Hennessy has the feistiness the lead role requires, and Miguel Ferrer bears watching as her tense, neurotic supervisor. Too bad the first couple of cases were too easily cracked.

Even though I didn’t approach it with a genre fan’s enthusiasm, I will allow that this remake offers its share of scares.

This four-part series adapted from Stephen King short stories starts off with a must-see performance by Oscar-winner William Hurt—the same kind of funny, ferocious, uninhibited turn that gave such a live-wire jolt to A History of Violence.

Director John Power establishes good pacing, as the mounting suspense alternates with scenes of banal normalcy and campy humor. The action is spread around on a solid supporting cast that includes Joanna Cassidy, E.G. Marshall, Allyce Beasley, John Ashton, Cliff DeYoung, Robert Carradine and Traci Lords...The thriller is like an attenuated, more pastoral version of the original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But once it gets its hooks in you, you’ll be back for the conclusion the following night.

Entertaining. But is it worth eight hours of your attention? Not unless you’re laid up with a bad flu bug you just can’t seem to shake.

So far the show is biting, funny, touching and surprising. In short, it's an absolute delight, and possibly even better than the landmark first season.

The series nails everything that NBC's Smash failed to do with the world of Broadway theater last year, providing a rollicking backstage look at the crazy, temperamental people engaged in artistic expression.

A fun, body-flinging, old-fashioned epic.... As Kublai Khan, British actor Benedict Wong gives an impressive performance, one of the best of the year: You absolutely believe his ruthlessness, his power and his calculating thoughtfulness. As Marco Polo, on the other hand, Italian actor Lorenzo Richelmy, who looks like a more lyrical Emile Hirsch, mostly has to be put up with.

It wasn't perfect by any means--switching between live singing and all those filmed ads killed just about any theatrical energy and flow well before the three hours were up--but the production was colorful and glitch-free. Allison Williams of Girls made a much more committed Peter than Carrie Underwood did a Maria von Trapp in last year's endless Sound of Music Live!, and Christopher Walken's extremely peculiar Captain Hook was a triumph.

As a raw police procedural, Gracepoint thrives thanks to legitimately unsettling twists, sharp revelations that focus our attention on new suspects. But it's in Carver and Miller’s competing worldviews that the show finds something more substantial to work with.

With many clichés coming straight from romantic comedy films, A to Z gets slightly cheesy at times, but Feldman and Milioti's easy chemistry makes their banter believable and, well, downright adorable.

The highlight of the show remains newlywed actress Lana Parrilla, who continues to pepper her Evil Queen with just the right amount of realism to make her deliciously wicked deeds seem justified, but Frozen is just the thing that has gotten Once really moving.

It actually improves upon the successful formula by downplaying any romantic entanglements, which, at times, have weighed down the leads of Rhimes's other shows.

In all, black-ish is Everybody Hates Chris meets Modern Family, but not quite as funny as either. Well, not yet, at least.

The premiere episode of Madam Secretary, for the time being, suggests that the show is very much the little sister [to The Good Wife].... But Madam Secretary, in which Téa Leoni plays the newly appointed secretary of state, deserves to hang around long enough to formulate and declare itself.

Not all of Gotham is as successful--a side plot involving Gordon's girlfriend Barbara Kean (Erin Richards) has yet to find its footing--but this dark (and cinematically shot) series will feel right at home as the lead-in to Fox's similarly toned Sleepy Hollow.

Red Band Society, which could turn out to be one of the best new shows of the fall, is like that, constantly catching you unexpectedly.

Philip Marlowe meets Moonlighting—with a passing nod to The Odd Couple—In this delightfully inventive new detective show.

Soul Food is inconsistent, but it whets the appetite.

The drawback to Catch Fire is that we aren't yet interested enough in the backup characters. For now Pace is reason enough to watch this on whatever TV, laptop or mobile screen you prefer in the digital age. [9 Jun 2014, p.33]

Ned and just about everyone else erupts in violent arguments, denunciations, accusations, counteraccusations, diatribes--these are searing, electrifying moments, furiously articulate and delivered with escalating passion. [2 Jun 2014, p.45]

His delivery, which falls between Monty Python and Austin Powers, explodes with enjoyable little pips of indignation. [26 May 2014, p.42]

Petals doesn't have the same smothering intensity but it's compellingly crazy, the TV equivalent of outsider art. [26 May 2014, p.42]

As the season goes on, the narrative grip will (one hopes) tighten and grow as richly decadent as the surrounding production--or Eva Green. [26 May 2014, p.39]

In the show's best moments, this moral pickle (being a mole vs. being a cop) leaves Ryan scrambling to improvise ways to prevent gang crimes without really catching anyone. [26 May 2014, p.40]

This version, set in Paris, compensates with an atmosphere of chic rot--they have that over there--an increased body count and an excellent cast. [19 May 2014, p.44]

Louie remains a small miracle--a shaggy-dog story, hopping with fleas, maybe rescued froma pound, that outdazzles Lassie, Air Bud and the rest. [12 May 2014,]

Jack is back, and he's still a lot of fun. [12 May 2014]

The show is vaguely mystical, implausible and sappy, but if you're in the right mood it's very moving. [5 May 2014, p.46]

The show is light with sharp baby kicks of meanness. [5 May 2014, p.46]

The procedural elements of the medical drama hum along nicely, but it's Reilly's performance outside the operating room that makes this show worth watching. [28 Apr 2014]

The team behind Bad Teacher has successfully reconfigured the raunchy comedy into a heart warming sitcom starring Ari Graynor that is still bad in all the right ways. [28 Apr 2014]

Edie Falco makes the stakes scarily real. [21 Apr 2014, p.43]

A larger, wholly engrossing story about crime syndicates and hit men. [21 Apr 2014, p.43]

Mad Men has both the greatness of execution and inscrutability of artistic intent, and it won't be until the show actually ends that I'll know which one won out. [21 Apr 2014, p.41]

Valley starts well, with needling absurdities, but payoffs are few. [Apr 2014, p.50]

Bell is key, so plainly direct and unstudied that we see the past through his eyes. [14 Apr 2014, p.50]

[A] fast, funny political satire. [14 Apr 2014, p.49]

The first three episodes of season 4 grab the wide-flung stories of this epic and assemble them into a crackling narrative. [7 Apr 2014, p.41]

If even a few good performances lock into your vision, you perk up. In this new comedy about friends in various stages of relationship envy and regret, there are two: James Van Der Beek and Zoe Lister-Jones. [7 Apr 2014, p.45]

This is the best "family" reality series since Honey Boo Boo or even The Osbournes from several centuries ago. [31 Mar 2014]

Jack has an excellent cast.... Maybe the writing will catch up with them. [31 Mar 2014]

Lindsay pulls us into her space and makes us feel protective. [31 Mar 2014]

The 100 is imaginative, surprising and fun--Lost for kids. [24 Mar 2014, p.39]

This partly improvised comedy is closer to Girls than All About Eve: wistful yet stinging, silly yet wise about the instability of even the deepest friendships. [24 Mar 2014, p.37]

Crisis may not be great, but it works. [24 Mar 2014, p.35]

The show is infernally good. [17 Mar 2014]

It's educational, kid-oriented and fun, and Tyson us confidently smooth popularizer of science. [17 Mar 2014]

Tyson elevates this character into a prism through which passes the span of existence.... You will be sighing for days. [10 Mar 2014, p.48]

At its best, Sirens has some of the emotional and comedic recklessness and shock of his FX comedy about firefighters, Rescue Me. Sirens needs to howl a little more. [10 Mar 2014]

The characters are too uneven a group: Some of them you instantly overlook, like the olive in a cocktail. Even so, thus has potential. [3 Mar 2014, p.41]

[It] promises to be a dizzyingly clever season 2. [3 Mar 2014, p.39]

Growing Up Fisher is a winning, welcome example [of a family sitcom], conceptually novel and solidly cash. [24 Feb 2014, p.37]

The one thing lacking is writing that goes beyond fondness into truly funny. [17 Feb 2014, p.45]

For now, apart from the Underwoods, it's underwhelming. [17 Feb 2014, p.43]

Cooper is compelling as an overconfident hothead who sees creative potential around each corner. Trouble is, no matter what the writers dream up for Fleming, Fleming has already dreamed up better for Bond. [10 Feb 2014, p.48]

With its rugged leads displaying a light comic touch, the series has a fresh appeal. [3 Feb 2014, p.44]

Flowers, both the book and the new movie, is completely absurd--if you want to gauge the absurdity, just know that one of the darkest secrets in the narrative involves a doughnut--but somehow also psychologically coherent. It has a grip.

The first few episodes of Rake are, if anything, even fluffier than White Collar. All the better for Kinnear to gently cut through the whimsy with his sharp delivery. [27 Jan 2014, p.39]

Intelligence is nicely done. [20 Jan 2014]

After an awful season 2, Lena Dunham's Brooklynocentric comedy celebrating coffee, ambition and sex is fixed. [20 Jan 2014, p.41]

Very little happens in the first three hours of this anthology crime series, yet it's absolutely riveting. [20 Jan 2014]

This parody of bad vintage miniseries is asinine--it's supposed to be--and from time to time hilarious. [13 Jan 2014, p.49]

The show must carry on, and of course it does, but rather sluggishly.... Overall the acting from the ensemble remains strong enough to sweep you along from episode to episode. [13 Jan 2014, p.47]

In the golden age of narrative TV, cartoons offer countervailing subversive pleasures: They're juvenile, satiric, surreal. Those words all apply to the wild spree Rick and Morty. [23 Dec 2013]

The show fades away like a Mari Gras parade drifting out of range. But it's a potent memory. [16 Dec 2013]

A slight, bright, British caper. [16 Dec 2013]

Holliday Grainger is an excellent Bonnie.... Emile Hirsch, a very good actor, plays Clyde as a passive nonentity.... Bonnie and Clyde seem as remote and illogical as another notorious couple of the era, Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor. [16 Dec 2013]

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is fine as it is. Tell your DVR to book it. [9 Dec 2013, p.43]

Every so often, Alley extracts a solid laugh from an unexceptional joke. [9 Dec 2013, p.45]

Flawlessly done, but a tough sell. [2 Dec 2013, p.50]

The anecdotes slam into each other with a punch-drunk indifference--but director Spike Lee's style is a series of swift jabs. [18 Nov 2013, p.47]

This late entry in the fall season is one of the best. [25 Nov 2013, p.43]

The CW has established a reliable [network formula]: beautiful young things plus alienation plus supernatural powers plus slim-fit leather jackets. It works again in this new series. [11 Nov 2013, p.40]

If Faris is the little engine that could, Janney is the caboose along for the ride. [4 Nov 2013]

Williams's humming energy is charming (and more softly winsome than it used to be.) The challenge is to surround him with actors with enough skill to play off or with him. Gellar, as his daughter, doesn't quite pull it off. Hamish Linklater, as an art director, does. [4 Nov 2013]

[A] mesmerizingly eerie French series set in a mountain community. [4 Nov 2013]

Despite its cheap shock effects, the show is indulgently ridiculous. [[28 Oct 2013, p.41]

Burton and Taylor is a wry, bittersweet take on a celebrated Hollywood romance. [21 Oct 2013, p.48]

This is all good, capering, costume-ball fun, even if Mary's life was dismal. My chief complaint is that pretty Adelaide Kane, as Mary, lacks any spirit or presence. [21 Oct 2013, p.50]

[A] pleasurable, cheeky new crime drama. [21 Oct 2013, p.47]

Everyone works so hard--including Arnett, even if he never lets you see him sweat--that this comes very close to succeeding. [21 Oct 2013, p.48]

Gregg has a deadpan ease that makes the engine purr. And his team is good-looking and stamped with just enough personality and humor: Without killing the fun, they ground the show. [14 Oct 2013, p.43]

Gina Gershon's performance as designer Donatella Versace is fabulously strange. [7 Oct 2013, p.49]

The first two episodes of season 3 are reassuringly grounded in believable intrigue. [7 Oct 2013, p.49]

This is adult entertainment in the very best possible sense. [7 Oct 2013, p.47]

Trophy Wife is no prize--the pilot is swamped with exposition recited in the girlishly thin voice of star Malin Akerman--yet there's enough of a comedic brain and cast at work here that some additional polishing might do the trick. [30 Sep 2013, p.49]

The opener sets this all up smoothly, and Collette, combining a mother's protective instinct with type A pride, is great to watch. [23 Sep 2013]

Arguably you shouldn't miss any of The Hollow Crown. But the one you're commanded to watch is Richard II. [23 Sep 2013]

Even if his acting feels like a sentimental stunt, Gervais wrote and directed the series with gentle skill. [16 Sep 2013, p.41]

A lot of momentum is lost having the lovers live 60 miles apart.... But the tender wrap-up will leave the waterworks flushed and refreshed. [9 Sep 2013, p.42]

Watching Nucky's frenemies thrive like poison toadstools ringing a tree--that's a grim, gripping spectacle in its own right. [9 Sep 2013, p.42]

Sunny is Punch and Judy for our time: invigoratingly primal entertainment.[9 Sep 2013, p.41]

[A] sure-footed legal drama. [2 Sep 2013]

At this point the show may lack in si-prises, but like one of Miss Kay's lovingly prepared brisket dinners, there's pleasing comfort in its familiarity. [26 Aug 2013, p.37]

A revenge farce that takes such perplexingly arbitrary turns that it finally sits down like a confused Labrador and refuses to budge. [12 Aug 2013]

Cove is exactly What it aspires to be--uncynical, lulling and sweet. [12 Aug 2013]

Queen delivers the basic goods (intrigue, sex) , but the only vivid character is Margaret Beaufort, mom of the future Henry VII. She's played by Amanda Hale with startling neuritic fervor. [12 Aug 2013]