Calling Rome a crushing disappointment would be accurate but too forgiving of its sordidly cockamamy fixations. Brutality and nudity rise in direct proportion to unpersuasive storytelling. Finding someone, anyone, to care about amid all this shock-value Sturm und Drang swiftly becomes an enervating chore. [26 Aug 2005, p.B33]

Their [John Brownlow and co-writer Don Macpherson's] saga is so vividly shaded, even minor characters resonate.

Bloody pirate battles? Check. Graphic sex scenes? Check. Shoreside conniving/intrigue? Intense.

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

Kinnear is solid, but his Keegan is a work in progress--both as human being and TV character.

Nip/Tuck is all about appearances, but it also has something to say. [21 June 2004, p.C01]

There's no drama, no trumped-up conflict, no insights, no revelations and absolutely no discreet view of a once-notorious Dorchester clan that ran wild in the streets but now drives them, coolly surveying their kingdom for another restaurant location.

They know how to nail situations/characters, while snappy edits cull fluff, leaving only comic gold.

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.

Looking occupies some fuzzy ill-defined middle ground filled with uni-dimensional characters.

The fuss is justified. Sunday's return of the Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss-created series is a triumphant one, and should easily establish Sherlock among TV's finest series.

The early part of the third may not be as good as the first season or stretches of the second, but for a few million anxiously awaiting Sunday, it's still good enough.

The real pleasure of this series is watching them peel away the layers to this particular onion, often on long car drives across a vast, wet, undifferentiated Louisiana landscape.... The real problem with True Detective are those flash-forwards to the present day: Younger Cohle, at least, is interesting. The older version is gaseous and his maunderings often stop the show cold.

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

Good newcomer that gets even better in the weeks ahead.

The oldest trope in the TV kingdom dies hard, and in fact dies not at all on Chicago PD, the latest from "Law & Order" creator Dick Wolf, who sleepwalks through this show, or at least doesn't bother to wake up long enough to rewrite any of the rules he's established over the past 30 years.

Will this be a good season? Undoubtedly, yes, and blood will be spilled. But if this opener is any indication, there's not enough fake blood in Hollywood to sate the fifth.

Lots of cartoon violence mixed with--irony alert--not enough intelligence.

The worst new show of 2014 can take solace that there are still 358 days left for another one to exceed it.

Slow start Sunday, but the drama's beauty and quality are intact.

About as good a Community restart as anyone could have possible hoped for.

The Assets isn't flashy, but boy, is it effective. It just grinds away, laying down intriguing details of "asset" care and feeding, made vivid through determined performances and intense crescendos.

A little long-winded in some stretches, not detailed enough in others but Holmes fans--and fans of cop procedurals--should like this.

"Johnny's" back to corrupt the locals, and if you liked last season, there's no apparent reason not to go along for this ride.

Dream On is almost there. It still needs some work, though. [6 July 1990, p.43]

Riveting, important and lots of fun.

Underwood, in the role of Maria, didn't entirely succeed--acting is part of the bargain, after all. But NBC's live version of Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein's beloved musical, staged at Grumman Studios in Bethpage, largely did.

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.