Narration clunkily tries to fill the narrative void. But it's blandly delivered.

Multiple-personality thriller starts a bit slowly Wednesday night, but early signs still indicate a summer keeper for TNT.

What's surprising is that there's nothing remotely cheesy about 4th and Loud, a good docuseries that trains the camera most of the time on the guys on the field.

If this is comedy, who needs it? [24 Sept 2002, p.B27]

Aside from the snappier editing and Sisco's greater sexual aggressiveness - like "Sex and the City's" Samantha, she gets the men on her most-wanted list - this could almost be a "Police Woman" episode from 30 years ago. [1 Oct 2003, p.B23]

A nice balance of 60-40 character drama and medicine. "Homicide" heavyweight Braugher is intense once again, yet smart enough to keep sharing the screen with a strong ensemble. [10 Oct 2000]

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.

Soderbergh has created a vibrant, dark and above all alluring Gotham. Owen's Thackery is its bracing human counterpart.

It's hard to imagine anyone over the age of 15 being able to watch this series with a straight face after seeing Tarzan go sniffing through Midtown like a bloodhound, but maybe that's the audience the WB is after. As we said, Fimmel does have great pecs. [3 Oct 2003, p.B47]

A series so monumentally meaningless, so pathetically puerile, so irredeemably ridiculous that, within my limited professional context, it prompts the Biggest Question of them all: Why is there television? [2 Nov 1988]

The new show is very violent, in bursts, in between all the poetry and music. I don't know why, but violence bothers me less when its mixed with lyrical scripts like in "A Man Called Hawk." It's like Shakespeare on TV. ... Any script becomes Shakespeare when Brooks gets his vocal cords around it; pearly words float out of the TV. [27 Jan 1989]

I was resistant to "life as we know it" at first, but it won me over (or wore me down). What seems prurience for prurience's sake turns out to be a good bit richer, kind of like "My So- Called Sex Life." [7 Oct 2004]

Yes, Outlander can occasionally be a bit much for those not already enamored of its romance-novel leanings. (I plead guilty.) But for those open to textured historical sweep and/or time travel what-ifs (guilty on both counts), it's easy to lose yourself in this gritty production's pungent sense of place, character and dilemma.

Fascinating and deeply troubling.

Get past the genuine awfulness of this--and it is awful--and a strange melancholy begins to settle in.

A beauty that requires time and patience, but at least strongly hints at a payoff that will reward both.

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]

The good news is that The Second One often is worse (in a good way) and does boast at least one viral YouTube clip, starring the head of the Statue of Liberty. (Poor Lady Liberty.) But The Second One is also more predictable, silly and self-conscious of the legacy.... For "Sharknado" fans: B- For viewers with highly refined tastes--or any taste--and sharks: F+

Efron and Grylls--who manages to be personable in all his series, even when he's rappelling down an ice cliff in the Antarctic while being pursued by a mob of angry emperor penguins--do, in fact, make a good team, and a fun one to hang out with for an hour, too.

Wonderful. ... It is a realistic drama, the sort of thing you might see occasionally on experimental "American Playhouses" on public TV. But nobody does realistic drama on commercial TV today. [1 May 1990]

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]

It's just super, a triumph of programme-making that even Alistair Cooke himself with his famous British overstatement can't exaggerate. [28 Mar 1991]

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]

The Lottery, with otherwise sage setup and promising performances, merits its own shot at something great.

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.

With "Satisfaction" an hour later proving even USA now knows what adult TV can really be, Rush doesn't deliver one.

You're the Worst exudes some charm (Cash is rich indeed) but can't keep from overstepping, either. It's saved by relationship detail and human vulnerability that "Married" utterly misses.

Married, in particular, is one-note with character tone: clueless people acting heedlessly.