Horowitz and Kitsis are clever and playful in how they insert the fairytale characters into the present day, which kept my interest even when, as I said earlier, I was chuckling.

An exciting and scary trip.

Thanks to the rock solid performances of Bello, O'Byrne and co-stars that include Kirk Acevedo, Kenny Johnson and Chicago homeboys Tim Griffin and Aidan Quinn, Prime Suspect rises above the formula network procedurals that focus more on forensics than good, old-fashioned grunt detective work.

Though the gorgeous production starts out slowly and has its pompous moments, it's ultimately worth your time.

It's truly troubling to watch as helpless, restrained patients are treated against their wills. Yet despite mumbling over and over during the first episode, "I'm done with this already," I had to see the second.

Despite its historic gravitas and scrupulous attention to period detail, Spies of Warsaw never really ignites.

Gervais has written, produced and directed a thoughtful and thought-provoking dramedy that celebrates everyday heroes and the power of kindness while attacking materialism and the way society often forgets people "just because they're old and poor and weak."

If they keep the cute at bay for more dinosaurs and dirty dealings, this should be a great ride.

Spivey gives her stars so much better material stemming from the parents' self-doubt about everything from doing right by their daughter to still rocking a tight skirt (Reagan) to buying the right cheese at the overwhelmingly huge supermarket (Chris).

There isn't anything too deeply intellectual here because the action moves the plot. And "Strike Back" has action to spare.

A tantalizingly juicy soap opera.

Like Spader, Collette is fascinating to watch; there's always so much happening just under the surface.... Show creators Alon Aranya, Omri Givon, Rotem Shamir and Jeffrey Nachmanoff pack the Hostages pilot with a ton of side plots.

It's all very new-agey and a bit pretentious.

While Prosecuting Casey Anthony does a decent job of re-creating the trial and media frenzy surrounding it, it fails to offer theories as to why the jury didn't convict her of murder.

Most of these characters are by-the-numbers denizens of any Western. Thankfully most of the actors make them more interesting than the sometimes atrocious dialogue should allow.

As an exercise in recreating a noir drama, Mob City has all the trappings we've seen better in "L.A. Confidential" and other projects, but little of the thrill.

The addition of Chicago native Hudson is a masterstroke, but with all that other melodrama, Smash remains a hit-or-miss proposition for me.

Some of the dialogue is groan-worthy, some plot turns totally predictable and some of the soapy silliness is just, well, silly. But J.R.'s Dallas is still a hoot.

It's fun to look at, but there's not a lot of substance underneath.

The Inbetweeners delivers moments of humor equal to all those other shows--mostly from the physical comedy--but overall it's too wimpy to make its own mark.

[Creator J.H. Wyman] peppers what really is a police procedural with enough not-so-distant science to make Almost Human a sci-fi thriller, and enough humor to make it a buddy cop comedy.

The mystical mumbo jumbo nearly derails the proceedings, but Goyer reins in the hookum in favor of frolicking adventure that's more fun than fact.

If only writers John Brownlow and Don Macpherson focused more on Fleming's wartime spy-jinks than on his extended mating dance with the already married and cheating Ann.

Necessary Roughness hasn't scored a touchdown yet, but it's early in the game.

[Purefoy's and Bacon's] performances--and scenes that focus on Carroll's killer minions that I won't talk about lest I spoil things for readers--are the strongest parts of the series and overshadow the weaknesses. Those include numerous plot holes and some sketchy logic, plus Williamson's annoying habit of beating us over the head with the Poe references.

The show still feels like it's coasting off the success of those super-charged early seasons.

"CSI: NY" is just as good as the original "CSI" and its first spin-off "CSI: Miami." ... Yes, the writing is a little weak, but the atypical crimes and the fascinating technology make the show extremely addictive. [24 Sep 2004]

NBC's The New Normal has its share of stereotypes and crass jokes that straddle the line of bad taste. But it's also sweet and, dare I say, funny.

It may not be as intriguing as "Thrones" or as tense as FX's spy thriller "The Americans," but Turn--which touches on still-relevant topics like torture, homosexuality and politics--offers a fresh spin on the War of Independence.

Mamet and his actors have created a fascinating character study that puts our notions of prejudice, celebrity, media and justice in the spotlight.

Ugly Americans can be gross and bizarre, but everything makes sense in the world that it has created.

Watch it to laugh, and you'll have a lot of fun.

I can't help but believe that if this new series focused on the dark, foreboding tone in its asylum scenes, it could become a powerful, trippy 9 p.m. drama.

[Bean's] nearly the only reason to watch this retread mashup of team-based crime/spy shows and the "Bourne" films.

Tonally, it's all over the place.

By pulling the curtain back on the magic of Neverland, Willing has stripped all the fun from a marvelous classic.

OK, so I'm having a real problem with the idea that Bridget could get away with this switch for even one second. If you can look past that, you'll still have to deal with a story so dense it takes a couple long expositional scenes to explain it all.

When it really sails, it cuts through the waves swiftly. But it loses wind so many times the thrills come only sporadically.

True Blood still entertains with crackling dialogue and about half its plotlines, but it's starting to feel a little long in the fang.

Sounds promising, but the premiere falls flat.

While its glimpses into the democratic world of piracy are interesting, Black Sails could cull a few plot barnacles and give viewers more action.

Not only is the production harmed by its overloaded pilot and just fleeting moments of originality, its visual effects and alien makeup design are wildly inconsistent. Despite all this, Defiance grew on me the more I watched.

You're likely to understand Fox's hesitation with The Goodwin Games after seeing the premiere, which introduces the characters and the premise, but with only a few laughs.

The HBO special comes off more as another managed attempt to forge the legend of Queen B.

Missing barely winks at the silliness it slings.

As fascinating as the minutiae are, fine work by the cast makes me wish this had been a fully scripted miniseries.

The hauntings are staged for maximum creepiness; the show (and James) look great.

Although you've tasted many of the ingredients before (in "The Sopranos," "Mad Men," "The Godfather" movies), creator Mitch Glazer mixes in enough new elements to keep things tasty.

[King & Maxwell] will live and die on the casting--because everything else about it feels as stale and standard as week-old white bread.

Despite the familiarities, the cheerfulness of this group helps the show overcome its predictability and other faults.

It isn't consistently funny--and it definitely isn't as daring or groundbreaking as advertised.

The M&Ms are brutal and might have set Monday Mornings apart as a psychological examination of regret and human error. But in the three episodes sent for review, producers David E. Kelley and CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta (adapting this from his 2012 novel) instead overdose on the same sappy storylines we've seen before.

It's often dull and heavy-handed. Rhys Meyers is burdened with purposefully heightened dialogue that sounds silly at times. His Dracula is meant to be irresistible, but he's just plain creepy.

It's dark, disturbing and a little downbeat--which isn't a dis at all.

It's epic, hilarious and totally tasteless.

A show about a hot gay couple who are both cops would have been a lot more interesting than the umpteenth light police procedural USA has delivered.

The movie holds these men and women up as heroes, but it makes them rather bland cardboard cutouts.

Reign isn't half bad at times with its marvelous costumes, palace intrigues and Follows' delicious take on Catherine. But the minute you start getting into fantasy, you're yanked right out by the contemporary music and other oddities—like a montage of giggling gals putting on makeup.

All in all, A Royal Romance offers some OK acting of a dull story.

The premise is fascinating enough to keep viewers' attention, if only to see what numbers Charlie will spin next. But some kinks need to be worked out before "Numb3rs" will add up.

The only thing that separates this bland cop drama from others is that Gloria is also a divorced single mom with two kids who lives with her recovering drug abuser but looks-good-in-a-towel brother (Chris Payne Gilbert).

Both believable and appealing as the hard-bitten homicide investigator, Lehman provides the only real motive for tuning in.

The office gang from Free Agents is anything but funny.

BFF uses the most obvious male-female cliches.

"Law & Order" mastermind Dick Wolf doesn't blaze any new trails with his latest effort, but at least he's getting out of the courtroom and precinct house.

Johnston, Faison, Knight and Basche have their moments, but more often than not they hammer the jokes home, mugging insufferably as they do so.

Salem as a whole reflects the difference in the work of West and Montgomery. Yet its wildly uneven premiere has enough going for it to make me watch at least another episode.

Nothing has really changed.

[Todd Ray's] passion for the peculiar is praiseworthy, and erases any misgivings that the venture is exploitation at its most blatant. Still it's not that easy to watch a guy called Morgue stick a hook in his nose until it comes out his mouth.

Marco Polo flits between storytelling styles without completely tying them together as successfully as "Game of Thrones" does.... By the fifth and sixth episodes the action picks up, the intrigue deepens and the stakes some higher.

Everything feels like a put-on; nothing seems plausible.

Seems to me she's [Alana's mother June is] desperate to stay in the spotlight. And all I can say to that is, "Honey, bye-bye."

Unlike "Archer" or "Sunny" or FX's "The League" and "Wilfred," Unsupervised refuses to go for the throat. And that makes it unfunny.

Some might say the show is overstuffed with stories, but I had no problem following the various strands, even if some were less interesting than others.

Much of the writing here is dreadful; scenes go nowhere while thinly developed characters pop in and out of the action--although there is little action early on.

Chozen will get more compelling once it focuses on that feud over loutish buffoonery and references to prison sex--which aren't that funny even the first five times they're made. For now, though, it simply mines the gay rapper premise for cheap laughs.

Anger Management is a colossally wasted opportunity for both Sheen and FX.

Get on The Client List only to see some ripped abs; everything else is nonsense.

I get the feeling Grace will always do the right thing, which is going to make The Mob Doctor predictable and not all that entertaining.

The Neighbors revives an old storyline used in everything from the the "SNL" Coneheads sketch to "Third Rock from the Sun." It just doesn't do it as well.

[A] stinker of a family sitcom.

I'd rather babysit a dozen children between the ages of 2 and 10 then sit through more of this.

Sad to say, another round of Black Friday madness would deliver more laughs than this brainless new sitcom.

If the writers relax their death grip on that formula and Handler stops choking the proceedings, Are You There, Chelsea? might be worth another look.

The show had all of the potential of "Idol," but Fox blew it by forgetting these words of wisdom: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. [15 Aug 2005]

Charlie's Angels is as absurd as the original 1976-81 series that launched the careers of Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett (and her hair).

Rob is clumsy and uncomfortable, not to mention completely devoid of chemistry among its actors or subtlety in their delivery of "jokes."

Liz & Dick is, simply, a joke.

ABC, you can do better than this drivel you call Work It.

The mockumentary soars more than it crash lands.

In its third season The League is sharper and raunchier than ever, and the aforementioned cast members, as well as Mark Duplass, Jon Lajoie, Stephen Rannazzisi and Katie Aselton, score TDs with nearly every line.

The gang delivers a ton of mostly low-brow laughs, but they're laughs nonetheless.

When her Airbender training is postponed, Korra travels to Republic City, where Aang's son Tenzin lives, so he can teach her. And that's when the fun begins.

Like "The Vampire Diaries," Teen Wolf successfully blends horror, mystery, romance, teen angst and plenty of reasons for cast members to show some (tasteful) skin.

Exec producers Paul Abbott and John Wells deliver dark humor, a full heart and a real desire to illustrate--no matter how outlandishly--just how difficult it is for impoverished families to make ends meet.

Sparks fly, parts break off, hydraulic fluid sprays. At least the episode ends with 10 minutes of awesome.