funny. Of course, like everything else on TV, some of it hits, a lot of it misses. But in the midst of the pain, cruelty, ridicule and abuse, not to mention boredom, somebody falls into a manhole and I find myself bursting out laughing. [29 Mar 1990]

Watching Charlie stare into space and compute somehow isn't as persuasive as watching Gil Grissom or one of his "CSI" cohorts peer into a microscope. [23 Jan 2005]

In a word, The Listener is boring. Or, if you prefer alliteration, listless.

The Path is a grim unburdening, all right, but also that what-if series in search of deeper moorings, and a deeper meaning.

Nothing remotely lurid in either show [7 Days of Sex and The Conversation With Amanda de Cadenet].

Nice locales (Paris! Rome!), a couple of decent action sequences... but otherwise a tepid potboiler over-seasoned with too many spy tropes and a plot with too many gaping holes.

Nice to look at, good performances, but ultimately a snooze.

Colorfully drawn. But all inside the lines.

Sure, it all looks and sounds achingly familiar and blandly dumb, and maybe some of it is. But check the brain at the door. You could do much worse.

Best not to overthink 60 Days, and 60 Days clearly doesn’t want you to.

Its rambling storytelling starts to reveal distinct shape in these people, their relationships and the show's quirky comic perspective [in the second episode].

[Chopra's] attractive, all right, and so is the rest of the telegenic crowd surrounding her. What's missing is much of a reason to care about her (or them). That's the fault of a pilot which spins a wild-eyed premise.

A messy newcomer with a "Twilight" saga vibe and "Twin Peaks" DNA.

If only it were more interesting.

The writing is sharp, but sharp-edged too. Overwhelmed with venom, Queens tends to be more mean-spirited than free-spirited. The cast is energetic, particularly Roberts and Curtis, who look like they're having a great time. But they can't quite convey that fun to the audience.

The cast has major potential, but Life Unexpected still needs to find an original and compelling voice.

A featherweight entertainment with a good cast, some charm, and not nearly enough laughs.

Yes, cliches about wealth and privilege abound and are confirmed, or perhaps further embedded....But NYC Prep is so eager to establish a kinship with "Gossip Girl" that it's forgotten to tell much of a story.

Princesses is not nearly as offensive as "Jersey Shore." The bad: It's still pretty dumb.

Its hasty pace frequently muddles precisely who's who where, when or why. Even the zippy sex scenes play like another gratuitous burst of firepower.

It's a Pre-Cambrian specimen that crept out of the primordial ooze of TV past, with a rhythm so profoundly familiar that if you happened to fall asleep during the first few minutes and woke up for the last, you'd be able to mentally reconstruct the entire program from scratch.

The first two episodes prove as tiresomely pleased-with-themselves as my run-on sentences. A half-hour is too much of not enough.

A convoluted story that doesn’t seem all that worthwhile to unravel, or peel--or watch..

[Shalom Auslande's] worldview is one part Christopher Hitchens, one part Samuel Beckett, one part Louis CK.... If all that makes his funny-ish new show sound bitter, angry, provocative and even compelling, then (well) that's because it is. But Happyish can also be wildly uneven and a little too smug in its certitude.

Sure, Thursday's pilot is junk, but it's pretty, diligent junk, essentially The Whopper of action TV, heaped high with mayhem condiments.

There's a smoldering ember of promise here, mainly in the cast, even if the pilot tended to smother it.

There's little here that hasn't been dramatized to death already.

Name aside, Cyber's pokey and old-fashioned, but the leads are the big draw.

It's all standard Schumer stuff, and nothing fans haven't sort of heard before, or maybe laughed at before, or cringed at before, or seen elements of before (her 2012 Comedy Central special). Those fans should be pleased. As usual, everyone else will be appalled.

A competent, connect-the-dots procedural that never offers much of a case for why a remake was needed.

Not so much scandalous as scandalously dull.

Yes, offensive, but the second episode loses that element, which suggests Fox got the message. Not surprisingly, it's the better of the two.

Perception is both clever and ridiculous.

Singleton’s first TV series has a nice retro vibe, but otherwise not much action, not much originality, and not much wallop.

After Spartacus blows most of its special-effects budget on the pilot, it settles into a not-bad sword-and-sandal genre series, a la "Xena" or "Hercules."

Some excellent special effects are in Monday night's episode, but nothing particularly shocking because it's become abundantly clear by now that The Dome can do any damn thing The Dome--or the writers--want.

What's missing is passion, joy and (ultimately) interest.

Not great comedy, but hopefully the beginning of long overdue recovery process for a talented, troubled actor.

These too-timid re-enactments, punctuated with the occasional burst of VFX gunfire, are interspersed with some informative commentary by real experts like veteran mob reporter Selwyn Raab and dramatically less informative observations by actors like Vincent Pastore, who of course played a mobster on TV.

Oddly amusing and amusingly odd.

Hap and Carla are certainly a great-looking couple, standing in the shadow of the North Dakota Rockies. What they're not is a heightened version of Blake and Alexis Colby Carrington, the sort of heights I was really hoping for here.

So pleased with itself, it doesn't seem concerned about pleasing us.

Nothing much new here (based on the first hour), but Remini appears resolute, tough-talking and potentially formidable.

As a family, they are particularly eager to convey a sense of normalcy, but Sister Wives still doesn't have much interest in exploring the religious underpinnings or larger ethical questions of this anything-but-normal lifestyle. You're left without a solid clue why the Browns--all five of them--have gone to this much trouble.

Good-looking--also lethargic, languid, listless and a little bit lifeless--at least in the early going.

Sarah Palin's Alaska is part-travelogue, part-"Todd and Sarah Plus Eight," part-slick political infomercial, and part Mark Burnett hokum - and oddly fascinating for all those reasons.

Nice looking, but not nearly enough action.

Allegiance is a curious duck, indeed. Smart and sophisticated certainly, but -- occasionally--a bit dim-bulbed and hokey, too.

At least Take Me Out has plenty of energy and camp.

In the pilot, some of the lines even find their mark--assuming the intended mark are sites like BuzzFeed, Digg, Cracked, Reddit, Upworthy and so on. But the millennial jokes quickly grow stale, along with their “what is it with these kids” setups.

Consider Seed the cutoffs and flip-flops of the comedy dress code. Acceptable in summer. But just barely.

A prime-time soap that wants to be harder-edged than “Empire,” but instead manages to be less fun.

While The Neighbors sketches something genuinely creative--and truly weird--its comedy doesn't really come together.

The Bomb is a headlong-rush past the milestones and guideposts of this history, rarely pausing to explore their deeper consequences or meaning, while offering just a nod now and then to enduring controversies, or acknowledging--though barely exploring--the huge personalities that shaped this history, such as Robert Oppenheimer. The actual science is almost completely ignored.

The show juggled a lot of storylines last night, maybe too many, but the vibe feels right. "90210" is not a disaster, and the CW can now officially let out a deep ... sigh ... of relief.

Falco--as always--remains one of TV's bright shining lights, but her Nurse Jackie suddenly feels like a work in progress.

Thin, flavorless high school gruel, but the lead bad boy is intriguing.