The pilot (which is ABC has released to the media) is a polished, entertaining and promising half-hour of comedy about a well-to-do American family.

A weird photocopy containing little atmosphere and less emotional resonance.

This shoddy program is nothing more than exploitative, misogynist trash.

It's all a little pell-mell, but it just about holds together and Viola Davis is ferocious in the lead role.

This iteration of the very successful "NCIS" franchise is, unsurprisingly, as competent as all the others, Bakula is typically good and it's nice that the show actually shot in New Orleans.

The show is so bland and forgettable that it gives me no real reason to return.

Well, this is a pile of nonsense, but at least it's more or less inoffensive nonsense.

It's too dour and it takes itself too seriously, but it has potential.

So far, it's contrived, predictable and seemingly allergic to ambiguity and subtext.

To really hook into this drama, you have to care about the kids and their fates, but to me, they all remained predictable types throughout, and the show did a poor job of showcasing the terrific Octavia Spencer.

What a big mess, and what a disappointing waste of Debra Messing.

Catherine's "patch" in Happy Valley may be more limited than the big chunks of Baltimore covered by Bunk and McNulty, but morally and emotionally, this fantastic drama goes deep.

Gretchen and Jimmy's story, which acquires surprising emotional weight as the season progresses, is highly addictive on its own merits.

There is a welcome weighty quality to this week's adventure tale, but its sense of substance comes from embracing the rich potential of the character's depth, not from overstuffing the hour with an excess of "clever" meta-commentary.

Unfortunately, heaping helpings of atmosphere do not make up for the lack of a strong narrative thread or the fact that the characters are so thinly drawn that it's hard to care about anything they do.

This British import is weird, slight and lovingly made, and perhaps most importantly, it's smart enough not to overstay its welcome.

There are times when Outlander shows glimmerings of that vitality and emotional depth, and if we're lucky, this earnest drama will keep heading in that direction.

The results of Soderbergh's latest foray into series television are frequently terrific.

It moves along with purpose and energy, but it's often at its best when finding colorful details and or allowing small, telling moments to breathe.

Despite a great deal of visible effort, the first four episodes of The Strain never succeeded in making Corey Stoll's epidemiologist character even remotely compelling. Unfortunately most of the other characters are even more superficial and predictable, which made it nearly impossible to stay engaged when they began doing dumb things. The only real bright spot in The Strain is David Bradley.

Though Extant is competently made, it shares a problem with another new TV show with a big name attached. Like "Extant," "The Strain," which arrives Sunday and boasts Guillermo Del Toro as one of its executive producers, feels kind of bland and bloodless.

The Leftovers is interesting television, even if, in the early going, it's not quite sure of what it wants to be or where it wants to go.

It's surprising to me that this ever got past the development stage, because nothing about Tyrant truly works. It's a halting, strained hodgepodge that ends up being an awkward mixture of bland and offensive.

This wonderful, resonant show clearly has a deep belief in the power of redemption and connection.

Syfy's Defiance doesn't just cement its place as a well-made and enjoyable show, it continues to serve as a welcome corrective to some recent trends in TV sci-fi.

Even if not every storyline sings and if Season 2 occasionally lacks the forward momentum that Pipex gave it, I still marvel at the urgency that underpins much of OITNB.

There's a tentativeness to Halt's first hour--it doesn't end especially strongly--but overall, the drama has a mostly credible pilot and lead actors who will probably be able take the show in compelling directions.

Everything around Malkovich is workmanlike and rather predictable, if competent.

Undateable, a show that does not set out to reinvent the multi-camera hangout comedy but execute that format reasonably well, turned out to be a generally pleasant surprise.

The film just about rises above its many flaws, thanks to a some committed and affecting performances from seasoned actors like Mark Ruffalo, Joe Mantello and a surprisingly effective Julia Roberts.

Penny Dreadful's gory moments are deployed strategically, and the adjective that best describes this show is not "bloody" but "soulful."

There's still nothing like it on TV, because there aren't too many people out there capable of excavating their brains with this much rigor, wit and insight.

Going by the first two hours, this new incarnation of the show exactly as 24-ish as you'd want it to be.

The weight of expectations on this new season were great, and if this plucky show staggers a little under that weight, that's understandable. I'm fully on board for Season 2, and I have every reason to believe Orphan Black will keep evolving in the direction of perfection. Science demands it.

Fargo develops into a solid pleasure; it's studded with telling details, excellent performances and satisfying subplots Fargo" develops into a solid pleasure; it's studded with telling details, excellent performances and satisfying subplots.

It's not as ambitious as Mad Men, of course, but it has its own very real pleasures.

In execution, Turn is plodding, predictable and a bit confusing, though I might have tried harder to follow the plot had any of the characters made it worth my while. As it is, the characters are mostly paper-thin and forgettable.

Even when the show is scene-setting mode (as it is in these early episodes), GoT now excels at slipping exposition into meaty character moments, and the cast is terrific at nailing what's in the scripts and much more beyond that.

It arrives fully formed and packed with smart observations that will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest technology, modern capitalism and geek culture. Even if you don't care about those things, Silicon Valley works as a well-crafted ensemble comedy about a particularly eccentric workplace.

The good news is this modest show already has a number of things in its favor: Its pace is bracing, the choices are difficult and the danger the characters face is real.

Crisis is efficient without really ever becoming enticing.

Believe substitutes mawkish sentiment for character development and thinks mysterious incidents and procedural beats constitute a story.

There are a lot of shows on TV that are fun, many that are educational and a number that are beautiful to look at, but it's rare for a show to have all of those qualities in abundance.

Very few shows are able to combine pleasurable episodic storytelling so deftly with solid character building and delicious suspense, but the first five episodes of the new season do that with style, not to mention period-perfect wigs.

ABC is advertising that the show's creators wrote "The Hangover," but imagine that movie with the heart and charm removed, and you're left with these skeevy remains.

The cast is very good and if the central relationships are beefed up, it could be a keeper.

The problem is, like "Sean Saves the World" and "The Michael J. Fox Show," this show is formulaic, slightly frantic and relies too much on unearned sentiment.

There's a tentative blandness to 'Star-Crossed' that hindered my ability to care about any of its broadly sketched characters.

Cooper does a solid job with the title role, and the early installments have an engaging briskness. However, Fleming drags a bit in its second half; given its slender budget, it might have worked better as a three-episode miniseries.

As it did last season, the show thoughtfully explores ideas about how belief systems spread and what people do when confronted with gods--or a God--that makes little sense to them.

What's mystifying is why Starz and the creators of Black Sails seem to think that, given the expanding array of options available to consumers, any content creators can get away with peddling fare that can't even manage to be consistently mediocre.

"He's a lawyer--but with a twist!" is not a formula that the big networks will ever stop trying to perfect. But the execution of that idea isn't quite up to par in the first episode of Rake.

The performances are nuanced and subtle.... Bakula's presence and air of experience add weight and depth to a show that occasionally seems too slight for its ambitions.

Helix doesn't reinvent the virus thriller, but it's a solid slice of genre entertainment that offers some creepy visuals and believable scares.

A taut, enjoyable second season.

[Novelist Joe Pizzolatto and director Cary Joji Fukunaga's] cohesive viewpoint helped me to forgive True Detective for some of its rougher spots, and the poetic visuals undoubtedly strengthened the most effective aspects of the drama.

All in all, the terrific Enlisted is one of the most pleasing network comedies to come along in quite some time.

Bradley brings a great deal of subtle pathos and doughty courage Hartnell's predicament, and ultimately, An Adventure becomes much more than a fun swing through TARDIS trivia. It becomes a story about hard work, ingenuity and a classy passing of the torch.

[A] low-key but thoughtfully realized gem.

The show may be for niche tastes, but it doesn't overstay its welcome and it manages to go to some demented and surprisingly emotionally places. And then it's done.

[Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan] are simply tremendous throughout, and they are the main reason to stick with the show, even when some of the supporting characters grate and parts of it feel like exposition-heavy excerpts from Thomas Maier's book of the same name.

This new season of Homeland.... comes across at times like a newborn foal on wobbly legs.

When Williams can rein in his hyper qualities, he can be an effective presence. And at least he knows his way around a joke, unlike Gellar, who, post-"Buffy," still hasn't risen above the level of the writing she's given (and the writing for her here is flat and one-dimensional).

It's a strained, generic affair.

Trophy Wife is charming and buoyant, and it has fun with tasks that feel like homework on many other new shows: It creates specific characters, establishes a consistent tone and sets up a host of relationships that are full of potential.

The Blacklist is never going to be anyone's idea of great art, but at least it has a pulpy kind of momentum that may well be worth watching for a while; I will stick around to see whether Spader's performance really is the only dish on the menu.

Hostages unfolds with the crisp efficiency of a humorless event planner checking tasks off a list.

The rhythms, the "jokes" and the pace are all stiff and overwrought, and priority seems to be giving Sean Hayes a huge number of opportunities to mug for the camera.

The bigger problem is, this show clearly has designs on being the next "Modern Family" and yet it isn't charming in the slightest. To hook viewers, the pilot needs to make them care about at least one person in this ensemble, and it can't manage that.

The only thing I can think about when I watch the Millers is that Margo Martindale deserves so much better than this, and I wish she was free of this show's hackneyed, overly broad "humor."

Super Fun Night isn't just bad, it's infuriatingly bad, given Wilson's likability, game energy and overall potential as a TV personality.

The existence of this comedy, which pretends to be brash but mainly succeeds in being more offensive, unfunny and predictable than Dads, told me that we have angered the gods.

The Goldbergs has a solid adult cast, but the whole thing leans heavily on broad humor and cartoonish moments--and did I mention that it's LOUD.

Creatively speaking, Dads comes off as if it were a much-resented homework assignment for all involved.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine has a genial, pleasing loopiness and very solid work from an intelligently assembled cast.

In its pilot, it achieved its modest goals without leaning too far into pompousness (as is the case with "Almost Human") or slicing off too much ham (hello "The Blacklist").

As was the case with the second season, Season 3 of Luther is only four hours long, and the drama would probably be more satisfying if it didn't try to cover so many bases in that limited running time.

[A] muscular yet surprisingly intelligent action drama.

The drama, which is an adaptation of a U.K. series of the same name, tries way too hard to be a Serious Cable Drama. The strain almost turns it into a parody of the genre.

Broadchurch manages to be both a finely crafted piece of suspenseful entertainment and also an emotionally resonant examination of grief, loss and moral confusion.

This amiable, entertaining show isn't trying to change the world or strain the boundaries of scripted television, and that's just fine.

Orange is one of the best new programs of the year, and the six episodes I've seen have left me hungry to see more.

Mismatched cops forced to work together is one of the oldest TV tropes in the book, but The Bridge builds such a realistic, detailed world around the detectives here that the dynamic is often fresh.

Much of the show simply feels disjointed, or tired, or both. Despite intermittent flashes of liveliness, the pacing of Ray Donovan is off, especially at first, when it feels as though the show is trying to cover too much ground and cram in too much backstory about the Donovans' troubled past in Boston.

The drama might have had more depth and texture if more time had been spent contextualizing their relationships instead of just showing the ladies putting up with a series of oafs. But there's only so much Bletchley can do in three installments, and it has many sustaining qualities to offset the relatively thin supporting characters.

It's admirable that the production wanted to be so truthful to the experiences of the damaged men who emerge from long prison stints, but there are a few too many languid shots of Daniel staring at things that mystify him. But it's worth sticking with Rectify, which often achieves a tone of conflicted, bittersweet sincerity.

Defiance is not just a smart, well-crafted TV show with a good cast and an adventurous flavor, it's also indisputably science fiction, which is a relief.

It's the sloppy approach to context and the tabloid-y aspects of Vice that are ultimately harder to take than the self-aggrandizing bro-ness of it all.

If you watch Hannibal, it's likely to stay with you for days. Despite the darkness at the heart of it, that's a good thing this time around.

The AMC drama is full of sharp writing, ambiguous segues, effective surprises and the usual array of pitch-perfect performances.

It takes a bit longer than it should for the viewer to assemble a working knowledge of the show's core mystery, and there are some tonal issues (some attempts at jokey moments are a bit jarring), but overall, Orphan Black is a quite watchable thriller that plunges its heroine into a murky world that almost seems designed to drive her mad.

I just want my favorite shows to be able to break my heart, and the more broadly Game of Thrones ranges and the longer its cast list grows, the tougher it will be for the drama to do that. It's impossible not to be drawn into the saga, however (aside from one or two strands that are filler and/or confusingly laid out).

Top of the Lake is [not] free of idiosyncratic digressions and the occasionally odd segue, but it does a critically important thing very well: It draws you into a specific world and it quickly makes that world's textures, relationships and stakes matter.

All in all, the stories about the town feel somewhat contrived, and the lead characters' arcs feel predictable, despite the texture the actors are occasionally able to give the material.

This middling-to-mediocre Reelz production is at least a few notches above a Syfy Saturday night movie. The special effects in "Ring" are sometimes passable and sometimes fairly terrible, but there is an actual story on display and manages to be somewhat timely.

While Hall (who plays Tietjens' wife, Sylvia) and Cumberbatch do a fine job of portraying two mismatched people who are nevertheless stuck with each other for a bunch of social, cultural and personal reasons--some of which even they don't understand--Parade's End is often at war with itself.

In the two episodes NBC sent for review, Port and Guarascio are respectful to what came before--possibly too respectful, but the desire to not rock the boat is understandable.

It's oddly disconnected from the idea of art as transformation, the show's characters are thinly drawn and it's usually fairly easy to see where the story is heading.