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]