Piers Morgan's first nights filling Larry King's suspenders weren't great....He's better--thorough, thoughtful--with serious figures like Rudolph Giuliani. [14 Feb 2010, p.40]

Louis-Dreyfus is going for breathless charm here, but this vehicle's in too much of a rush.

Wonderland grabs elements from the Lewis Carroll classic, throwing them down a rabbit hole and lets them land willy-nilly. [28 Oct 2013, p.42]

At a full, commercial-free hour, this can all start to drag a bit. But L.A. is strongly evoked as a casually sensual backdrop and-thank you!-that awful L Word theme music is gone.

The pyrotechnics involved in the opening heist are good, and the cast is a dream. [25 Sep 2006, p.43]

The production is gorgeous and the tedium unrelenting. [8 Apr 2013, p.42]

If Caan grabs more screen time and the writers build on the hints of sexual chemistry between Danny and Nessa, I might place a small bet on this superslick series-provided Danny learns the virtue of occasional silence.

[A] fascinating reality hit. [28 Mar 2011, p.57]

I want to root for a reality series that uplifts, but for this one to work, it either needs to be more fun or more real. [15 Feb 2010, p.43]

This Victorian-era prequel to Peter Pan works. [12 Dec 2011, p.48]

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 Class doesn't necessarily generate more laughs than other sitcoms, but it has more charm--like a kinder, gentler How I Met Your Mother--and that's incentive enough to stick with it. [16 Oct 2006, p.39]

Unlike Monk, a gently comic character coping with mental illness, Roday's just an overgrown kid. [10 Jul 2006, p.39]

For a scary movie, this is incredibly banal. In fact, the events surrounding fateful Flight 29 are a crashing bore.

The show is gentle, winning and sympathetic. [7 May 2012, p.48]

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

There isn't much of a story, though. The best thing is the terrific song in the opening credits: Aloe Blacc's "I Need a Dollar." It has the sort of itchy desperation that should have driven the whole show.

Sorry, this one doesn't cick. [9 Aug 2010, p.35]

The series' grim tone and overall look of a grimy world in perpetual need of dusting or wiping is a long way from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and closer to Japanese movies like The Grudge. [12 Sep 2005, p.45]

Gellar commands every scene. Hers is a true, potent star turn. [12 Sep 2011, p.43]

I kept wishing for a rose ceremony to perk things up. [8 May 2006, p.39]

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]

Though Allison is potentially worth watching as both a medium and a mother of three, someone needs to conjure up a stronger supporting cast if this show is to hold our interest.

An attractive, multi-accented cast and far-flung locales make it worth the trip. [1 Jul 2013, p.36]

It wouldn't hurt to pick up the pace, but Graceland is a successful move toward true grittiness. [3 Jun 2013, p.43]

A droll Petersen and dependable Marg Helgenberger head the competent cast, and the opener is offbeat enough to stimulate curiosity. But please don't overdo the camera tricks.

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

Visually, it makes for odd television. Odder still is that the coaches compete too....The good news? The caliber of voices is high--better than American Idol. [16 May 2011, p.43]

As Merlin, Joseph Fiennes is more like a trainer-dietitian than mentor, but he's lively. Eva Green, as Morgan, is coldly beautiful and magnificent in Camelot couture. She's enchanting. But I don't see Jamie Campbell Bower's Arthur having the resolve of a king. [28 Mar 2011, p.54]

It's fun sport. [30 Jan 2012, p.44]

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]

Diaries is lukewarm and earnest. [21 Jan 2013]

The Comeback is funny, especially when it skewers the tasteless and false in reality TV.

True Blood is neglecting the potent subtext of vampire myth--forbidden sex and romance--in favor of political allegory. [24 Jun 2013, p.39]

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.

The premise might make sense if Stults had a Rain Man intensity. Instead he's laid back and scruffy. [6 Feb 2012, p.40]

In its zeal to avoid Johnny Depp-style silliness, any sense of pirate fun is lost at sea. [3 Feb 2014, p.44]

At least Endings has something fresh at it's core....Even better, the well-cast ensemble includes Casey Wilson. [25 Apr 2011, p.44]

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]

Her mind has repressed the clues [to her sister's murder]. Clever paradox, but as a result the show is an unsatisfying mix of razor-sharp thinking and befogged gloom. [10 Oct 2011, p.44]

With sharp camera work, pulsating music and no tedious, gimme-an-Emmy closeups, it's like CSI at warp speed. [4 Sep 2006, p.41]

It's a well-done, somewhat sleepy ensemble drama about newbies on patrol. [7 May 2012, p.46]

This air of finality throws the many small, fine details of Parker's performance, the main reason for the show's existence, into sharp relief. [13 Aug 2012, p.42]

The problem with all this sensitivitiy is that the show has a tougher time delivering on the whimsy. [3 May 2010, p.42]

The premiere feels sort of like "The Closer" but doesn't clinch the deal. I'm just not sure what to make of Jason Lee without his Jason Lee-ishness. But there's a crackle of eccentric touches, including an abundance of Elvis impersonators and the charmingly off-kilter Celia Weston as his mother.

It's a hallucinatory riff on an old noir tradition (is Raines being played for a sap by his own daydreams?), but the gimmick doesn't click. [19 Mar 2007, p.39]

The group dynamics are worth observing for a while, but when the women go into catfight mode, the show slides into reality-TV routine.

A gauzy, pretty documentary. [18 Feb 2013, p.43]

Intelligence is nicely done. [20 Jan 2014]

The show works on its own undemanding terms. [6 Jun 2011, p.45]

This bifurcated character--Mother of the Year meets Jack Bauer--isn't always believable, but Judd welds the two Beccas together through sheer willpower. [19 Mar 2012, p.41]

Daniels is great, biting clean through clotted dialogue that's twinkly yet sanctimonious. [2 Jul 2012, p.40]

It's just suspenseful and clever enough to keep you happily intrigued. [3 Sep 2012, p.39]

The show doesn't need to be so crowded. [5 Dec 2011, p.46]

Even this adventuresome idiosyncratic actor [Malkovich] doesn't seem to be having much fun. [2 Jun 2014, p.46]

With the second episode, though, the whole tone improves: Delany's performance seems to have caught some of the coppery warmth of her hair, and we spend more time with a good ensemble. [4 Apr 2011, p.49]

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]

The acting is flat, but the show casts a hokey spell. [19 Sep 2011, p.65]

The story is promising. [9 Apr 2012, p.42]

Whether the show can figure out what to do with Madsen's semi-reformed brood is the challenge. Right now the show feels less like FX's recent, underrated The Riches than Brothers & Sisters set among the criminal element.

Season 6 staggers from incident to incident as Nancy and family run from their enemies--and the authorities. [13 Sep 2010, p.50]

Not a bad concept, but the casting is out of whack. [21 Mar 2011, p.46]

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

It doesn't help the show to have such a wooden presence al the helm. As Commander Sinclair, lead actor Michael O'Hare is like Lorne Greene under hypnosis. In fact, this colorful but cheesy satellite opera aspires to nothing greater than being a '90s Battiestar Galactica.

It has none of Desperate Housewives' winking cuteness, none of Revenge's dagger-eyed, fire-breathing kick. [12 Mar 2012, p.43]

[Skip's] part is virtually unplayable, especially since Bill Pullman and Jenna Elfman, as the first couple, give restrained, relatively natural performances, and Skip's siblings are written more along the lines of Modern Family. [14 Jan 2013, p.52]

As with all reality shows, the pleasure for viewers is the cruel one of rubbernecking a disaster.

Most of Mornings is stock melodrama, and apart from Molina, not all that well acted. [18 Feb 2013, p.43]

This go-round, a tired-looking Bobby Brown struggles to act like he's there for anything other than the paycheck, and Britney Spears' ex Kevin Federline (who appears alongside his ex Shar Jackson) comes off like a man defeated. Bummer, dude.

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.

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]

Season 2 of MTV's instant trash classic moves the Situation, Snooki and Co. down to Miami Beach for a little change of scenery and no apparent change in attitude. Actually, the scenery hasn't really changed, either.

The show offers genuine scares, but lines like "I already cried wolf once--you think they're gonna believe me?" cast a hokey spell. [31 Oct 2011, p.35]

In the end, though, tinkering around the edges won't be enough to ensure The Guardian's future if Baker's performance remains a void at the center of the drama.

Every time he flaps into view in his baggy hoodedness, he looks like Batman in need of a tailor. [17 Jan 2011, p.40]

Thanks to the mesmerizing performance of Vincent D'Onofrio as New York City Det. Bobby Goren, this new series enhances the value of the brand.

Clive Owen teams with Nicole Kidman for a long, lopsided slog through the life of Ernest Hemingway and war journalist Martha Gellhorn. [4 Jun 2012, p.42]

This sitcom has the high-tech antics of Chuck and the misfit camaraderie of Community-not bad, but no breakthrough. [2 May 2011, p.38]

It's trite and obvious, and meant to be, with songs that are shallow, sunny and snappy.... Just Go with it. [22 Jul 2013, p.48]

It's an awful story, and it deserves a better production than this. [31 Oct 2005, p.39]

For now, Sunshine is a bit busy and unfocused. [28 Feb 2011, p.43]

It's just a plainer Ugly Betty. [9 Jan 2012, p.40]

The framework [couples counseling] is cute but irrelevant: You don't need an analyst piecing together the relationship when that's the audience's job. [14 May 2012, p.44]

Reubens is getting a bit old for this, but Pee-wee's innocence, infantilism and camp haven't dated--there's a rebel in the ridiculousness. [21 Mar 2011, p.46]

Popular makes valid points about the unfairness of social stratification. But with its gimmicky camera work (whoa, we're on fast-forward) and flights of surrealism (talking frog in bio lab), it tries too hard to be hip.

The show is sloppy, vulgar fun, even if it's hard to detect much likability under the layers of lacquer. [9 May 2011, p.43]

The show moves along with the dull, humming smoothness of commerce. [19 Mar 2012, p.42]

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

Fun enough, but the nastiness could be applied more heavily.

I found 1 vs. 100 much more enjoyable [than Deal Or No Deal]. [23 Oct 2006, p.37]

The sincerity of the enterprise is in inverse proportion to its fun. [13 May 2013, p.49]

Finnigan's performance dovetails perfectly with Close's neat if heavy- handed dramatic concept. [17 Oct 2005, p.39]

The show's a letdown, especially since it comes with one of the most lovingly assembled casts of any series. [9 Oct 2006, p.41]

The premise of this one is about as dumb as you can get.

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 lot of this material may be hackneyed, but Ritter puts it over with energy and a slathering of shtick. It's simple, really: Like him, like the show.

The arbitrary leap overseas moves the show that much closer to pure sitcom--an improvement. [22 Aug 2011, p.45]

This portrait of Prince William's courtship of Kate Middleton is better than April's plucky Lifetime movie. [29 Aug 2011, p.36]