So no, the jokes aren't as haute as the cuisine. But presentation, on the plate or on television, goes a long way, and Confidential has the look of a winner.

This is not a show that wants to be analyzed. Rather, it demands that you enjoy it. And there is plenty of humor to mine in the premise.

Love Monkey is an anomaly, an intelligent, well-written dramedy for adults about adults, even if some of the chords it hits are in a minor key.

Details of color and composition do the work usually handled by too much expository dialogue, granting access to Dani and Charlie’s thinking.

Perabo shows herself capable of playing Walker tough or sweet, clueless or competent. Unfortunately, in the span of a single episode, she's asked to do all of the above.

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.

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

Despite some obvious faults, Strike Back is a decent enough action yarn with slick production values. At the same time, though, the series is more concerned with gratuitous nudity--this is Cinemax, after all, so each episode includes a lifetime's worth of breasts and butt cheeks-than creating a story with any substance, character, or emotional weight.

Even with all its CGI trappings and somber Washington, D.C. setting, Threshold feels minor, an amalgam of The Abyss and maybe Dark Skies.

Despite some promising moments in the first few episodes, the show seems destined for the same fate as Ellie.

While this is a lot of plot to deliver in one episode, Revolution manages it efficiently. But still, it doesn't feel very special.

The show's formula looks to be this: the silly plots swirl, the brokers scheme, and the minions toil, but in each episode, Liv finds a moment to chat with one of these wise, powerful, and inevitably troubled women. In these moments, Scandal is slightly less tabloidy and soapy, and slightly more beguiling.

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.

Better With You might try to be a straight-up joke/punchline/laughtrack sitcom. But that dooms it to comparisons with the other ABC shows such as Modern Family and The Middle that bookend it on Wednesday night. Those shows both have more distinct attitudes toward institutions like families and, particularly, marriage, than Better With You seems likely to find.

Dark Matters has something for viewers who are easily titillated as well as those interested in history.

So far, its mix of spirituality and science, familial and global struggles, is galvanizing.

At times witty and always good-looking, Undercovers needs to figure out how to balance its serious, silly, and gimmicky inclinations.

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.

When Tara and Sookie speak truth to each other (or seem to), True Blood is almost shrewd.

With the subtlety of a sledgehammer, the show right away telegraphs that there is more to Kaan than meets the eye, that he's not just a con. We're just not inclined to believe him.

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 shaman contrivance is surely tedious, but it appears that New Amsterdam uses the immortal design not as a way to Forrest-Gump its protagonist into a set of trite historical situations, but more cleverly, to ask questions about those situations.

Stick with it through the second episode: it gets moving quickly in the subsequent episodes, and turns into a grim frontier revenge saga, with intriguing personalities and interconnecting storylines.

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.

The problem is that the story in between the songs is still inconsistent and muddled.

Detroit 1-8-7 has a long way to go before it comes close to equaling Homicide, but it's off to a promising start.

Unfortunately, clumsy writing gets in the way of potential insight.

It's as though the show imagines that if can just cut from one event to another fast enough, no one will notice how shallow it all is.