A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover) give plenty of notes, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

  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) […]

  WITCHES OF EAST END:  Sunday 10PM on Lifetime Previously… on WITCHES OF EAST END:  Joanna Beauchamp (Julia Ormand) is an immortal witch with a family curse.  Over and over again, she bears her daughters, free-spirited Freya (Jenna Dewan-Tatum) and studious Ingrid (Rachel Boston), only to see them die before they reach 30 years old […]

  PLAYING HOUSE:  Tuesday 10PM on USA – If Nothing Else Is On… Created by and starring real-life best friends Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham, PLAYING HOUSE is, as sisterhood comedies created by and starring real-life best friends go, less edged and genuine than HBO’s recent Doll & Em (which was the work of […]

  HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Previously… on HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER:  At Middleton College, the brilliant, daunting law professor and criminal defense attorney Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) has gathered together her yearly group of five of her most promising students to work with her at her law […]

  STITCHERS:  Tuesday 9PM on ABCFamily Previously… on STITCHERS:  Graduate student and science whiz Kirsten (Emma Ishta) has “temporal dysplasia,” a (fictional) condition in which she doesn’t experience the passage of time.  Somehow this has given her a robotic personality, but for unexplained reasons it also makes her the perfect candidate for the government’s Stitchers […]

> A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and production of episodes for the regular season:  a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover in the off-season) give plenty of notes, both helpful and otherwise, and […]

  HBO has been airing a spiffy HD edition of James L. Brooks’ 1987 BROADCAST NEWS  in its recent rotation (it’s next scheduled for July 20 and 24), and that makes sense, since the Brooks film is one of the acknowledged inspirations for HBO’s current Aaron Sorkin series THE NEWSROOM.  I’m not sure how much […]