Vampires may live forever, but TV shows don’t, and tonight the coffin closed on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, the pre-superhero champion of the then-fledgling CW network when it debuted 8 years ago.  In truth, the close of business was a season or two past due:  not only were the ratings way down from their peak, […]

  LONGMIRE:  Monday 10PM on A&E LONGMIRE may be the best CBS show not to air on CBS.  A cleanly-executed, straightforward procedural that skews old (3/4 of its viewers are over 50), it’s a show that knows what it wants to accomplish and doesn’t try to reach for more.  The Season 2 premiere, written by […]

  DEVIOUS MAIDS:  Sunday 10PM on Lifetime Previously… on DEVIOUS MAIDS:  A quintet of maids toil for the vapid, selfish, and sometimes downright evil well-to-do of Beverly Hills.  Carmen (Roselyn Sanchez) hopes contact with her music-star boss will jump-start her own singing career.  Zoila (Judy Reyes) is trying to keep her daughter Valentina (Edy Ganem) […]

  THE SLAP:  Thursday 8PM on NBC – Potential DVR Alert THE SLAP is strikingly different from everything else on broadcast television–it’s unusual even by cable standards, with an indie film, non-genre mindset that brings little to mind beyond Showtime’s The Affair and HBO’s Togetherness (and even The Affair has its flash-forward murder plot to help […]

  The season finale (if it’s lucky) of TNT’s mediocre MURDER IN THE FIRST was rather sad, pallid proof that the powerhouse writer/producer Steven Bochco has been outstripped by the genre he helped invent, the serialized adult crime drama.  Murder In the First tried, sometimes painfully, to be newfangled, throwing in the latest in basic […]

  Although Starz was a co-financier of THE WHITE QUEEN, the show was produced by the BBC predominantly for a British audience, so it helped to have a working (or at least a Wikipedia) knowledge of 15th-century English history to get the most out of it.  For example, it would have been difficult to appreciate […]

  GIRLFRIENDS’ GUIDE TO DIVORCE:  Tuesday 10PM on Bravo – If Nothing Else Is On… Bravo has established a very successful brand for itself in the unscripted realm, notably with the Real Housewives franchise and its seemingly innumerable spin-offs, and now with GIRLFRIENDS’ GUIDE TO DIVORCE, the network is attempting to extend that brand to […]

> (Note:  SHOWBUZZDAILY had a pilot report on this show back when it was called Are You There, Vodka?  It’s Me, Chelsea.  Since then, it’s been substantially recast and reshot, not to mention retitled, so we’re taking a fresh look at it.) ARE YOU THERE, CHELSEA? – Wednesdays 8:30PM on NBC – If Nothing Else […]