[A] somewhat overheated but still fairly effective new thriller.

The tone here is David Lynch meets David Cronenberg meets Quentin Tarantino, moody and heightened in the early episodes, then ever more weird and gory. It all hinges on Salazar and treatises may be written on her huge, expressive eyes, which jump between angered, exhausted, erotic and (repeatedly) horrified.

The young skeptical priest and older exorcist priest will team up to do battle with the devil while Davis looks on wide-eyed, apparently, and this will be dragged out on a weekly basis. Heaven help us.

Just about everything that made the first season of True Detective entrancing is missing from the second, wholly re-imagined second season. In truth, only the worst, most clichéd parts remain. And yet.... If you make it to the third episode, chances are you'll keep going.

The first episode is shaky, but the series stabilizes as it progresses. Nothing’s all that startling or original, but it all flows along until you realize you’ve watched four shows in a row and you’re wondering whether life has any meaning.

It knows it’s walking familiar ground — spooky but never scary, occasionally violent but never gory, magical but hardly wondrous. Watchable but nowhere near fascinating.

Turn becomes more tense with each episode, at least through the first three, and that’s a very good sign.

It doesn’t help that any dramatic tension is undercut by the first episode, which essentially gives away the entire plot. “The Shrink Next Door” is the dramatic equivalent of watching someone pull the wings off a fly.

It takes some soapy turns in season two, and Carell’s character can seem stranded in limbo, but this is big starry television about big starry television that dares you to look away. Tune in.

The Last Ship would be better off developing its own new society tensions, medical nightmares and primal-survival adventures than leaning on black-hat stereotypes. Maybe it will end up heading in that direction, maybe it will succumb to more common cliches and become lost at sea. It could float either way.

“Outer Range” is a complete mess: Senseless, pretentious, purposely obscure and wasteful.

Mamet is known for tight, pointed dramas, and he holds true to his rep here, creating a mystery, procedural and character study all in one.

Watching Shooter as a series is like falling back into a well-known and familiar story, just one with lots of guns. It’s downright comfortable. And that’s odd.

[A] promising mix of urban decay, moral corruption and brutal betrayal that’s likely to fuel Sun.

Handled correctly, this has “Lost” potential.

One Child spends too much time running in place--which may reflect China’s inert bureaucracy, but falls short of riveting viewing.

All these characters manage to work, at least in a broadcast-show way. This is mostly because of Mixon’s constant narration and commentary; she’s offering a sarcastic-neurotic voiceover on her own absurd life.

Whether viewers will feel too challenged by Ellie to smile along remains to be seen. Hopefully they won't; TV needs crazy-vain-brave risk-takers badly. [26 Feb 2002]

Instead of being seriously macabre, it goes for broad satire, although it certainly has its gory moments. It’s an odd mash-up that leaves little room for real connection to the characters, having faith instead in laughs and blood. Then again, laughs and blood have a good track record.

What starts off as a lusty and dewy-eyed dance between lovers quickly turns into a taut game of cat and mouse more titillating than the pair’s pending nuptials. Enos and Krause have palpable chemistry.

Langford (“Knives Out,” “13 Reasons Why”) is effective if not exceptional, somewhat mirroring the entire enterprise. The gore quotient here runs high, but unlike “Thrones” and “The Witcher” there is no underlying erotic throb fueling things and humor is scarce.

The unexpected moves keep things feeling shinier than they are, and that’s the magic balancing act “Mr. Corman” attempts. Life may be disappointing but it’s also amusing and sweet and wonderfully odd. “Mr. Corman” dares to be honest.

One of the producers here is Jason Katims ("Friday Night Lights,” “Parenthod”) and the warm familial intimacy of his previous shows flows through “Away.” The cast is uniformly strong and there’s a reason Swank has two Oscars. “Away” isn’t great but it is unique, and that’s good enough.

Gripes aside, "The Comey Rule" is a frightening and timely look at recent history and its repercussions. Actors will no doubt be biting into the role of Trump for years to come, but to top Gleeson they'll have to do a a heck of a lot of chewing.

As well-engineered, demographically balanced and ethnically diverse as this show is, it’s still pretty daffy how it cuts back and forth between sun and fun and drug wastoids and gangstas.

The warm and goofy and topical camaraderie of that show [“Sex and the City”] is nowhere apparent here. Nor are any laughs. There are no actual laugh lines here, just lines that let you know they were supposed to be funny. It is, in essence, a romantic picture postcard comedy show without any comedy (or much romance for that matter).

Cliches bounce off one another in a slick combination of gallows humor, inspirational bonding, deep thoughts and maudlin moments.

What next? An unholy alliance between Aquaman's niece and the Thing's second cousin? "Birds of Prey" is for the birds. [9 Oct 2002, p.1D]

Alliances are made and broken, power shifts go this way and that, blood is spilled, and wenches keep wenching. It’s oddly addictive, and the cast--made up mostly of British, Australian and Canadian actors--is as sharp as you’d expect from pay cable.

So, basically, this is a drug-fueled Sherlock Holmes situation, although Brian does something so monumentally stupid while supposedly in his smart state at the show’s beginning that it comes close to undermining the show’s premise. Luckily McDorman, who appeared in “American Sniper” with Cooper, has an easygoing charm that helps right the boat.

There’s tons of pseudo-scientific cyberpunk gobbledygook, of course, but Smith keeps things moving and pretense falls to the wayside. ... “The Peripheral” is dead center fun.

The pitch here can be shrill. The warden makes Satan look like a nice guy, and Gil has a temper that can be wearying. But the essential tension--who will finally tell the truth? everybody is lying to somebody--makes for compelling, if exhausting, drama.

Based on the novel by Kristin Hannah, “Firefly Lane” is so efficient it nearly takes the guilt out of guilty pleasure.

Rhimes brings in familiar faces from other Shondaland shows, travels to exotic places, has Anna strut about in all manner of glitzy outfits — Anna loves to shop — and generally offers up solid modern TV entertainment. But a tighter, more succinct work would have lived up to Garner’s performance.

As actors, Stanford and Schull have to convince TV audiences that they are not dishing out reheated versions of the performances Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe did in the original. Thankfully, that's not the case and these two actors are quite compelling as a couple of lost souls trying desperately to make things right.

The level of profanity here would likely give any real life vice principal a heart attack, and Gamby’s stupidity is world class. Eventually you realize he’s just a lonely, sad jerk in need of validation. Comedy, you’ll recall, is just tragedy upside down.

"Devil" is one of Netflix’s light-horror excursions, nothing too gory or sexy. ... It’s messy TV but, really, you can’t go too wrong with devil worshipers.

The Messengers seems far-fetched, even by [The CW's] standards.

It’s an intentionally delicious and messy show, born to be binged, although a lot of the name-dropping – Tallulah Bankhead, Noel Coward -- may float right by some. No matter, its glittery blend of the tacky, corny and controversial, while lacking real weight, is an escapist balm.

Creator Harriet Warner obviously has no lack of imagination, though she does exhibit a serious lack of restraint. The show does have its own mad energy and if you like crazy content measured by the pound it may be for you. If not, you could end up feeling battered by it all.

As harrowing, dark and bloody as the premiere episodes are, and as open as the show’s direction seems to be, the comparisons [to Game of Thrones,” “Sons,” “Deadwood,” “Breaking Bad,” “The Sopranos,” and “The Walking Dead”] seem apt. This Bastard rocks.

But Nicky Fallin is about as unlikable and uncomfortable a character as television audiences have ever been asked to care for. Maybe he would unfold splendidly over time. But it's doubtful he'll get that time. [25 Sept 2001, p.5B]

Van Helsing obviously wants to be “The Walking Dead” with vampires, but it lacks that show’s production values, cast and over-the-top imagination.

Summer is traditionally the time to turn off your brain. “Panic” is for those who’ve disengaged.

Only trouble is--aside from the torture porn nature of the show--the story itself is a series of question marks that takes a plunge into the ridiculous in its climactic scene.

"Nine Perfect Strangers" is a clumsy star-driven project that, scene to scene, is never quite sure what it is. ... Hopefully there's an answer tucked into the final episodes, which were not provided for review. Whether or not you care enough to stick around that long, that's another story.

Unfortunately the pacing here is too slow and many may abandon the train before it gets where it’s going. “Behind Her Eyes” is the perfect example of a six-part series that should have been four. Its stretch marks are unseemly. Less can be more.

“Hunters” works in black-and-white and stereotypes, hiding in the bygone, but today anti-Semitism is on the rise and American Nazis apparently include “very fine people” according to one prominent source. Perhaps now wasn’t the time for a wildly uneven, superficial, comic book-type treatment of this particularly sick and unfortunately still-relevant dynamic.

Watching dad fend off guys while the girls strut around in thongs is going to get old fast. [17 Sep 2002]

With the tension of its premise and the promise of its family-driven drama, Gang Related may eventually work the stiffness out of its joints and become interesting. Or not. It’s that kind of show.

This is a solid, risky show with loads of potential. Keep it coming.

verybody apparently abandons their jobs without explanation, little irritants that add up, making for a sloppy and fairly obvious story. What’s odd is that so much talent — the fine young actress Jessica Barden plays an earlier version of Laura — is involved in what is basically this week’s content.

It’s not necessarily bad, understand, just surprisingly underwhelming considering it’s called Houdini & Doyle. One expects fireworks; instead we get consternation.

Backstrom is dicey indeed. Every time he makes a move, it's got to be part of an intricate puzzle that will be solved. More often, it's just an obnoxious guy staggering off in a direction that turns out to be conveniently right.

Mariah’s World isn’t breaking any molds. But because the supreme diva Mariah is the star, there’s a certain ridiculous, hilarious, hyper-stylized charm to the proceedings.

You’d think “The One” would have all sorts of places to go, and yet it goes to few of them. Instead the show revolves around a murder that’s neither mysterious or terribly plausible.

The pilot is a bit clunky setting all this up (there’s also Jack’s local bartender and friend, Eddie, played by Chris Williams), but the actors are all pretty sharp, as are the cross-generational jokes.

As summertime smarmy yarns go, American Gothic holds promise.

Maybe all these different storylines are going to meet up, maybe they’re all going to keep wandering around. It will take great patience to find out which.

By the end of the first episode you have little idea what’s going on; by the end of the fourth show the series is starting to gel a bit, but questions have been piled upon questions and soooo many characters have been introduced you need a scorecard.

Although this is certainly the most narcissistic talk show in memory, it depends wholly on whether you enjoy Chelsea or not.

Mostly this is see Halston go up, then see Halston go down, a far too familiar story. Just because it’s real doesn’t make it interesting. “Halston” never bothers to go beyond the obvious.

Star-Crossed never really catches fire.

Sharon Stone is a vengeful heiress and that’s all she is; Corey Stoll is an incompetent hitman and that sums him up. This isn’t acting, it’s posing. Happily Judy Davis and Sophie Okonedo — both Oscar nominees — do eventually develop juicy parts. And “Ratched” becomes watchable entertainment. But that style-over-content thing makes you wonder if Ryan Murphy shows would be better off with less Ryan Murphy.

Like "The Simpsons," "Married with Children," "Malcolm in the Middle" and other Fox sitcoms, the ridiculous reach is what makes "The Mick" work.

"The Woman in the House..." suffers from pacing issues and is stretched painfully thin at eight episodes (some as brief as 22 minutes), although it might have worked better as a movie, with the absurdity heightened, the fat trimmed and a more clear comic tone.

It’s all very breathless, as it should be, and Carter scores points by weaponizing a rather large object at the first episode’s end. But the original “24” was character-driven to a large extent by Keifer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer and elevated even further when Mary Lynn Rajskub’s Chloe O’Brian came along. No such fire or chemistry is evident here.

Despite all the talent, this relentlessly serious endeavor toggles between being dramatically inert and outright silly.

There’s no sense of depth or attachment here, all is obvious and shallow and ultimately contrived. Again: Forgettable.

A lot of humor ends up left behind and most of it stops short. This is a show that cuts with a butter knife instead of a razor blade. And it cuts every which way instead of one direction. The result is, not surprisingly, a mess.

This is a disaster movie writ large for TV and the simple fact is, it works despite some none-too-subtle turns. You can’t help being enthralled by a story you wouldn’t want to be a part of.

It holds together as myriad characters come and go thanks to strong turns by Kazan as a sister driven to find out the truth about her brother, and Gabriel, as a wife who finds her reality in tatters. They are the anchors who keep this dervish series grounded.

Stephen King should get out more. This latest miniseries offering from the too prolific schlock horrormeister may be the week's big TV event, running Sunday, Monday and Thursday, but it plays like a greatest hits collection: Stephen's Best Spooks . Except, like so many such collections, once you get all the songs next to one another, you realize they sound alarmingly similar. [26 Jan 2002]

John Cho deserves a better show. Not that “Cowboy Bebop” is awful. It isn’t. It’s just typical. ... It also doesn’t help that the dialogue is uneven and stilted at times. Smooth talking characters need to talk smoothly.

This is, of course, the stuff of all serial dramas, but we usually see baby steps in some direction. That Was Then promises only chaos. [27 Sept 2002, p.1C]

It’s consistently inconsistent, purposely tacky and piles cliché upon cliché. It is trash TV. It could be a huge hit. ... The term guilty pleasure seems appropriate here. More guilt than pleasure, though.

It all looks good, but Arjona never gains real traction as Dorothy and some of the side stories become distractions. Still, Emerald City is an ambitious, if derivative, project for broadcast television.

The show’s biggest problem, though, is it’s hard to like either of its main characters.

It’s not bad television, really. It’s just by-the-CBS-book television.

You get the feeling creator Rockne S. O'Bannon is building a puzzle box to nowhere here, but Knepper's malevolent glare sets a nice, unhinged tone, and there's certainly plenty of room to move forward.

The proliferation of characters can be disorienting and super-Bibb is criminally underused, but “Jupiter’s Legacy” works for the most part if your idea of entertainment leans that way. Glittering costumes, eyes that shoot laser beams, explosions and destruction galore. That’s entertainment circa 2021.

Stars Rose Leslie and Theo James have an easygoing bicker-banter chemistry that lets this fantasy rom-com slide past its many ridiculous and overtly sentimental moments. No, it’s not a show for the ages, but it works as a ray of empty-headed spring-summer sunny optimism.

You end up identifying more with the people from outside the group, looking on as these people force friendships with folks from their past they’ve clearly outgrown. As viewers, we know how they feel.

Lopez probably has a sitcom in him, but this isn't it. And it has nothing to do with the Latino bent. "My Wife & Kids" is funny because Damon Wayans is funny and it's about a funny family. It has nothing to do with race. Same with George Lopez. It's bad because it's bad, and bad knows no color. [27 Mar 2002]

This show was originally called "American Wreck", until somebody at CBS realized that could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not a wreck, really, it just never gets rolling in any direction that looks interesting enough to follow.

For the most part, Lee Daniels traffics in tawdry messes. With Star, his latest TV project for Fox, he is at his tawdriest and messiest.

Wooden self-serious streaming content at its most mediocre.

This show is so far-fetched it makes "24" look like political reporting and "Lost" seem like a nature documentary.

Man with a Plan just makes you wish he’d take his sincere befuddlement elsewhere, someplace that mattered. Simply put, Matt LeBlanc is too good to be this irrelevant.

If "Dinotopia" doesn't come up with something else for our heroes to do other than rescue gentle folk from mean dinosaurs, the show is going to get repetitious fast. [28 Nov 2002]

This series reflects the way wealthy, neurotic, overly busy and sex-obsessed TV executives and producers think America lives, in other words, the way they live. They're wrong. Most of us are not TV executives. Please let Hidden Hills be hidden for good as soon as possible. [24 Sept 2002]

It's clear that this program is a compendium of every irritating cliche ever to assault a defenseless TV viewer. [7 Jul 2000]

Marienthal is an appealing kid and it's nice to see Sagal back at work, but this show is just a little too sex crazy and far too predictable. [2 Oct 2000, p.5F]

Essentially, Shameless is still Shameless: A raucous, shocking, moral battleground, a family comedy taken to twisted extremes, boosted by a uniformly fine cast, and consistently entertaining.

Power is as sexy, flashy and addictive as it has always been. The only difference is the women in Ghost’s world have a lot more to do and say--and the series is better for it.

What The Lost Tapes adds, beyond all the terrifying footage, is a plethora of perspectives and insights.

A soppy, radically inconsistent, corny and downright embarrassing soap opera.

It's all wholesome and kid-friendly, an ode to Christmas specials of yore and delivered with a knowing wink and a nod.