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.