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.

An odd but involving concept--Raging Birds. [14 Mar 2011, p.42]

Like other reality shows, this one has its irritants.

Their white collar cases aren't always riveting but as summer fares goes, hot guys and Manhattan backdrops are a reliably escapist combo. [25 Jun 2012, p.47]

Woods is every bit as entertaining as he strives to be. [25 Sep 2006, p.43]

[Forest Whitaker as Sam Cooper is] an arresting, oblique performance, and it works well amid all the procedural muck. [21 Feb 2011, p.42]

What really matters on Apprentice, though, are the celebs: This season's B- and (let's face it) C-listers are a good, volatile mix. [14 Mar 2011, p.42]

The personality dynamics are fun to watch even if the film turns out not to be.

A diverting, silly potboiler, a bold cartoon with none of the staffers' anxious beetle scuttling that gives NBC's venerable The West Wing a sense of verisimilitude. [3 Oct 2005, p.39]

[It] looks to be a season of solid suspense. [30 Jan 2006, p.37]

Just about perfect in its way--always fun, well-paced--and much, much better than UPN's failed models drama South Beach. [1 May 2006, p.39]

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

The show's saving grace is that as the weeks go by, the characters begin to grow on you. That has more to do with the actors' animation than it does with the rimshot writing.

The show is a lusty soap opera that aspires to the pulsating, cutting-edge glamour of Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth. It's a little ham-fisted for that. [2 Apr 2007, p.37]

This likable silly series has entertainment value. [8 Apr 2013, p.42]

These joined stories never forge into one strong plot, but there's always Duvall. [3 Jul 2006, p.35]

If you look past them, at their star projects and their own homes and offices, you can see that their tastes are impeccable and inarguable. [13 Jun 2011, p.46]

Joe Mantegna and Mary Steenburgen are fine as Joan's parents, but the series shouldn't go out of its way to play up the dad's role as small-city police chief. Keep the emphasis on God's plan, not man's law.

Collar's odd-couple tension tugs the show in entertaining directions. [13 Jun 2011, p.46]

Emily Deschanel is well cast as Brennan--she has the right sort of drained, remote presence, as if still working off last night's sleeping pill--and she's also well cast against David Boreanaz. [19 Sep 2005, p.45]

Promising ... Like [Out of Sight's Jennifer] Lopez, Gugino is a looker who can be tough, but she makes the character more open, more alive.

While the show's humor can be raunchy or even cruel, the voice work is pure unruffled deadpan. [18 Jan 2010, p.42]

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]

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]

The humor has a light, convivial burble. [26 Mar 2012, p.45]

The series that strains our nerves and our credulity returns with more hour-by-hour suspense, and amazingly it still works.

Katie Leclerc is instantly, sunnily appealing as Daphne....Vanessa Marano is fine as the other misplaced kid, except she's a sulker and sort of a drag. [13 Jun 2011, p.48]

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

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

Defenders at least has a sure grip on its tone. [8 Nov 2010, p.40]

Hilariously peculiar.

A smoothly executed vehicle for Rebecca Romijn and Jon Tenney, it knows exactly what it's doing, [16 Jun 2013]

[Steve Buscemi's] appearance is the occasion for exposition that's not as smooth as we'd expect from this extraordinary series. Yet the season premiere has moments so compelling that you'll be irresistibly drawn back into the family business.

Once you grow accustomed to the trash talk, however, the series draws you deeper and deeper into a little world where the law holds no sway and right is trodden in the mud.

Bloods isn't groundbreaking, but there are hints of a deeper scandal woven into the solid plot. Worth checking out. [25 Oct 2010, p.39]

The series has developed its own original rhythm, each week breaking cases down into unexpectedly punchy vignettes. The cast is excellent. [6 Dec 2010, p.50]

The acting is what keeps the show addictive--particularly good is Julia Stiles. [29 Nov 2010, p.44]

[The new women are] all promising, if too polite, to take on Ramona....Luckily, previews indicate they all end the season quaking and screaming. [11 Jun 2012, p. 44]

The show remains intelligently written and remarkably well acted, but there's a sense that it's marking time.

For all its "look what we can get away with" grandstanding and scalpel-sharp wit, Nip/Tuck succeeds best when it deftly pierces the heart.

The show is a quietly intriguing, informative study of assimilation, identity and community. [21 Nov 2011, p.40]

If the show's isn't terribly ambitious to break new ground, it's a nice lull. [11 Jun 2012, p.42]

Motive isn't ingenious enough to motivate imitations or spinoffs, but it's smooth and diverting. [27 May 2013, p.40]

The comedy never quite lifts into giddiness, but there are lots of solid, unexpected laughs. And isn't that cause for celebration? [26 Apr 2010, p.40]

Girl has a surprisingly casual sense of humor and Anna Silk is physically just right in the lead role. [13 Feb 2012, p.45]

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 second half builds steadily and surely toward a potential meet-and-greet with the apocalypse. [12 Dec 2005, p.39]

The show is a bit of a junk heap--Fringe, Mission:Impossible and Death Becomes Her are in the pile--but it's a real adventure. [11 Jul 2011, p.34]

Preachers' Daughters, focusing on three families headed by ministers, has its hearts in the tight place. [18 Mar 2013, p.42]

What keeps it from being exploitative--just--is the sense that these kids know such dangerous exhilaration won't, can't, lead to the happiness they're looking for. [31 Jan 2011, p.40]

Two tense, tricky, fine performances [22 Jul 2013]

The show works and it's fun. [12 Nov 2012, p.43]

O'Loughlin's an impressively taciturn, tense presence" You get the sense that McGarrett could go to a luau and still experience it as a hurt locker. As McGarrett's sidekick Danno, Scott Caan is the opposite: all quick, bantam energy. He steals scenes as coolly as surfers catch waves. [27 Sep 2010, p.53]

This is close to sitcom, but the show's skeleton is strong enough to bear it. [28 Nov 2011, p.62]

I look forward to The Payoff. [27 Sep 2010, p.54]

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

It gets an unexpected freshness from a young cast. [5 Mar 2007, p.37]

This is a carefully assembled, emotionally attuned drama about obese teens stuck in a summer weight-loss camp.

This could grow into a show of more than ordinary interest. [28 Nov 2011, p.57]

This is Dallas with out all the barbecue sauce, a soap about dynastic Texans that feels closer to Friday Night Lights in its understated leanness. [27 Sep 2010, p.54]

History's first scripted series is a headlong tumble into an irresistible and surprisingly neglected genre. [18 Mar 2013, p.41]

The show is still crazily entertaining. [11 Jun 2012, p.41]

If sparks (and ratings) weren't flying, what matters most id Delany's satisfyingly forthright portrayal of a woman who trusts her intellect and instinct. [18 Mar 2013, p.42]

[A] rattling good series. [10 Jul 2006, p.39]

This doesn't have the stiletto kick of the CW's Nikita, but it's frothy, sexy, relaxed--a brief, all-expense-paid vacation. [27 Sep 2010, p.55]

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

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

Of the large, nicely peppered cast, I especially like Vergara, who has some of the vamping yumminess of a Catherine Zeta-Jones. [8 Jan 2007, p.35]

Gilmore creator Amy Sherman-Palladino gives her actors a zip drive's worth of dialogue....Foster's got the mouth--and charm--to pull it off. [18 Jun 2012, p.43]

The talent of the cast, the overall quality of the writing and the genuine New York City atmosphere should compensate for an occasional lapse in judgment.

The show has a very sure grip on how these minor events, accompanied by small satisfactions, play out in a household of two middle-aged parents, two teenage kids and one inscrutable 9-year-old. [13 Dec 2010, p.46]

The jokes hop all over the place but the show, like Chloe, is refreshingly wild. [16 Apr 2012, p.49]

This provocatively, almost boisterously violent thriller bolts into action with a clever premise and sustains it with good, unexpected jolts. [28 Jan 2013, p.43]

I like how the show shifts from sitcom laughs to soap opera tremors. [21 Feb 2011, p.45]

Her own unhappy childhood haunts her, giving the mommy thread a weird poignancy. [7 Mar 2011, p.38]

The fun comes in watching the uncynical Adams learn to undercut everyone else's cunning. [27 Jun 2011, p.46]

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

Both shows [NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles] have an old-fashioned but relaxing simplicity, with an upbeat emphasis on the value of being a team. It's family entertainment. [21 Mar 2011, p.43]

That premise could make for a crisp and slick adventure hour; it did in the pilot. Already, though, Fahey's character is losing definition because of a string of unfocused scripts.

Allen is one of the fall's freshest finds. But all the best punch lines in the hilarious pilot came right out of his "Men Are Pigs" stand-up routine. With the writers out on their own, the humor seems to be thinning out.

If you automatically expect a new HBO series to be edgy or innovative, you'll be disappointed in this one. It's basically just a sitcom—but it has the advantage of being funny.

The banter is warm and fast and easy, and the sisters' personality types balance out well. [17 Oct 2005, p.39]

Though Tommy's conversations with Jimmy seem like a glib gimmick, Rescue Me redeems itself with rough firehouse humor and a realistic depiction of the emergencies faced by the crew.

The '70s Show has a jarringly '90s slacker sensibility. Still there are some very funny moments.

This is the most original new cartoon series I've seen since SpongeBob SquarePants arrived in 1999. If only it were as funny.

The melodrama of it all is tasty--a jumbo macaroon. [27 Aug 2012, p.43]

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.

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

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.

It's painful to criticize a show that has intelligence and depth, but there's no getting around the fact that overarching earnestness and a subtle but troubling air of fatalism combine to make this a dolorous hour.

The drama is sci-fi lite, rendered with gee-whiz energy and a sense of levity. And it's frivolous and under-imagined.

Each episode tries to shoehorn in bold a history and an ethics lesson with the period dress and picturesque ports of call. The result, though visually rich, is like a fuddy-duddy theme-park ride.

The show runs on the same alternating current of pathos and comedy as L.A. Law, but the drama is more ponderous and the humor a good deal more forced.

Subtlety is not a hallmark of the writing, nor of Christopher Rich's performance as Reba's faithless spouse.

This program is a little more loopy and labored than Bloodworth-Thomason's other shows and has to forage around longer to uncover its punch lines. But the leads are very adept at playing up what humor there is.

The first two outings are uneven, but watch for a hilarious future episode in which Arthur meets a support group for disgruntled superhero sidekicks.

When the focus is on the trio's fractious home life, the show is lively enough to overcome its formulaic nature. But Curry also plays a substitute teacher, which means he's often surrounded by precocious little smart alecks.

Alternating—or rather, wavering—between frightening and funny, the show has yet to establish a clear identity beyond its-status as a post-teenage teammate of The WB's popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer.