With its witty dialogue, talented ensemble, and a premise reminiscent of 1930s screwball comedies, Cheers was a welcome change of pace.

The reason why Queer As Folk largely works is because it’s driven by the characters, not their sexuality.

The Crossing Jordan team clearly meant well, but somehow their intentions fail to translate onscreen.

American Dreams, although set in the supposedly kindler, gentler days of 1963, manages not wrap itself in a “things were so much better then” haze. In so doing, it encourages viewers to think about the issues it tentatively raises, and to make connections between the lives it portrays and the lives we live now.

Indeed, it’s Gross’ winning performance that makes the hit-or-miss first season of Family Ties worth your time. His impeccably dry delivery showcases the show’s humor, to be sure, but his good-guy aura makes him truly extraordinary.

What distinguishes The 4400 is its representation of the sense of alienation that pervades post-9/11 America.

A befuddled retirement party for King's clichés. From start to finish, the show dodders about like an Alzheimer's patient on a scavenger hunt.

Not only does Show Me a Hero deal with the same type of intricate institutional power struggles of city government--this time in 1987 in Yonkers, NY, where a battle over the desegregation of low-income housing is waged with newly elected mayor Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac) caught in the crossfire--but it does it with the kind of nuanced, ensemble-driven, character-based stories that made The Wire one of the most acclaimed television series of all time.

The Strain reifies its connections between political and melodramatic themes with the gory action for which the series is best known--the monsters’ neck-piercing six-foot tongues, the silver bullets’ exploding effects--in kitschy evidence during the battle against that takes up the bulk of the storage facility scene.

Nick Doob and Shari Cookson’s decision to use such “found footage” makes their film at once immediate and distressingly distanced, as it offers images both ordinary and specific, families and individuals posing for photos, their faces turned to the camera.

Even in the areas of its strength--the give-and-take between strong-minded friends, the camaraderie of colleagues, and the bonds of a multi-generational family—the show tends to probe lightly the critical issues it consistently raises.

In this second season, only a mild intellectual puzzle stretched over far too many episodes.

Aquarius isn’t quite history, but it also isn’t precisely now, or even accurate.

Though it’s unclear in three episodes where such ideas might go in Wayward Pines, the show does provide plenty of unanswered questions to pique our interest.

Weird Loners is not so fresh as its title might presume. Its protagonists are more familiar than strange, and their stories are clichéd.

Ultimately, House of Cards Season Three is a great continuation of a show that remains deliciously dramatic even with a few glaring flaws.

There are undeniably pulpy elements here, from the teasing out of material through multiple episodes to the melodramatic True Detective-esque credits sequence and crime reenactments. So far, it appears the film offers a spectrum of voices, some countering Durst’s.

So far, the Disney experiment is working, if not always perfectly. Agent Carter‘s tone seems right and its lead seems perfect, helping the live-action wing of the Marvel franchise to evolve as it spreads across time into our current entertainment and its future.

If you miss Warehouse 13, or liked Friday the 13th: The Series, or Tia Carrere in The Relic Hunter, then The Librarians is worth a visit.

Perhaps as the interplay between the World War II setting and other Marvelverses continues, we’ll see that the creative team learned from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D,’s early stumbles, so the new show is more mature, and ready to hit the ground with its Enfield No. 4s blazing.

The Flash sports a great cast, visually well-designed sets and effects, and the pace and atmosphere reflect the deft hands of directors and crew. But a superhero show can’t live on those elements alone.

The portrayal of Thomas’ decline is visceral from the first moments to the last, evoking that same second-hand queasiness one experiences watching, say, Leaving Las Vegas, with explicit images of obliterating drunkenness, retching, and emotionless, mechanical sex, as well as the spasmodic gasping for breath coming out of a blackout or descending into an asthma attack. Watching Thomas’ experience is riveting.

Death Comes to Pemberley works so well because the characters are so perfectly realized. Affairs, unwed pregnancies, and murder all abound, but at the heart of the series is the story of a marriage.

It’s a credit to Caspe and Marry Me’s other creators that the series premiere introduces all of these characters and their relationships seamlessly, without clunky, expositional dialogue about how they all met.

The plots of the first episodes have none of the labyrinthine structure of classic Seinfeld episodes; they feel more like vehicles for prewritten bits. They’re funny, but they don’t sound like regular people talking. This artificial sensibility is exacerbated by various performances.

A compelling mystery, it maintains a measured pace, inviting viewers’ patience.

Trapped in the hour-long drama structure, the half-hour sitcom that The Mysteries of Laura might long to be never finds its footing.

Maybe ABC’s social media strategy should include posting only the last scene of this episode and pretend the rest of it never happened. That, and changing the title.

While Keating is immediately a compelling character, it is unfortunate that so much of the pilot episode requires the viewer to suspend disbelief, starting with the idea that a top-notch defense attorney would allow a class of newbie law students unfettered access to all documents in a case that she is currently defending.

Everything in the first episode suggests that Forever has a better shot at successfully combining procedural conventions and a high-concept than, say, Intelligence or Almost Human.

Even with selective choices of what reality to include in its fiction, Sleepy Hollow is effective, biting like a vampire, infecting with simultaneous thrill and dread.

Some of the characters aren’t able to achieve the same balance between fantasy and realism as the rest of the show.... Thankfully, Mooney isn’t as central a figure here as Bullock or Gordon, who together are fully capable of carrying the series, even without young Bruce. Logue gives an especially strong performance as Bullock, an exhausted, veteran crime-fighter who remains likable and charismatic even as his various failings seem inevitable.

As fascinating as Madam Secretary can be regarding its global focuses, it’s so far less detailed when it comes to McCord, her family, and her colleagues.

For all the characters’ feeble development, though, Scorpion doesn’t drag. And Lin’s action sequences at the end look great as well as ludicrous.

While you want to love the mere existence of Octavia Spencer on TV every week, the show works awfully hard to make this hard.

Each of the firefighters here reveals a nuanced, complex mindfulness, a sense that what they do is dangerous, but also rewarding, exciting, important, and, in a word, what they do.

While the designated flawed hero John espouses an essential grasp of the purpose of medicine and the workings of disease (“Despite what you may believe,” he tells Cornelia, “Sickness isn’t a result of poor character, germs don’t examine your bankbook”), he’s also stymied, by his own prejudices as well as money concerns. That these might take him in different directions suggests the series has some sense of the difficulty of medicine then and still.

While the picture it provides is certainly strange and paradoxical, it is also limited.

The series takes some time to put this team together, even in the same area of New York. And while you’re waiting for that plot turn, you’re treated to a series of lurid images, from yucky to jolting.

As before, The Bridge loses its own focus frequently, sliding off into multiple storylines that follow pairs of characters, some less interesting than others, some downright distracting. But for all the time that feels misspent on Charlotte and her idiot boyfriend Ray (Brian Van Holt) or the self-deluding addict reporter Frye (Matthew Lillard) and his long-suffering partner Adriana (Emily Rios), The Bridge offers brief moments that resonate and sometimes, even chill.

You’re left to wonder about what she sees, or whether she believes what she sees, a set of questions that might be intriguing (watching her distraught face as she watches herself) or annoying (watching her vaguely worried face as she spots a stranger at the end of her driveway in the dead of night).

Based on co-creator Tom Perrotta’s 2011 book, The Leftovers imagines a range of responses (and too often, responses accompanied by anxiety-making piano or violin trills).

The Escape Artist is unusually willing not to let the audience off the hook, and instead, to help us understand that the pursuit of substantive justice may prove as dangerous as the crimes it seeks to right.

With the relationships among MacMillan, Clark, and Howe in the foreground, Halt and Catch Fire makes impressive use of its time period without treating it as an elbow-to-the-ribs joke.

He anticipates pretty much every move made against him, as you might as well, given that they’re made by people designed to remind you of previous people in Jack’s universe.

Hawley’s film noir plot is reasonably Coen-esque in its twists and misunderstandings and character-motivated actions. But it can’t match the extremely particular style of the inimitable and unpredictable Coens, a target Hawley apparently chose for himself and misses by a country mile.

There are a few elements of Silicon Valley that are still works in progress at this point. The force of Miller’s personality can be overwhelming, and a little of Erlich goes a long way.

Still impressively detailed and masterfully assembled, the show again focuses on the classed relations among employees and employers, relations that can be both supportive and dysfunctional, and, increasingly, affected by external forces.

It’s not always clear what either woman gains from the friendship, and while maintaining the imbalance of power would feed the show’s bleakly comic seam, the fourth episode’s final scene suggests an impending shift when both Em and Doll audition for the same role, creating new and welcome tensions going forward.

On the evidence of the first two episodes, Resurrection seems just one more twist on an American obsession with investigating what lies beneath the surfaces of rural or suburban idylls. As a device to tell the same old stories about illicit love affairs, family estrangement, hidden crimes, and the secrets parents keep from children and visa versa, the arbitrary resurrection of the dead seems pretty extreme, and, frankly, a wasted opportunity.

That Bo’s gifts remain somewhat beyond her control or comprehension makes her a puzzle but also predictable. Bo will indeed be on a winding road, as she must be just a bit of a person who will irritate and mystify her jokester-action-hero protector, as she must seem both odd and sympathetic to the adults watching her, in her world and in yours.

This is pretty much how it goes on Chicagoland: Emmanuel against everyone else.

The show piles on plot and cliché. You know too much already. And yet, watching her, you realize you can never know enough.

Walton’s Will is more jovial and goofy, a ladies’ man with at least one good and honest friend his own age in Andy. He’s also the primary reason to give NBC’s About a Boy any sort of chance to develop its formula.

The film offers a version of the real Mitt, performative and authentic, charming and awkward, occasionally at the same time.

Archer‘s affection for character and craft makes it more likely to be remembered as one of the great TV shows of our time, and not just another dirty cartoon.

The show is becoming more complex along with its characters, and as a result, the viewer feels a greater investment.

As a prestige show, it’s so serious, portentous, and polished, it’s not very much fun at all, so intent on wrapping its package in money and style that it forgets to put anything inside.

Lacking both comedy and tragedy, Enlisted earns no such commendations.

Intelligence might probe these questions more, and so become richer than the latest show about a tortured male genius outsmarting the bad guys. Or it might just settle for flashy graphics, great action scenes, and underused actors looking good.

Sadly, this program fails to be either compelling or diverting. Instead, it is a bloated and filler-stuffed waste of time.

Combining the flashy trashy aesthetics of reality TV and the rodeo circuit, Rodeo Girls is at its best in the ring itself, as the camera speeds around the barrels with horse and rider.

Mob City fails to make connections between now and the repercussions of the ‘40s, say, the marginalization of democratic debate, the pathologizing of women’s agency and autonomy, and the hysterical politics of fear and insecurity in an increasingly global economy. These daunting themes remain off screen here, leaving only a series of monotonous conversations and shoot-outs.

If the premise intrigues you, watch or rewatch Blade Runner instead, and offer Almost Human the all-too-human body swerve.

Rhys Meyers is mostly effective during such inserting, exuding exotic appeal and sensitive yearning—at least when he’s gazing on his object of desire from afar. When he speaks, his appeal is dulled by his flattened, put-on American accent, which makes him sound like Chris Pine.

Valentine Road features a range of interview subjects who voice conflicting concerns and express their discontents, but it also resists casting judgment against one person or another.

If the daily competitions for commissions don’t quite match the savagery of the male-on-male contests in Glengarry Glenross or In The Company of Men, they remain vicious enough to give the otherwise fluffy plotting a little bite.

The jokes fly furiously during the first episode, and the delivery is impeccable all around.

Ironside is an exercise in cynicism, a safety-first raid on the vaults with not a shred of respect for either the its prospective audience.

Regardless of historical veracity, though, some of the drama here is shopworn.

The navel-gazing tenor doesn’t always obscure Parenthood‘s thought-provoking moments, which often also showcase clipped, witty scripting, and lucid acting.

The team assembled in the first episode is less a team and more a loose collection of brooding loners.... [Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) is] an oasis amid all this peevishness.

It is to say that this mimicking is just that, as if the creators here have watched those shows ["24" and "Homeland"], but have no original inspiration, and instead think that plot twists in and of themselves make a drama bracing.

An intriguing twist suggests her involvement in his scheme is more complicated than the setup suggests, but we knew that. Moreover, she may also be more complicated than Red anticipates, which might make the introduction of this so familiar dynamic more a point of departure than a retread. That will be helpful because, based on the first episode, The Blacklist‘s plot makes little sense.

These couple of episodes give hope that Kaling the writer means to continue to skewer her character’s fantasies with the same combination of intelligence and acid wit as before.

It’s to this busy show’s credit that the pilot doesn’t feel disjointed. All of these disparate parts are working more or less harmoniously.

Even the actors in the smallest roles are three-dimensional, a rich tribute to Britain’s theatrical talent. If these are, as Horowitz claims, the last episodes of Foyle he writes, both he and his longtime actor-collaborators are bowing out on a very high note indeed.

Somehow, this ludicrous premise and uneven plot elements cohere into a fast-moving, exciting hour.

The show doesn’t only deliver fast-paced action and fine performances, but also, increasingly, poses questions concerning responsibility.

While The Flag ponders the whereabouts of Shirley and Spiro’s flag, it raises other, broader, variously resonant questions too, questions concerning how symbols and icons become significant, as well as how stories are told and myths are disseminated.

When so much of the series depends on psychological nuance, the lurch into Hollywood action thriller confrontations is an outright admission of defeat. Sensationalism trumps subtlety once more. Both Luther and Idris Elba deserve so much more.

In 10 years of reviewing film and television for various publications, no comedy has given me as much pleasure as The Office.

Most viewers will recognize the South Park-like humor, critiquing the problem by critiquing the mainstream response to it. But unlike South Park, which usually offers something like “hope”(however sarcastically rendered), High School USA! is mostly just bleak.

The brilliance is precisely a function of its incongruity.

C.S.I.: Miami is very slick, very clever, and very eager to please.

While the characters remain thinly rendered types and the situations predictable, Orange is the New Black veers from melodrama to slapstick.

Even as all of these seeming oppositions are set up, the show insists on the blurring of lines, the bridges as well as the borders.

So aggressive is RENO 911!'s low-budget affect (not to mention its inconsistent pace and sometimes flat humor) that Cops looks positively polished by comparison. ... Still, and especially in its improvisational moments, RENO 911! offers occasionally engaging spontaneity.

Why is Charlie here? He doesn’t get involved in the action, only generates equations that are truly unexciting.

Bruckner takes on the role with gusto, and she and Harron together create someone whose unthinking commitment to the pursuit of “F-U-N” (in Anna’s phrasing) achieves something close to sublimity.

Despite the new episode’s title, “Ch-Ch-Changes,” not much here is different.

Copper reveals not only the grim living conditions of 19th century New York, but also the implications of unchecked police power.

Although it’s worth reserving judgment on the disposition and spirit of Under the Dome until we’ve seen at least a handful of episodes, it’s fair to say that the pilot embraces the material’s pulpier elements, with none of Lost’s nerdy digression or philosophical trolling.

Twisted combines a handful of stereotypical ideas about romanticized teenage criminals with fresh perspectives on how humans understand or fear one another under intense stress.

This shying away from meaty storylines typifies the longstanding weakness of Major Crimes and, to a certain extent, The Closer before it.... As the team has little to do on the job, the episode fills out the time with minor whiffs of narrative.

When Falling Skies is clicking, it remains a very entertaining show that fills a niche.

While Kieren does contend with zombie-style gore, the show isn’t a kill-fest like The Walking Dead. But as it raises the sorts of questions that classic zombie fare, In the Flesh also draws some perceptive connections to our own social and political contexts.

The Fosters needs more than good intentions and tentative, sanitised handling of its subject to survive once a same-sex couple central to a US drama passes unnoticed.