Scorsese and Winter and a whole host of talented episode writers and directors including Jonathan Tropper (Banshee), S. J. Clarkson, Debora Cahn, and Adam Rapp labor mightily to bend you to the will of Richie Finestra--to see and hear the music the way he does, as full of endless innovation and possibility--but too often, Vinyl traps you in a familiar cycle of sex and drugs and rock & roll.

The performers in Those Who Can’t are probably nice people--they’re clearly smart, even if their show’s concept is woefully derivative.

If Bee can sustain the tone she presented in this premiere episode, Full Frontal is going to be an exhilarating pleasure.

A completely successful attempt to re-position Michael Jackson as a profoundly self-aware artist, as opposed to the freakish and tragic celebrity that he became, Spike Lee’s Michael Jackson’s Journey From Motown To Off The Wall is both thrilling and instructional.

Animals is intriguing, and if you’re in the right mood, its leisurely pace and slacker rhythms can pull you in for a while.

The first night of Madoff is both entertaining and instructive.... But the first night ends on a breathless cliffhanger, and Thursday’s concluding night resolves that cliffhanger in a way that made me feel cheated of drama. And the TV movie only proceeds to slide further.

There’s a lot of speechifying, some of it is moving and fascinating, some of it sounding like penny-ante Eugene O’Neill. It’s also completely fascinating, and full of really wonderful performances.

This so-called “limited series” takes the facts of the Simpson case and, by bending and shaping the emphases of those facts, turns it into a startlingly stirring critique of racism, sexism, and the judicial system that still resonates today. To be sure, the series also contains its share of laughs and excess.

It’s got the makings of a cult following, if not a terribly long run in this country.

Over the first five episodes made available for review, the show--created by Peter Mattei with producers including Peter Tolan (Rescue Me) and Paul Giamatti--amounts to a hill of beans. Beans with a lot of gassy verbiage.

There are frequently times when the production comes across like an episode of late-period 7th Heaven. But at its best, Recovery Road does a good job of capturing the complex web of both emotions and actions that are taken in the journey to sobriety suggested by the show title.

I found the series irritating because I find Handler funny very rarely. If you’re a fan, you’ll have a great time, because what this series should be called is Chelsea Does Chelsea.

The most obnoxious show of the new year thus far, Lucifer traduces the character created by Neil Gaiman and developed by writer Mike Carey in the Lucifer comic-book series.

Overall, this seems as though it will be one of Syfy’s most engaging new series as the channel continues to get back into the hardcore sci-fi and fantasy genres.

The tropical backdrop looks great--it’s like watching an episode of Survivor with a bunch of hyped-up macho actors (in other words, exactly like an episode of Survivor, minus Jeff Probst). But you have to put up with a lot of macho bluster and silliness, with dialogue that sometimes shades over into Three Stooges territory. (“Why were you running?” “I was running because you were running!”) If your tolerance for tough-guy bravado with flashes of violence is high, you might enjoy running with these mad dogs.

The content tends to be heavy on example and light on analysis and interpretation. The show could stand to slow down a bit on the ways--as the often too clever for its own good narration says--“we upload our very selves to the place we call the cloud,” and ponder the implications of all this internet interaction.

London Spy proceeds at a languid pace that will either draw you in, entranced, or repel you with tedium. I was drawn in, yet not quite entranced, but the series gets both better (it always helps anything when Charlotte Rampling shows up) and more flawed as it proceeds.

[Chip's mother] is played with Baskets’ one true flash of inspiration by Louie Anderson. Anderson inhabits Christine Baskets with a wonderful, tart delicacy.... Chip Baskets is most often a selfish creep. It’s a brave move for a performer to make, and congratulations to Galifianakis for his commitment. Just don’t ask me to keep watching him in this role.

[Davies and director Tom Harper] reduce, expand, or toss out numerous plot lines and characters, all in the service of heavy-breathing romance and big-spectacle battle scenes in a kind of young-adult-novel depiction of Russian families caught up in 19th-century tumult.... Old pros such as Jim Broadbent, Stephen Rea, and Brian Cox are around to lend the soap opera proceedings some gravity.

The whole concept--fleshed out by producers Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, and Marc Guggenheim--has the potential for amusement, especially in its mix of motivations.... [But] There are elements that weaken the show. The dialogue is stilted (“Grant me the permission to change the timeline just this once!”), the acting, with the exception of the fluid Garber and the amusingly tough slouching of Lotz, tends to be stiff

The writing is uneven.... But then there are numerous other fine touches.

In the season premiere, the primary story line involves Nina, as a babysitter, trying to get Elmo and Abby to calm down enough to be put to bed. “You’re too excited,” she says. “You need to do something relaxing.” This is already a better premise for a half-hour show than 98 percent of the frenetic sitcoms on the air.... The Sesame Street touchstones remain in place: There is the letter (“B”) and number (“10”) of the day, for example.

Idiotsitter, a smartly crass comedy, plays like a treatment for a wacky buddy-movie, shrunk to a smaller scale for TV.

They [Duchovny and Anderson] slip back into their roles with a gratifying conviction, if not quite enough to make you forget their recent prominence in Californication or The Fall or Aquarius or Hannibal.... The new X-Files hour is fine for what it is, but it lacks the kick of minty-freshness, in favor of the musty tang of mythology.

A funny sitcom with the good-posture backbone of truth.

Throughout everything, Lopez gives a solid performance — perhaps the best dramatic work she’s done since her first-rate film, Out of Sight (1998). Liotta is excellent as well.... But Shades of Blue’s biggeset problem is this: beyond Lopez and Liotta, the rest of the cops are bland clichés (de Matteo’s marital-woes subplot is particularly trite), and as the series proceeds, Harlee’s efforts to keep her FBI-informant status a secret from her co-workers becomes very strained.

It’s like an extremely well-acted power-point presentation on what to do, and what not to do, when a sexual assault occurs.

The Shannara Chronicles is a lot of hooey with hotsy young actors.