THE COOL KIDS:  Friday 8:30PM on FOX One takeaway from FOX’s terrible new sitcom THE COOL KIDS is that Martin Mull is in a particularly ruinous rut.  Four years ago, he co-starred in FOX’s awful Dads, a quickly canceled clunker about naughty oldsters.  Now here he is back again in Cool Kids, which moves […]

  MURPHY BROWN:  Thursday 9:30PM on CBS MURPHY BROWN was Prestige TV comedy before that concept really existed.  When it went on the air 30 years ago, it was a year before the arrival of Seinfeld, and 5 years ahead of Frasier, and while there were other intelligent, funny sitcoms on the air, Diane English’s […]

  A MILLION LITTLE THINGS:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC ABC’s A MILLION LITTLE THINGS is about as ambitious as broadcast TV intends to get this season, which in this case means This Is Us by way of The Big Chill.  As in the latter, the show revolves around a group of old friends, Eddie (David […]

  SINGLE PARENTS:  Wednesday 9:30PM on ABC ABC’s post-Modern Family Wednesday sitcom SINGLE PARENTS was created by Elizabeth Meriwether and JJ Philbin, respectively the creator and a senior writer/producer of New Girl (the pilot is credited to Philbin from a story by both of them), and it’s an attempt to extend that show’s brand of […]

  FBI:  Tuesday 9PM on CBS Dick Wolf and CBS have always seemed as made for each other as the leads of a rom-com.  And as in that genre, only outside interference has kept the King and Network of Procedurals from falling into a passionate airport-gate embrace before now.  In this case, it’s been their […]

  NEW AMSTERDAM:  Tuesday 10PM on NBC You can learn much of what you need to know about NBC’s medical procedural NEW AMSTERDAM from a bit of the David Schulner pilot script: DOCTOR 1:  Look–if you can’t help [name of patient] as a doctor, then just help her as a human being. DOCTOR 2:  Am […]

  MANIFEST:  Mondays 10PM on NBC Of all the Lost rip-offs we’ve seen over the years, NBC’s MANIFEST seems from its pilot to be the laziest, and perhaps the worst.  Creator Jeff Rake (he has the eminently forgettable The Mysteries of Laura to his credit) has replaced the dense mythology of Lost with a set-up […]

  MAGNUM, P.I.:  Monday 9PM on CBS As everyone knows, the 2018-19 CBS TV season has turned out to be the final one overseen by Les Moonves, the longtime network mogul ousted after allegations of sexual misconduct.  It’s fitting that the first new series of his last season is that definitive Moonves-ian object, a rebooted […]