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.

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

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

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

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]

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]

Too bad the show can't resist taking itself seriously as a "social experiment."

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

Sedgwick embraces the character's quirks, including a weakness for sugary snacks, while conveying her keen intelligence.

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]

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.

The show isn't all that different from Bravo's recent Real Housewives of Orange County, although the production values are much higher--everything has an expensive, carefully lit feminine gloss that perfectly matches the homemakers. [19 Jun 2006, p.37]

It feels so close to actual American life that it lacks the gut excitement that would take it over the line into true entertainment. [9 Oct 2006, p.41]

The show is likable, in a channel-surfing way: So-So Rosie. [31 Oct 2011, p.36]

This is less interesting than I'd hoped. [8 Jul 2013, p.36]

James Spader, as the cryptic new CEO, is better. Everything he says sounds like a parable intended for stupid children. That's how to manage Dunder Mifflin. [15 Nov 2011, p.43]

[Viewers] may get a kick out of the mix of adrenaline and murk. [26 Jun 2006, p.41]

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

Got to kick it up a notch, Chuck. [18 Jan 2010, p.41]

Cold Case should be money in the bank for CBS. But the... premiere suffers from a predictable murder plo... and an overly arty climactic sequence that belongs in a music video, not a police drama.

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

If you prize originality, this new series will underwhelm you. ... What's surprising is the goodly number of laughs it does offer.

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

This new four-hour version... trims back the pageantry and tries for a degree of modern psychological realism. [17 Apr 2006, p.43]

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

Now in its seventh season, ABC's classic prime-time soap opera remains slickly watchable, but the momentum is seeping out. [29 Nov 2010, p.44]

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]

It's an appropriate time to ask how the first spinoff is doing. The answer is quite well—if you're a David Caruso fan.

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]

The L Word is hot, to be sure.

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.

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

Lohan attacks the part with a relentless, huffing-and-puffing determination that rivets attention.... While Bowler is a flawless Burton, Lohan's single-minded fierceness obliterates him. [3 Dec 2012, p.43]

Now in season 7, the onetime groundbreaker has become merely sweet and amiable. It crumbles like a soft-baked cookie. [6 Nov 2010, p.49]

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

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]

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]

It's an affable show, but at an hour long, it starts to feel like a slow dance that won't end. [12 Nov 2012, p.46]

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

Without Bentley;s cruel cunning, the rest of the show has played out predictably. [1 Aug 2011, p.39]

The opening gag of this new series is not just contrived but also uncomfortable.... But the show improves from there. [17 Sep 2012, p.40]

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

I wish the show had a little more verisimilitude--the peasants' homes look cheap, not poor--but it's zippy mindless fun. [5 Mar 2007, p.37]

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

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

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]

Honey Boo Boo is just a little girl doing [her] best to be a beauty queen, TV star and dutiful daughter to the surprisingly levelheaded June. [22 Jul 2013]

Jake & Vienna's sense of self-importance in this crowd is ludicrous yet also fascinating. They make Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt look earnest. [15 Aug 2011, p.34]

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

This series is usually more entertaining than most of the genre, so I was disappointed to note that the fifth-season contestants include Alison, the runner-up on another CBS reality show, last summer's Big Brother 4.

The show delivered more pure entertainment in the auditions than it has since the finalists became housemates and started the usual reality-show backbiting.

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

Bottom Line: Good beat, weak drama.

[A] half-decent start.

The drama is clumsy and over-baked and the plotting implausible. ... Still, an energetic cast and the musical setting combine to make this silly show watchable.

The problem with this new series is not the star's performance but the writers' unwillingness to take the character far enough.

This is an old scow of a series, hefty and handsome but listing toward tedium.

It's still an unabashed throwback—what folks used to call a shoot-'em-up.

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

There are some laughs here... but too often even the eccentricity seems formulaic.

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.

Attractive as well as articulate, all these high schoolers qualify for some sort of advanced placement. They're easy to watch, just a little hard to believe.

Nothing too original is happening here.

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.

Williams is likable even when his character isn't rational.

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.

In the solemn pilot the youngsters were all incredibly mature, incredibly patient, incredibly understanding and incredibly dull. But the characters seem to be growing more selfish, randy and funky.

Mantis's costume is cool, but the plots and action scenes are lukewarm at best.

Nothing in the opener is especially fresh or intriguing except the relationship between Ryan and Seth.

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]

An uninvolving melodrama with a large undifferentiated cast.

Contrived? And then some. But it's shot with the kind of So-Flo art deco shine we haven't seen since Miami Vice.

Mount needs to run this thing, and he can't if he's the caboose. [27 Aug 2012, p.44]

The show... is partly improvised, a stunt used to richer effect on ABC's upcoming Sons & Daughters. [6 Mar 2006, p.41]

It's a good cast, and Arquette's peculiar charm is always welcome. But I'm tired of comedies about the desperate infantilism of panicked adults. [8 Jan 2007, p.35]

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]

The show borrows from Northern Exposure, Twin Peaks, maybe the corporate drama Profit--too many to gauge how it'll develop. [24 Jul 2006, p.33]

New executive producer Arnold Shapiro has made Big Brother 2 less tedious than last summer's ... But the show still has too many blah periods in which the players simply sit around and scheme.

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

It's an MRI that's lost its mapping capabilities. [30 Apr 2012, p.36]

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

Bell is an attractive lead, but the show... starts out by taking itself too seriously and working too hard to establish an atmosphere of teen angst mixed with noir mystery. It wouldn't hurt if the student-sleuth lightened up.

With no reward besides fleeting fame, what rational person would want to go through domestic upheaval merely for viewers' amusement?

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

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.

What it lacks is wit, depending instead on Lawrence to do shtick. He overacts terribly, hammily mugging for the camera.

Too bad none of the five participants have much spark, and nothing unique seems to happen to anybody.

For this series to work, the main character—and the star's acting skills—must show signs of growth.

This would just be another substandard sitcom, if not for its alarmingly sexist bent.

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

The gutted-out city is perhaps the show's most compelling character. [26 Aug 2013, p.38]

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

It's a gauge of how much reality programming has changed TV that I kept thinking that Mark Burnett could come in, push some situational hot buttons and produce a better show. [12 Jun 2006, p.39]

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

Project Greenlight is a dream come true for a guy named Jones, but it looks like less of a thrill for the average viewer.

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

Hard to leg-warm up to.