We've just seen this stuff too many times. Merely changing script specifics to Olympic references doesn't make it fresh.

It could easily be mean and cynical, but manages to avoid both fatal pitfalls because the finalists are so genuinely enthusiastic and so blissfully uncomprehending of their shortcomings.

Enjoy the atmospherics. They're good. Just don't expect them to lead to a satisfying payoff. It might never come.

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

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.

Don't miss this series, with its first-rate performances and impeccable filmmaking. It is rich and rewarding, even if it runs into the occasional plotting issue.

Rick Berman and Brannon Braga have assembled an attractive cast and found a tone -colloquial, humorous, slyly sexy -that probably will make questions about the science in this fiction moot. [26 Sep 2001]

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]

It's a cut above boilerplate, with good production values and decent performances.

That "The Red Line" often does as well as it does is a tribute to the cast and the overall production. But apple polish is still apple polish. ... There's a real world out there with real-world shootings of unarmed black men by the police, with horrific consequences, and a vast gulf of mistrust that separates whole communities from law enforcement. No CBS miniseries, however worthy the intentions, could probably get its head around that reality. "The Red Line" certainly tries, but falls short.

Expanse is so expansive, it’s hard to pin down--well, anything.

Even if we are being taken for a ride, there's so much to savor on this trip. [12 Sep 2003]

By the end of the first season, the show had improved significantly, if not quite dramatically, and based on a viewing of the first two episodes, that trend continues.

The most interesting character, or certainly most compelling, is Barkin’s Smurf. She’s a Ma Barker with cleavage, a brownie-baking Gemma Teller (“Sons of Anarchy”). Ultimately, she may be the one to seal the pact here.

The pilot's envelope-pushing is caustic and obvious, two things Mom seems better than. Faris is both gutsy and touching as the adult trying to get her act together, while Janney's crafty adolescence extends to a third generation around Faris' two kids.

The show is an old-fashioned courtroom procedural, but the pilot has enough sharp writing and well-greased plot twists to suggest future promise.

Another "Friends" (or "Girls"?) knockoff with a likable cast and some sharp writing.

Well-crafted sitcom, but Goggins takes some getting used to.

Good newcomer that gets even better in the weeks ahead.

The River still has a quirkily eccentric charm. It's just so deliciously odd.

The parsing of detail is effective because by the end of Monday's pilot, I was surprised by an unexpected reaction: I actually wanted to know what happens next week.

The Last O.G. can’t help being a little sad because Morgan is a little sad, and it can’t help being a little funny because Morgan is Morgan. He so much as breathes and you laugh.

The same strut and swagger is here, except Ballers feels smarter and more clear-eyed about the dangers of this culture, in ways "Entourage" never did.

Compulsively watchable, as usual, but also on the reverential side. This "Crown" has no teeth.

Underwhelming open that feels underfunded too.

The formula--must find murderer of beautiful woman before last commercial break--predates the dinosaurs, but also incorporates some satisfying twists.

Good Girls gets the journalism part almost laughably wrong, but as an ensemble drama with a good cast, high production values, and much else, even a crusty editor might observe that, “This story has legs.”

Fake news, real soap — and still watchable.