Engaging docudrama with lots of interesting detail. Worth watching.

Not a lot of laughs — as if — but the payoff succeeds and so does Winslet.

Crawford and Wayans display little rapport. That leaves racing cars, speeding bullets and wannabe wit to prop up an essentially superfluous show.

This is a Danny McBride comedy--not exactly funny, but weirdly engaging in its own uncomfortable way. His fans should be pleased. Everyone else will be puzzled--or worse, repulsed.

The Ranch isn’t hateable as much as just bone-weary. It’s a by-the-dots, or the numbers--whichever are easiest to connect--sitcom that proceeds according to formula.

This doesn't pretend to be a deep show, but it's a pleasant diversion with a good cast, and really good (read: expensive) production values.

An oddity with additional oddness in the form of Malkovich. But as summer diversions go, this looks to be a good one.

Body of Proof feels like a show that has nearly been nibbled to death by network ducks. You can almost see the TV executive Post-it notes on the screen.

The show is bad, the star a bit sad, his shtick as old as a rock.

Finally, the best new comedy of the 2005-06 TV season is here... What's that, you say? This is a drama and not a comedy? Oh, dear.

A not-bad formula gothic that'll rise or fall on the Dekker/Robertson chemistry; I'm betting on the former.

Sleepy, listless, dull. But it has a great set; the beach and clouds on the horizon are alluring.

Bland, with no pop or energy, Scoundrels limps sadly along.

Had something special about it from the start: the mood, the writing, the acting. All the great series establish a mis-en-scene, a special environment that you can cut with a knife. I felt I was in a different place watching "Wiseguy." [30 May 1988]

Matt Olmstead and Nick Santora are two solid guys who know how to make good TV and Lombardozzi and Alonzo are superior actors. But there are only flashes of promise here.

The missing pieces, arguably the most important ones, are the groundbreaking and socially relevant ones. That proficient and fluid animation aside, Disenchantment breaks no ground, offers nothing socially current other than the fact that Bean's a strong, independent woman.

Waco won’t be the first drama to reduce a tragedy to its simplest components, but this doesn’t offer much confidence that these are the right components or the only ones. This is Waco in black and white, absent any shades of gray--an inkblot test with just one interpretation.

The dialogue's preposterous, the plot ludicrous, and the premise as fresh as a wrung-out old mop.

We've been down this road before and all the signposts of Underemployed look the same.

"The Violet Hour" is an elegant and surprising love story, while "The Royal We" is a sour disappointment. But the best news: A Matthew Weiner show is back on TV.

This is good bunk, fun bunk, energetic bunk. Much better bunk than the last volume.

Craven and corrupt, studios did ruin lives and stoke racism. But a seven-hour Velveeta-smothered corrective, along with a few nice performances and some genuinely awful ones (discretion is indeed the better part of valor on this last point, by the way)? Get me rewrite, kid. STAT. Overindulgent, overwrought, overdone.

Solid star turn, eerie production values, even a killer ending.

Blunt Talk aspires to "Network's" kinetically brilliant madness. It arrives a limp and muddled mess.

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

We're happy to see a multigenerational sitcom, and the pilot has some nice writing. But the effort feels somehow strained. Though stage veteran Byrne has charisma, he's hardly a sitcom natural. So maybe that's the point. A sitcom that doesn't behave like one. Hope springs eternal. [6 Oct 2000, p.B51]

Nix knows how to dig deeper holes for his folks, while he broadens their motivations, sometimes recognized only along the way. Nix isn't bad at keeping the plot pot percolating, either.

Not so much scandalous as scandalously dull.

We already know too much and paradoxically too little about the JFK assassination. A TV movie needed to tell us something we don't know. No dice here.

This is a very good cast laboring through terribly weak material.

This version is a triumph.

Unadulterated rubbish, and exactly what fans expect. Bravo, Starz.

This entire series will rise (or tumble to oblivion) on the shoulders of their characters, and on whatever chemistry they create. First impressions are that it will indeed rise.

Monday Mornings is Kelleyesque in all the best and admittedly worst--melodramatic, manipulative, shocking--ways. But it's also intelligent, particularly well-written and acted, and above all interested in matters other than what's directly mounted on the screen before your eyes, most notably ethics, human nature and human fallibility.

Over the first three episodes, I Feel Bad has largely erased that which (theoretically) made it stand out the most among fall newcomers--a comedy about culture as much as one about motherhood. The result is homogeneous and bland.

Imperfect, often entertaining, unrecognizable from book or movie.

The first two parts of "Tell Me Your Secrets" are certainly engaging in a potboiler sense, but it's not at all clear that its makers can keep it up for 10 episodes.

19 feels exactly like a Shondaland show, but far more like a crossover than a spinoff. There’s perhaps a bigger problem: NBC’s “Chicago Fire” already does this show and does it well.

[Bakula and Pounder] should make the process of watching--or chore of watching, depending on your appetite for more of this formula--just a little more agreeable.

I laughed. Not often, or perhaps not often enough, but there was also enough McFarlane-esque gross-out sophomoric tomfoolery to keep even me reasonably entertained for a half-hour. Plus, good ol' likable Cleveland works well as a leading man.

Yes, indeed, a love letter this is, but 41 is better than rank puffery because it also takes the full measure of Bush.

All dark shadows and gloom, there's a comic-book vigor to the series, and the narrative contortion of a soap.

This one is stylish, smartly produced and has a very appealing cast.

Faithful, intelligent adaptation, and an overstuffed one too.

Overall, "The Irrational" is decently acted, competently written, and adequately directed.

Lizzie Borden takes an ax to many assumptions--including the one that Lifetime movies aren't worth watching.

The overall production--good, mostly efficient, and certainly not perfect.

You've probably already heard Executioner is slow to get into. That's true. But (I think) the setup works, and (also think) it promises a satisfying series.

As usual, the production is immaculate, and Bernthal--who never disappoints--is his usual self. You may, however, wish (I did) that his Punisher wasn’t such a humorless, unmitigated jerk.

It's as if we've all passed this way (many times) before and could write the dialogue, act the scenes, predict the outcome all in our sleep.

Jersey Shore is appalling, which is mostly its appeal, but it can also be funny, irreverent and breezily dimwitted--which is the rest of the appeal.

The series has to update to 2021, or try to anyway. To that end, there are prominent Black characters here for pretty much the first time in series history — better late than never but about as awkward an attempt to redress its unbearable whiteness of being as you might imagine.

Grimm has real promise if NBC has real patience.

While neither dialogue nor sitcom tropes could be called fresh, the pilot plays solid, relying on able actors to score under tight direction (James Widdoes).

Tonight's opening episode of The Guardian is as well-crafted as any of this fall's series pilots. The hour plays like a tidy little TV movie. And therein lies its potential problem. Where the series can go from here-go, that is, without losing credibility and the dramatic tensions that make it distinctive-is difficult to fathom. [25 Sept 2001, p.B27]

SPOOKY stuff happens in The Others. Windows open by themselves, ghosts spring out of walls, eerie sounds wail. Yes, indeed, it's spooky. It's spooky how script writers think this sort of stuff is actually effective after so many years of seeing these cues so many times in so many "horror" movies. [4 Feb 2000]

Sure, it's summer and the viewing is easy--and Zoo is about as easy as it gets. There is some fun here, or potentially some fun.

Manifest wants to be "This Is Us" with a taste of "Lost." Over the first episode, it manages the feat with considerable skill. A good cast sells the improbable hook by at least making it emotionally probable.

Dutiful, reverent, energetic, expertly crafted and yet utterly incapable of escaping the long shadow of its exotic midnight forbear. The capacity to entertain is still here. The capacity to shock is not. Even as good as she is, Cox’s immaculate-- and historic--performance feels tame compared with Curry’s subversive screen one.

Which isn't to say Duck Dynasty isn't entertaining. It's just more of the same.

While critics like me count quibbles, kids of all ages should share my husband's assessment: "It's a superhero show. Superman flies. Give The Cape a little space."

Capable enough time-killer, but nothing compelling.

Just as people either drink or don't, you'll get it or you won't.

Stellar production, famous leads. What's missing? Heart.

Forever isn't betting the future on plot mechanics, however, but on chemistry and that obscure object of desire called "sex appeal." These leads have it--in spades.

There’s a fine line between “calming” and “soporific,” but the new season mostly manages to stay on the right side of it, judging by the first three episodes.

Whoa, pardner. Calm down. There's too much struttin' and puffin' in the pilot for our taste. Rich casting and drama possibilities get mired in improbable events. And the basic premise -white father rides in to save black city? -is asking for trouble. [6 Oct 2000, p.B51]

Neither offensive nor particularly funny, it's merely another average, laugh-track-addled sitcom. The four leads are fine; they just need better material.

Sad thing is, I'm a geek girl myself, who'd be happy to love this mad mix of technology, action and "humor" if it were, you know, actually funny more often than just cheaply offensive. Less pander, more wit, please.

Dramatically inert, Badlands is at least technically accomplished.

Inexorably transfixing, whether you're taking names or taking notes.

It's fun, but totally insubstantial.

Headaches will be induced just in trying to unravel the plot mess Bon Temps finds itself in. At least this will be the last headache.

Fist-clenching may be a novel approach, also a self-negating one, and Yellowstone--good writing, solid cast, nice views aside--can also be a bummer at times. Nicely done series that can also, from a viewer perspective, be depleting.

Like many Lifetime productions, this one is designed to make you stand up and take action on a hot-button issue. Unlike many, it's got the dramatic chops to keep you on your feet applauding.

Leaden, dull, flat, tone deaf. Any reason to go on? Sure. This replaces another ex-"Friends" vehicle (Courteney Cox's "Cougar Town," which returns mid-April) that launched with both left feet, then dramatically improved. With all the on-screen talent here, this ex-"Friends" star could eventually shine, too.

In its zeal to zing local TV news, "Dog" loses any flavor of authenticity, which is absolutely essential for effective satire.

Content is the much bigger issue here. In the pilot, Tyrant at times comes perilously close to embracing derogatory media stereotypes of Arabs.

White Famous is so corrosive that it ends up fighting itself. The self-loathing here is the type that’s common to so many Hollywood satires, filled with the requisite pythons and soul crushers who keep the sausage factory conveyor belt moving. But much of this goes beyond loathing to self-lacerating. ... Awful.

Tonight's premiere may seem like ridiculous twaddle, and it may feel like a major downer (and kinda sloooow), too, but maybe that's just Bruckheimer playing with our heads. In fact, Hour deserves a second look (next week is definitely better).

Disturbing. Magnetic. Hold your breath. Watch.

Bassett refuses to cast blame for the troubles, and we're left with a portrait that has plenty of love--just not a whole lot of insight or edge.

There’s a thing called chemistry, which is little evident in the first few episodes here. Fischer and Hudson seem fine sparring, but not all that connected.

One thing you can say for USA: It knows what it's doing. It's got its shtick, and it's sticking to it.

Not great, not terrible--just your standard-issue TV movie about a well-known historic event.

Bob's Burgers might be meatier if it gave us some reason to watch these characters. The title isn't the only thing that feels generic.

Placid and often incomprehensibly bland, Combat Hospital still has flashes of intelligence. Definitely worth a second look.

Yikes, this is calculating. Ouch, is it way too self-aware (even for teens). There's a caste system in high school? Are you shocked to learn this? [29 Sept 1999, p.B03]

Defying Gravity is a glorious, glimmering glop of foolishness--a spitball magnet of the first order that elicits jeers when it wants tears and catcalls when striving for philosophical heft.

Exciting newcomer with lots of action, and some guiding intelligence, too. (Demerits for a secondary story that doesn’t work.)

Bonnie & Clyde really is just another biopic with superior production values, a few good performances and a pair of protagonists who deserve no sympathy, and receive none here.

If you can see the forest through the trees, it's good, wearable fashion that's the real "fashion star" on this show, and it gives viewers an unusual glimpse into the world of retail despite all the superfluous hoopla.

Lotsa fast banter and stylish direction will make some viewers dimly recall--as they are doubtlessly meant to--William Powell and Myrna Loy's late, great "Thin Man" movie series.

Bridgeton is too dull, its denizens likewise. The mystery will eventually be settled, some people will get eaten along the way, our heroes will save the day, the fog will disperse, the sun will come out. Ten episodes sure seems like a long road to get there.

Painfully familiar hospital drama that starts off sloppy but improves.

Good-hearted and gentle, Fisher struggles on the "funny" front.

The cast is excellent, the writing superior and the direction, too. ... But this "World" does suffer from lack of scale, or at least reduction in scale. This could easily be a Syfy series as well as a Peacock one. It doesn't soar off the screen to wow you, or shock you.

Good Pacino, skillful pulp, but an impossible balancing act.