Bad has taken the complexity of modern television storytelling to new levels. [23 Jul 2012, p.37]

Gritty and engrossing as ever.

Critics justly extolled The Sopranos for its brilliant blend of compelling drama and mordant humor, and the first three episodes of 2000 contain no signs of slippage.

As Larry, Shandling raises banality into an art form; he is consistently hilarious whether blissfully watching his own videos or reacting to a bad review.

The Sopranos is better than ever.

The show hasn't lost its clever agility at building pressure-cooker suspense and then lobbing in a surprise. [8 Oct 2012, p.55]

The Show has evolved into a modern underworld Western--there's nothing else like it. [18 Jul 2011, p.41]

The show is an absolute original. [28 Jan 2013, p.44]

The show moves methodically from one story line to another, progressing by inches yet holding our interest with its finely drawn characters and a rare ability to illuminate the gray areas of city life.

The best ensemble cop drama since Hill Street Blues.

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]

These are almost closer to short stories than sitcom episodes--and yes, they're fantastic. [23 Jul 2012, p.38]

In its second season this gritty frontier drama still boasts the most colorfully eccentric ensemble of any show on TV. But Al Swearengen, the malignly glowering saloon boss, played to the hilt by Golden Globe winner Ian McShane, is first among equals.

Larry David's sitcom remains an awe-inspiring (and hilarious) exercise in comedic extremes of chaos and control.

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,]

Season 4 launches with an episode focused on TV's most mysterious ad executive-and since Jon Hamm's watchful yet charismatic performance makes the show tick, that's excellent.

Scratch the gritty surface of this new police drama and you'll find it's not a totally revolutionary contribution to the genre.

[A] taut, ingenious spy series. [10 Oct 2011, p.44]

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

I'm beseeching you to watch the pilot of this new series. It's not just extraordinary TV--it's the best piece of filmmaking I've seen anywhere this year. ... In subsequent weeks the series settles into a more predictable and sentimental mold, reminiscent of The Wonder Years, but it is still superior TV.

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

It's beautifully constructed, cleverly fitted with red herrings and capacious enough to house a community of suspects. The emotional payoff is sensational, and so is the acting. [12 Aug 2013]

It's mesmerizing. [26 Mar 2012, p.44]

In season 2 of PBS's richly clever Sherlock, the Victorian tales have been refitted to our century. [14 May 2012, p.44]

Shandling's laid-back comic style dovetails with the dry writing, creating a series that's the clear victor in the talk show wars.

There's event television, and there's Game of Thrones. [8 Apr 2013, p.41]

What gives the show its kick is the gleefully childish lack of repentance shown by most of these rascals--countered by Olyphant's coolly amused control. [4 Feb 2013, .39]

Now that's daring television.

The show is a trampoline that sags clear down to the ground, the better to catapult you off into the air. [18 Jul 2011, p.35]

Can. Not. Wait. [9 Apr 2012, p.39]

The first three episodes are full of impressively strong criminals. [23 Jan 2012, p.40]

If you pay attention, the writing and direction reward the effort.

Thanks to the nimble Leary, ever riveting as TV's most nuanced antihero (sorry, Tony Soprano), Tommy's tenuous struggle for sobriety is even more rewarding than last season's harrowing downfall.

A well-crafted, surprisingly intelligent update of ABC's late-'70s Star Wars clone.

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

It's the season's best new series, period.

The show still tends to go suddenly flat--it's hard to tell whether the party is supposed to be dead or it's just incompetently staged--but Hamm is always superb as Don. [2 Apr 2012, p.37]

The show is infernally good. [17 Mar 2014]

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

The show is gorgeously produced and spectacularly violent but its success depends chiefly on Buscemi....A brilliant, brutally funny performance. [20 Sep 2010, p.51]

The episodes have grown slower and schmaltzier since the gripping pilot, but this series is still as sweet as an egg cream made with Fox's U-Bet Chocolate Syrup.

The relationship of saint to sinner has seldom been so moving. [26 Feb 2007, p.39]

It has intelligence and feeling and brutality. The Sopranos hits all the notes.

The makers of 24 needn't overuse the split-screen technique to emphasize the onrush of events. Viewers can feel the suspense start to build without seeing the seconds tick off on a digital clock. Give the gimmicks a rest. We're hooked without them.

The young actors are natural and convincing, and the high school characters manage to be funny without too much Dawson's Creek glibness.

Hilariously peculiar.

In its second season, the spy parody remains my favorite animated series, thanks to its retro visual design--this is a cartoon for the age of Mad Men--and the vicious, dead-aim put-downs that make up most of the dialogue. [14 Mar 2011, p.42]

Andy's humiliations as a minor celebrity aren't quite as funny as was his earlier shame at being a nobody, but as a satire of showbiz vanity, Extras can still be described as (what else?) stellar. [29 Jan 2007, p.43]

Co-created by David Simon and Eric Over­myer, the team behind The Wire, this is a lovingly textured, slowly unfolding series set in post-Katrina New Orleans. [26 Apr 2010, p.40]

You'll laugh so often that you may not notice the blessed absence of a laugh track.

Matthew Weiner has advanced the show far enough into the '60s that its fundamental philosophical question begins to generate its own oppressive suspense. [15 Apr 2013]

This haunting New Zealand miniseries boasts a strong, tense performance from Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss as a detective, but it's very much the work of director Jane Campion. [25 Mar 2013, p.44]

Russell has an unassuming sort of star quality that draws us to her character, and the writing in the pilot is sensitive without being soapy.

[An] amiable send-up of small-town life.

It's a raw, ironic, occasionally touching comedy of post-millennial manners. [23 Apr 2012, p.37]

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

For the most part, the miniseries honors the soldiers' bravery without hiding their fears or failings.

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

Awesomely clever, it's the Inception of sitcoms. In season 2 the show has preserved its core concept of friendships in a community-college study group while piling on daringly odd jobs. [6 Dec 2010, p.49]

They're delightful. [26 Nov 2012, p.48]

It's the jungle version of Saving Private Ryan's opening battle, over and over across 10 hours. Why, then, is this so excitingly powerful instead of just numbing? Because the stakes are huge: The historical momentum pulls you in and drags you along.

Prohibition is a merry, bullet-sprayed study of the era's rampant criminality. [10 Oct 2011, p.40]

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]

This remains far and away the best prime-time sitcom: crisp and farcical, but very kind. [25 Oct 2010, p.37]

This eighth season finds him spending time in New York City, and the trip rejuvenates him. [18 Jul 2011, p.35]

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

[A] cool yet intensely emotional British crime series. [24 Jun 2013, p.40]

Grabs you so forcefully that you won't shake free even when the drama strains credulity.

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.

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

It's very entertaining in its low-key, waist-widening ways. [20 Dec 2010, p.44]

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

This new college comedy isn't quite in the same class [as Freaks and Geeks], but it captures the atmosphere of the dormitory as minimum-security madhouse.

The jokes take of on all sorts of unexpected trajectories--foul balls that score. [12 Mar 2012, p.45]

Discovery's Africa is yet another marvel of high-definition photography. [14 Jan 2013, p.56]

Nashville is the best new show of the fall. [29 Oct 2012, p.37]

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]

Luckily the characters are so fully formed, and so fully inhabited by the cast, that the whole mess staggers up out of the trenches and keeps going. [9 Jan 2012, p.39]

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]

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]

In more ways than one, ER's new competitor is tough to watch. But the effort looks to be worth it.

As lead detective, Mireille Enos is terrific and makes up for the sense that we're revisiting terrain already covered--and reduced to parody--by Twin Peaks. [11 Apr 2011, p.46]

An instant classic.

It takes awhile to adjust to the dissonance, but the muted naturalism of the superb cast draws us in. [9 May 2011, p.40]

We're betting that with experience, this inconsistent show can find a way to win.

Girls can still be Girls. [21 Jan 2013]

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]

It's a good show, powerfully acted--especially by Katy Segal as tough mama Gemma--and true to its convictions. [20 Sep 2010, p.52]

Strikingly shot, wonderfully cast, this tough, taut, atmospheric show is the season's best new series.

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

Falco's performance never loses a weary, trudging toughness and, at the core two hard kernels of anger and sorrow. [16 Apr 2012, p.50]

If the Granthams are low on dough, emotionally they're richer than ever. [14 Jan 2013, p.51]

Parks, in a sense, is Li'l Sebastian: shaggy, small-boned, charming and lovably stupid. [31 Jan 2011, p.39]

24 strains credulity here and there... and some of the season premiere's doomsday dialogue smacks of parody. But the real-time format builds tension week-to-week as well as scene-to-scene, and Sutherland keeps adding depth to his portrayal of a man staggering slightly with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

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

Therapist Paul Weston a human-shaped cloud who grumbles with the low thunder of the maladjusted, has drifted back for a gripping new season of HBO's In Treatment. Gabriel Byrne plays the part flawlessly, and he's up against two especially rewarding talents. [1 Nov 2010, p.42]

Director Steven Soderbergh's Candelabra is one of the smartest, tartest examples I've ever seen of that soupy genre, the Hollywood biopic. [27 May 2013, p.39]

The heartbreak here--especially the cases of poor children who died of "dust pneumonia"--is tremendous. [26 Nov 2012, p.45