Episodes isn't a weighty series at all, but these actors elevate every scene they are in with spot-on comic timing and a graceful ability to play a range of conflicting emotions at once.

The best reason to watch, however, is the music and the group’s on-stage performance. Whether or not you were a boy band fan in the 1980s, this is top-quality stuff.

What's especially impressive in Season 3 is how cogently and clearly events in the two different universes are handled. It's not hard to tell which is which and it's not hard to follow how the two worlds are connected, and those connections have only deepened the mythology in pleasing ways.

Fortitude reminds me of "Borgen" because neither show is loud; nothing about this kind of drama is bombastic or outsized. Fortitude takes its time as it builds up its icy, workaday world and depicts the day to day lives of its residents.

It remains invigoratingly itself and it continues to land in Hannah in a series of situations in which layers of thematic complexity stack up like delayed planes circling a busy airport.

The new cop drama The Chicago Code resembles its lead characters: It's focused, determined and ambitious--and sometimes it tries to do too much. Still, the handsome Code succeeds far more often than it strikes out.

The tacked-on attempt to give the show some heart ("See, they're just crazy, mixed-up regular folks with good intentions!") was so disappointingly cynical and contrived. It was a transparent attempt to give depth to something that had so vociferously lacked it.

There are fitful moments that work, but the show also manages to shoot itself in the foot regularly.

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

The diverting and enjoyable Terriers occupies a different stylistic territory, but there's a noir strain underneath its shaggy exterior. As the best detective stories do, it features a smart, flawed lead character who is too stubborn and inquisitive for his own good.

Fresh Off the Boat is good--at times, very good. Without question, it's one of the best new shows of the broadcast network season: funny, well-acted and promising on a number of levels.

The parts that do work possess the doom-laden yet strangely optimistic romanticism of Milch's best work.

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.

While a tale of restless discontent in a rich California coastal town offers an intriguing ride, it’s also a deliberate one. Think of it as a Sunday drive, at a leisurely pace that enables the passengers to absorb every detail of the scenery.

There are some bumps in the road as the show lays out its premise, but Supergirl has a number of things going for it: Melissa Benoist is convincing and charming in the lead role; the supporting cast, which features the likes of Calista Flockhart, Chyler Leigh, Mehcad Brooks and David Harewood, is very good; and the leaders of the writing team behind it.

It's certainly worth keeping up with Key & Peele, given how strong and confident those outings are.

The good news is that the unusually ambitious Awake succeeds at several of the things it's attempting, and star Jason Isaacs grounds the drama with a charismatic yet subtle performance.

The good news is that this show's building blocks are very strong. The dialogue, the world and the cast are all enjoyable, and the show simply exudes 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.

There is a flatness to the supporting characters--Saul's wife and Carrie's sister are now garden-variety Prestige Cable nags--and a measured predictability to the overall story that drains too much tension from even the sight of a wig-free Corey Stoll. Yet Mandy Patinkin and F. Murray Abraham are still fantastic, the show still employs top-notch directors and Homeland can still rustle up an atmosphere of tense isolation when it needs to. All in all, many of the tin-eared elements would more or less tolerable if I were still intrigued by Carrie Mathison.

The action sequences and fights are briskly shot and edited, the supporting cast is acerbically great.... The worst element of Strike Back’s final go-round looms pretty large in the first half of the season. It’s a contrived story line involving Scott’s son, who turns up in Bangkok wanting to get to know his dad.

I'm not discouraged by the show's early growing pains; the cast is still full of good actors, Last Resort displays an admirable amount of forward momentum and the hiccups along the way are just another indication of how many chances the show is taking.

The witches are an intriguing presence, but other parts of the show aren't casting the same spell as the magnificent Shaw. If you're addicted to True Blood's brand of smoldering melodrama, well, there's a lot of it this season. And it looks as though about half of it might actually be worth watching.

The relationships that are sketched out in the first hour are promising.

There are some promising moments Episodes, and as the characters move beyond stereotypes, some of the story lines begin to pay off in amusing and even touching ways.

The two leads lack any kind of chemistry, platonic or otherwise, and the storytelling lacks the smarts and insight of one of TV's best Sherlockian creations, "House."

It’s amusing at times, provocative at times, because I Love Dick often explores the practice of contemporary navel-gazing by satirizing it.

Its sprightly first hour is one of the most solidly entertaining pilots of the fall season, and it did the most important thing that first episodes must do: It made me eager to see what comes next.

Given how wonderful its first season was, the fact that Broadchurch has turned into such a muddle is the bigger disappointment. Despite the usual array of finely calibrated performances, the second season simply doesn't work, in large part because it consciously and deliberately undoes much of what was powerful about the shattering conclusion to the first season.

Now in its second season, Portlandia has matured into a comedic concoction that is consistently pleasing.

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.

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.

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.

Once Duhamel and Winters settle into a rhythm and begin showing more nuanced aspects of their characters, I began to enjoy "Battle Creek" for the light, reasonably well-constructed crime drama that it is, and as the season develops, Shore is able to do a few interesting things with the question of whether people can truly change.

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.

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.

Lone Star doesn't have quite the same sense of place as 'FNL,' and it's far more of a traditional soap than the NBC/DirecTV drama. Still, Voight and especially Keith, who projects palpable charisma, give terrific performances as the strong, stubborn men trying to bend Bob to their wills. This is no 'Dallas' but a sincere look at one man's attempt to go straight without alienating everyone he loves.

The first two hours of Hit and Miss come across as a finely observed, well-acted independent film, and I wasn't really sure whether there was a lot more story left to tell as Episode 2 came to a close, but I'm willing to let Mia prove me wrong.

Veep simply isn't particularly fresh or funny, and most of its jokes are telegraphed from a long way away.

The drama is every bit as brisk and engaging as its lead character, and I can only list one real objection to the show: its brevity.

This small gem of a film manages to be a finely drawn character piece and a searching exploration of what powerful people will (and won't) do to keep their countries safe, and it provides some great actors with meaty roles along the way.

There's no getting around it: There are just big problems in the execution of this engaging premise, and I doubt I'll be able to get beyond what I've already seen, given how regularly the show turned me off in the early going.

There’s still plenty of humor, always bending toward the absurd, and Archer’s time travel has not stripped him of his signature phrases, attitude or fondness for bourbon and wordplay.

White Collar's return is a sprightly, enjoyable affair--stylishly shot, well acted and deftly threaded with moral ambiguity.

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.

It's weird that in the show's fifth season, the stakes actually feel lower than they did a couple of years ago.

It's got a smart pace, good performances and it's a relief not to have to commit to something long-term.

There’s a fair amount of darkness in this story, because the lives it chronicles were not easy. There’s also a fair amount of humor. Mostly there’s admiration for three women who in a very short time accomplished things their world saw no reason to think they could.

The unsettled, rule-breaking personality of the central character, his affair with an underdeveloped female character, a murderer who's too clever by half--these things aren't hard to find on TV. And though Bosch is credible, the episodes I saw weren't at such a fantastic level of execution that I have to see more of it and feel the need to shout from the rooftops about it.

Gleeson does a first-rate job with a character we’ve seen before, the tormented cop who plunges into a battle where he’s seemingly outflanked and outgunned. Treadaway is suitably troubling as a kid who represses such waves of rage and frustration that we don’t doubt it could explode somewhere. That the causes of his rage play as clichés doesn’t make him less menacing, though it makes the larger story less than subtle. Call it a solid campfire yarn.

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

I'm happy to report that not being a fan of James Van Der Beek from the "Creek" didn't prevent me from enjoying the actor in the moderately amusing ABC sitcom.

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

The way to keep both casual and hardcore sci-fi fans in the fold is to tell stories that revolve around memorable characters, to take on compelling questions and to give the tales intellectual and emotional plausibility. Torchwood: Miracle Day doesn't quite have all those elements nailed down all the time, but it gets reasonable chunks of those things right--enough to keep me tuning in and hoping that the story gains coherence (and not just speed) over the course of the season.

It's essentially interested in the ways in which lonely, damaged characters allow themselves to find comfort in a world that has no fixed moral moorings, and the wounded tenacity of these people is every bit as intriguing as the progress of that mystery briefcase.

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

There are some promising ideas and story lines here, but the pilot far outshone subsequent episodes in terms of quality and efficiency.

Blue Bloods sounds good on paper. Yet despite its good cast and competent execution, this drama about a family of New York cops feels a bit perfunctory. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the drama, which is ably headed by Tom Selleck, but there's every chance that Blue Bloods will turn out to be just another cop show.

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

It's light and diverting yet respectful of its characters and their histories, thus it can serve as a pleasant, earnest counterbalance to some of TV's darker dramas.

The good news is, Sarah, Cosima and the other clones retain most of the real estate in this gorgeously grimy biothriller, and watching the established characters relate to each other is still a lot of fun.

This show knows what it wants to do and it churns through its story with efficiency and the gloss that comes from executing the ABC house style with energy and a bit of flair.

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.

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.

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.

Given how much potential this premise contains, I dearly wish The Fades could decide what it wants to do.

There's a weird stew of ideas about expectations, desire and anger roiling around in Mindy, but as they're explored here, those ideas don't cohere into a show that's either funny or cogent.

I came away from HBO's five-part series with a great deal of respect for Winslet's impassioned performance, but so many other aspects of Mildred Pierce worked against Winslet's naturalistic style that parts of the miniseries ended up being, frankly, a slog.

Empire is being marketed as a bold, original show from high-profile artists, but it feels strangely tentative in its first episode.

Everything about Covert Affairs feels bland and generic: Annie herself (Perabo is efficient but charisma-free), her missions (this week's assignment is completely predictable), her relationship with her sister (the wonderful Anne Dudek, wasted in a marginal role), and especially her relationship with her boyfriend, another CIA operative.

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

It would be a mistake to count this scruffy little comedy out. It's really charming.

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.

I'll keep watching, given the caliber of the cast and the solidly made pilot, and I'll hope that Vegas gives these actors more to do than standing over bodies and leveling shotguns at city slickers.

What a light, yet satisfying treat this show turned out to be.

Full of fast-paced banter and pop culture lines, Riverdale starts this road trip as a fine ride.

When it comes to espionage stories or action-adventure in general, originality isn't as crucial as a good execution of the basics, and in that regard, the first hour of Nikita delivers.

Though Babylon is pleasant and reasonably well executed, there's not too much to grab on to at the center of the drama; it makes moves toward engagement of knotty issues, only to ultimately skate along their surface. But Nesbitt is typically excellent and the show's depiction of London, its cops and its cynical politics can be diverting.

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.

It's almost a shot-for-shot remake of the original, but that's not what makes this version a derivative TV zombie. It's the lack of atmosphere and the near-complete absence of a mournful, mysterious tone that makes the new version feel empty and hollow.

There's still something winning and relevant about their particular blend of cluelessness and surprisingly sharp commentary.

Wilfred is still a work in progress; in the early stages, the relationship between the dog and the man feels a little claustrophobic, but as the episodes progress, Ryan's world begins to expand a bit, which is a good thing.

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

Stylish, charming and thoroughly engaging.

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

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.

It's the kind of show that could well settle into a nice groove once it gets a few episodes in, especially given that all the performances are top notch, including those from Lucy Punch and Echo Kellum as friends of the title duo.

As it is, the decent but unspectacular Copper comes off as "Deadwood Cop," minus the Milch.

When We Rise doesn’t pick up a story at its beginning and doesn’t leave a story with an ending. What it delivers is a game-changing saga from the middle.

The Event was a well-paced hour that played skillfully with time, and if the characters were a little thin, well, it's a pilot--it'll take time to give characters shading and dimension.

It’s by no means the deepest thing you’ll watch this year, but you’d have to search far and wide to find a program that hits its chosen target with such concentrated glee.

The main problem is, Man Seeking Woman tries for the kind of weird, imaginative wit you find on "Archer" or "Louie" but the new show doesn't have the craft, ideas or skills to back it up.

Yet despite the dude-tastic charisma that Caan brings to Danno, I can't quite see a reason to watch Hawaii Five-0 again, given that each week, the stories will probably feel like something we've already seen on 'NCIS,' 'NCIS Los Angeles' or any number of the 'CSIs.' Bad guys will be caught, the team shall be triumphant. Rinse and repeat.

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

By casting Feore, Arnaud, Harris and the magnetic Irons in this Gothic soap opera about randy popes and their enemies, and by taking the world of 15th Century Rome moderately seriously, Jordan ensured that this drama would be more than just a mildly cheesy guilty pleasure. It's not much more than that, mind you, but you won't have to go to confession after you've partaken of this Showtime costume drama.

The truth of the matter is, the pilot is well-paced and the first half is especially fun.

Ben Feldman and Cristin Milioti are good actors and undeniably adorable together in this competent pilot.... The charm of its cast and, ideally, sharp writing from the NBC show could keep it afloat.

The odd-couple pairing is one of the oldest ones in the TV playbook, and the two mismatched waitresses in 2 Broke are good company, at least in the show's initial outing.