You go on the lam, and you find Laguna Beach. [2 Oct 2006, p.45]

Despite the backstory, the humor is conventionally jolly. [30 Aug 2010, p.38]

Crass Peter's couch-potato tendencies give MacFarlane the pretext for one quick TV spoof after another, and some of them are hilarious. I find these satirical flights far funnier than the frustrated schemes of Stewie Griffin, a sinister baby bent on world domination.

Though Krumholtz captures Charlie's combination of genius and immaturity, Morrow's straight-arrow role sorely needs a few dabs of color.

In the first few episodes, nothing's happening. No pulse. Doctor, what's wrong? [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

The show is light, viewer-friendly entertainment, but without the conceptual novelty that gives USA dramas their oomph. [20 Jun 2011, p.48]

It feels less like Freud's fun house than an opportunity for one performer after another to launch into frenzied, vituperative speeches. [24 Apr 2006, p.39]

Harsh Realm looks to be capably acted and artfully creepy, but I'm not sure I care to get involved in another dark, paranoid drama from Chris Carter.

It's not a fascinating process. As host and co-judge, Jewel is so glamorously reserved, she's faintly sinister. [6 Jun 2011, p.46]

Neither [Underwood nor Moyer were] helped by the fact that the production stuck to the original Broadway show, which premiered more than half a century ago. It was full of business that might be delightful or even exciting on a stage--nuns gliding about while singing their alleluias, characters racing up and down grand, sweeping staircases--but on a wide-screen television it tended to look like just that, lots and lots of stage business.

The show needs work-—why all the breast jokes?-—but [Lithgow and Curtin] don't.

It's a promising setup, but Deception doesn't allow us the dirty pleasure of enjoying the awful Bowers. [14 Jan 2013, p.56]

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 makeover series isn't breaking any new ground: A wallflower, repotted and pruned, blooms overnight into an assured woman willing to tackle her dream date. The real asset here is its charming British host, style adviser Louise Roe.

None of these results will rock a viewer's world, but it's unexpectedly satisfying to see stars in a reality project that's more relatable than ballroom dancing or a temporary work detail for Donald Trump.

Parker is appealing as always, but watching the show is an empty diversion—like scanning a gossip column about people who don't exist.

It's an enjoyable enough whodunit. The problem is McCormack. [23 Jul 2012, p.38]

Path sometimes feels like 24 downsized into The Office. [18 Sep 2006, p.39]

A solid, well-done series. [19 Jan 2012, p.42]

Now, ma'am, no need to bolt like a horse-unless you're scared of cliches. You aren't, are you?

It is nice but overly familiar in its reliance on pop-culture signposts and snuggly sentimentality. [30 Sep 2013, p.53]

This is Amazing Race of the damned, with something of the open-ended, Pandora's-box mystery of Lost, and it has the potential for out-there adventure. [23 Apr 2007, p.37]

Rivers scarcely pretends any of the setups are real--it's just more material for her. [7 Feb 2011, p.41]

Scott's performance is totally believable, but that doesn't mean you want to ride shotgun with him in such a tired vehicle. [19 Jun 2006, p.37]

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]

Savage's sarcastic bon mots sound distinctly more like the words of a grown-up gag writer than they do the spontaneous utterings of a preadolescent. Even though they've dumbed him up since the Borscht Belt pilot, his character is still overwritten.

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

Not too original, but the cast makes this King more than a commoner.

It's like watching a manor house sink beneath the waves with loud, hissing pomp. [16 Apr 2012, p.50]

The end product should be called Hellkittens--not bad, but its tiny claws neither grip nor rip. [13 Sep 2010, p.47]

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]

This is a formulaic but fairly competent series with delusions of grandeur.

They should have spent less of that budget on computer graphics, scale models and sets—and more on the writing. This is drab melodrama.

The case seems more like a good crusade for Nancy Grace than the starting point for a series. [28 Aug 2006, p.35]

The stunts are a confusing mix of bullets and blowups: Apocalypse Now on the scale of Wipeout. [3 Sep 2012, p.40]

No zest, no fun. [26 Mar 2007, p.37]

They're just bland. [2 Apr 2012, p.44]

This FOX version of a family sitcom isn't as irreverent or formula-free as it thinks--ABC's "The Middle" is actually edgier--but it scores points for never resorting to mere cuteness and for throwing in a bizarre sight gag about frozen squirrels.

The narrative seems unduly baggy and stretched out, nothing so sharply defined as a triangle. More like a rhomboid. [12 Dec 2005, p.39]

What we have is a light, fast show about friends and couples who hang together, banter together and drink together. [8 Nov 2010, p.40]

This new hour-long comedy is a bustling, rather scattered affair. [15 Jul 2013]

The show wants to mix in big themes (politics, money) with a family soap opera, but it just feels bloated and vague. [25 Sep 2006, p.43]

It's pleasant enough--and thankfully it's not zany. The problem is that Danson's crisis is believable midlife comedy, while the patients' neuroses are closer to stock. [9 Oct 2006, p.41]

The camera work is shaky, the music is gritty, and the endings aren't always happy. But the fact that you can almost smell the B.O. on some of the people piling into that truck makes it a raw, more real alternative to the usual sugary sweet. [21 Nov 2005, p.43]

The show makes little effort to create a sense of the potent clash--or erotic attraction--between cultures. [24 Feb 2014, p.38]

These people are all more ordinary and much less fabulously neurotic than you might have hoped. [11 Mar 2013, p.48]

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]

The tone of the first three episodes is grubby yet also precious. [11 Jun 2007, p.41]

The hot-potato miniseries dares to be unflattering. [11 Apr 2011, p.45]

The series makes a weak slab at the Hill Street Blues mix of humor and pathos. But Chiklis is a marvel of believability, vividly creating a character who is disarming, droll, clever and compassionate.

The show could be compelling, especially if the cast pulls off two decades' worth of aging. [12 Sep 2005, p.46]

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]

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.

Well, a mil doesn't go far these days, and neither does this series. [4 Sep 2006, p.41]

The show's main problem is that the guys, straddling the line between undateable-cute and undateable-unlikeable, more frequently fall into the latter camp. [2 Jun 2014, p.46]

FX's spy parody Archer is funnier, and AMC's short-lived Rubicon was a more sharply realized fantasy of work life in a shadow bureaucracy. This is a botched mission. [4 Apr 2011, p.50]

This enjoyable series from the Grey's Anatomy team is sort of Doctors Without Borders--who are also without too many clothes. [24 Jan 2011, p.41]

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.

There are rivalries and feuds and dangerous situations, as well as a complete lack of personality. [29 Oct 2012, p.38]

The Most natural thing here is Palin's effortless command of the camera. In That Regard, the show is fascinating. [22 Nov 2010, p.38]

The Exes is New Girl fallen off the back of a truck. [19 Dec 2011, p.44]

The supernatural drama lacks in dramatic tension and suffers without the self-aware humor that made the similarly themed American Horror Story: Coven work so well. [28 Apr 2014]

The Real World is an insult to anyone who lives in the real world.

The two-hour premiere is sort of fun, but the plot is nutty even by sci-fi standards.

It's a well-made hour of generic moments. [15 Apr 2013, p.44]

I just wish he'd [Will Arnett] run away from this dead horse of a sitcom. [11 Oct 2010, p.38]

This is competent reality fare, but coming after the besotted Ali and Roberto, it's like tying cans of nitroglycerin to a honeymooner's car. [23 Aug 2010, p.35]

By and large, they all seem to know exactly how to play to the camera and signal they're in on this nonsense. That gives Princesses a thin but distinct edge. [10 Jun 2013, p.48]

This doesn't have as distinctive a style as The WB's Supernatural--that's more like a jeans ad for the undead--but Kolchak three decades on still knows how to move. [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

It's only fun, though, when the would-be mates turn on each other and the bat guano flies: Romancing the Stone morph into The War of the roses. [25 Jul 2011, p.40]

The show is cleverer than you'd expect. [20 Aug 2012, p.41]

Only Visnjic, immaculately groomed and vaguely continental, seems to understand that this over-the-top story requires not only a constant flame to boil the plot but a flirtatious sense of fun. [11 Mar 2013, p.45]

[It] looks like Sex and the City relocated to Northern Exposure. [18 Sep 2006, p.39]

Mostly it feels like an instructional film about disaster preparedness. [2 Oct 2006, p.45]

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

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.

Kathy Bates' surly gravity can't prevail over the silliness of this new series. [24 Jan 2010, p.43]

Brosnan remains totally believable whether he's borderline batty or bravely resilient. [19 Dec 2011, p.44]

This is advertising with a side of bruthah (and muthah)-ly love. [10 Feb 2014, p.50]

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]

Chalke and company are all expert comic actors, but the pilot is leapingly frantic, a puppy wanting love. [8 Apr 2013, p.45]

Saddled with stars who neither clash nor click, breaking In appears to be broken. [19 Mar 2012, p.46]

It's like a David Mamet parody of Roseanne. [19 Jun 2006, p.37]

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

Makes a nice first impression but quickly wears out its welcome.

King’s characters inspire indifference—except for the ones who are actively annoying—so you’re unlikely to care that some of the ghostbusters wind up dead. The author has a cheeky cameo in part 2 as a pizza delivery man, but instead of wasting his time acting he should have thought up a satisfying ending. After six hours of Rose Red, it’s truly scary to contemplate that the story may not be over. Bottom Line: Bring on the wrecking ball.

There are enough positive signs in the two-hour premiere that I'll probably take a look ... when the series moves to its regular time period.

Can you say "ill-conceived"?

Thandie Newton is intimidatingly fierce.... The problem is everyone else. [8 Apr 2013, p.45]

Ragsdale has vigor, and the office scenes, featuring Jason Bernard, Yeardley Smith, Jane Sibbett and Hank Azaria, work moderately well without the intrusion of the barbershop quartet in his cerebellum. That gimmick, however, makes the show unbearably contrived.

It's like watching someone try to flirt while stuck in a revolving door. But Gummer has a whirring charm that never settles for mere adorkability. [22 Oct 2012m p.42]

It's Jersey Shore toned up as an Abercrombie & Fitch campaign. [12 Aug 2013]

It's awkward, sweet, sincere--and sometimes yawningly dull. [6 Aug 2012, p.37]

Welcome to the family is nicely cast.... [But it] needs to punch up the writing. [28 Oct 2013, p.47]

Though [Ramsay's] bleep-filled rants are supposed to bring out the best in his staff, they seem like blatant workplace harassment. When he turns his ire on the customers, it's even harder to stomach.

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

It's still not funny. [23 Jan 2012, p.42]

Murray is more interesting here than in last season's laughable The Lone Ranger, but the writing... is junior-varsity stuff.