The show clearly wants to be like the movie “Soapdish,” but Telenovela can’t quite pull it off. A second episode is considerably less funny than the pilot, a danger sign. The pilot episode has fun riffing on TV stars with swelled heads and telenovela camera trick clichés, and it all plays to Ms. Longoria’s comedic strengths.

If this all seems too precious, well, it is. But the show is saved by Ms. Gummer and a relentless pace.

The show does begin to fill in a few blanks, particularly the immortality angle, in its second episode, but it’s still a slow, sometimes tedious process.

The new Wolf Lake... is obvious and lumbers to a start rather than moving in Twin Peaks-like mysterious ways. [12 Sep 2001]

The tone varies wildly from action-adventure to serious costume drama.

Mystery Girls has some fun with viewer knowledge of rumors of disharmony on the “90210” set (yes, Shannen Doherty gets a shout-out) even if it all plays to cat-fighting women stereotype. Spelling comes off both worse (she’s mistaken for a prostitute twice in the first 10 minutes) and funnier (she gets the best lines; Ms. Garth plays the straight woman).

Business buffs may love it, but Shark Tank lacks the lush visuals of "Survivor" and the star power of Trump. It just doesn't have the same bite.

Other than the shorter season and London setting, the story beats and types of twists are nearly identical. This sameness highlights how the show's format, revolutionary when it premiered more than a decade ago, has become formulaic and a little stale.

BoJack Horseman gets the particulars of late '80s sitcoms right and has a few scattershot funny moments but it's mostly not a laugh riot.

"Brothers & Sisters" may find a way to streamline its storytelling and allow viewers to more easily sort out the huge cast of characters (there are at least 10 series regulars), or it may remain an unwieldy mess. Time will tell.

It all seems familiar, which isn't necessarily bad, but it makes the show somewhat stale.

It seems like a typical, sometimes plodding teen soap.

It’s difficult to judge The Almighty Johnsons from its pilot episode, but the blend of humor and Norse Gods lore does fit in well with Syfy’s penchant for light, fantasy dramas, but those series also tend to be fairly forgettable.

The good news: The White Queen gets off to an entertaining start. The bad news: In subsequent episodes it gets bogged down in then-this-happened, then-that-happened jumps through history.

The heart-tugging medical stories and conflicts all feel familiar, none of them delivered with anything that approaches a fresh twist.

After so many series have failed to come to satisfying first-season conclusions after similar built-in obsolescence plots, it’s hard to trust Salvation will live up to its title. If it does, what will producers do for season two?

Too often the show is raucous without reason, but Will sparks to life in a scene where Shakespeare engages in what in modern times could be compared to a rap battle or poetry slam, only in Will it’s a word competition using iambic pentameter.

The Wire gives so little, it almost begs to be abandoned; then a scene or a smidgen of character development offers a hook that might keep viewers interested. But TV shows, no matter how complex or thought-provoking, shouldn't require that much work. [1 June 2002, p.B-6]

'24' continues to roar forward at a breakneck pace, and it does tantalize by dropping clues that keep viewers hooked ... But with the minutiae of love affairs gumming up the works, it's more difficult than ever for viewers -- and the show's characters -- to keep their eyes on the big picture threat that's supposed to drive the series. [26 Oct 2003]

Everything in Young & Hungry is predictable, including most of the jokes.

Touch feels like yet another series--last week it was Alcatraz--that seemed like a better idea for a one-shot movie than a weekly TV series.

An OK (but visually unexceptional) pilot that does little to set viewers up for what the show will be on a week-to-week basis.

While appropriately grimy given the 1620s, rural North America setting (Although it was filmed in South Africa), the dour deprivation depicted proves dull over the miniseries’ first two hours.

Despite a poor job of establishing its characters and their relationships (wait, those two aren't a couple?), The Ex-List begins with a strong, romantic premise.

Through the first two episodes it’s just not enough to differentiate this series from so many conspiracy thrillers that have come before.

Dull, predictable, scuzzy drama set centuries in the future after everyone on the planet has lost their sight.

Where "The Sopranos" has some laugh-out-loud comedic moments, "Brotherhood" is dark, brooding and forever serious. And that grows tedious after a few episodes.

The series, a purported behind-the-scenes look at the Trump administration, has its intermittent funny moments, and the character designs of the people who populate Trump’s cabinet are entertaining. But the story that’s grafted onto the first episode — Trump has to find an anniversary gift for Melania — is sitcom-trite and reminiscent of the old Comedy Central series “That’s My Bush.”