THE VIKINGS:  Sunday 10PM on History Channel In its pilot, at least, THE VIKINGS, which marks History Channel’s first step into the world of continuing scripted drama after its massive success last year with the Hatfields and McCoys miniseries, is so rudimentary a piece of historical fiction that it might as well have been […]

  CAUSEWAY (Apple – November 4):  After a decade as one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, there was reason to wonder whether the Jennifer Lawrence who first came to prominence with the Sundance movie Winter’s Bone still had a gritty indie-movie gear.  She returns to those roots with Causeway, for which she also serves as a […]

  People have been accusing Julian Schnabel’s MIRAL of being propaganda for the Palestinian cause, but in a way that’s an insult to propagandists, who are usually focused and effective at what they do.  Miral is more of a mess than that, a no-doubt heartfelt story about one of the most historically complicated situations in […]

> V/H/S, which screened as part of Sundance’s Park City At Midnight series, is a gimmick piled upon a gimmick. First is the horror anthology itself, familiar from the Twilight Zone movie and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery TV show, among many others.  In this case, half a dozen unrelated short films, each from a different […]

  THE KILLING:  Sunday 9PM on AMC By its second season, THE KILLING was as ridiculed as any serious drama on television this side of Smash.  There were its mannerisms–just how many flights to her fiancee in California could Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) narrowly miss?–its perpetually gloomy, rainy atmospherics, its blind corner and red herring-laden […]

  It’s Year 40 for SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, and like many prosperous middle-aged citizens, SNL has no interest at all in shaking up its comfortable life.  Tonight’s season premiere could, with a few cast adjustments, have been the premiere of any season over the past decade.  Even though there were only two franchise sketches on […]

  To use an analogy that’s unfortunately apt, GLEE is heading out the door like a Broadway diva who won’t admit that her voice is shot and she can’t remember her lines anymore.  The show probably would have been canceled this season, after a run of ratings that have gone beyond disappointing to flat-out dreadful, […]

  BLINDSPOT:  Monday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… NBC’s strategy this fall seems to be to play the deja vu card and hope for the best.  Heroes Reborn returns on Thursday as though its ratings hadn’t cratered into oblivion just 5 years ago, The Player feels like basic cable circa 1998, […]