Scandal is about as realistic as Mamie Eisenhower Witch Hunter but it has so much headlong energy, you may not care. [9 Apr 2012, p.40]

Edie Falco makes the stakes scarily real. [21 Apr 2014, p.43]

The first few nights showed O'Brien settling in with his charmingly original humor, which is sophisticated yet twerpily silly. [29 Nov 2010, p.41]

The opener sets this all up smoothly, and Collette, combining a mother's protective instinct with type A pride, is great to watch. [23 Sep 2013]

It's a temperature-controlled How I Met Your Mother. [27 Sep 2010, p.56]

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.

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]

Skeet Ulrich and Corey Stoll are well-paired as detectives, and Alfred Molina, looking like an irascible owl, adds some harrumping power as deputy DA. [18 Sep 2010, p.40]

Petals doesn't have the same smothering intensity but it's compellingly crazy, the TV equivalent of outsider art. [26 May 2014, p.42]

The one great redemptive asset--and it's significant--is Kiefer Sutherland. [26 Mar 2012, p.41]

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]

The show's weakness is a negligible supporting cast, particularly Diedrich Bader and Ryan Stiles.

This partly improvised comedy is closer to Girls than All About Eve: wistful yet stinging, silly yet wise about the instability of even the deepest friendships. [24 Mar 2014, p.37]

The L Word is hot, to be sure.

It takes a few half-hour episodes before the tone gels. [16 Jan 2012, p.39]

Beyond the pilot, though, it appears to be a blandly generic precinct drama. [5 Mar 2013]

The 100 is imaginative, surprising and fun--Lost for kids. [24 Mar 2014, p.39]

A fun buzz. [1 Jul 2013, p.36]

Tudor history is irresistible, even if the bedroom gymnastics here seem more in keeping with the Playboy Mansion than a royal palace. [19 Apr 2010, p.47]

Trading on a paranoid, conspiratorial tone that recalls The Prisoner and MTV's Dead at 21, the show is jumbled but jazzy.

Crisis may not be great, but it works. [24 Mar 2014, p.35]

In contrast, the British original, while just as explicit, is also funny and warm, with a Trainspotting zip. You'll be happier renting videotapes of that.

This drive for revenge is what makes the pilot spark, smoke and go chug-a-chug-chug. [14 Nov 2011, p.45]

Traffic Light is better than NBC's Perfect Couples--the jokes are more relaxed, and the cast includes NCIS's Liza Lapira, whose humor has bite. Not a killer ensemble, though. [14 Feb 2011, p.42]

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 like Lisa Kudrow's Comeback without the satiric contempt. [10 Apr 2006, p.35]

Until, and unless, all the elements fall into place, it's more smush than smash. [18 Feb 2013, p.41]

It's both old and new, a comfy piece of nostalgia that doubles as a fresh guilty pleasure. [18 Jun 2012, p.39]