HANNIBAL:  Thursday 10PM on NBC – Potential DVR Alert Bryan Fuller has a very unusual sensibility, especially for network TV.  He’s attracted both to gruesome crime stories and elaborate visual tableaux, as he showed in his Wonderfalls and particularly Pushing Daisies, with its mix of candy-coated production design and bizarre murder mysteries–it was like [...]

  ROGUE:  Wednesday 9PM on Audience Network (DirecTV only) – Change the Channel Remember when the phrase “cable drama” only implied a cheaper, racier version of a network cop show?  Subscribers to DirecTV can relive those years with ROGUE, its newest original programming and a series that gives Red Widow a run for its money [...]

    HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS (FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE):  Wednesday 9:30PM on ABC -  Change the Channel There isn’t much to be said for the exhaustively titled midseason comedy HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS (FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE), but within the subgenre of sitcoms about adults living [...]

  MR. SELFRIDGE:  Sunday 9PM on PBS To get the obvious over with quickly, MR. SELFRIDGE, PBS’s attempt to find a partner for its blockbuster hit Downton Abbey, isn’t in that show’s league.  Instead it’s a merely pleasant traipse down another corner of early 20th-century British history. While Downton offers a cornucopia of sharply-drawn characters [...]

  BATES MOTEL:  Monday 10PM on A&E The idea of a pilot is to provide a template for the series that’s to come, but while the first hour of BATES MOTEL is accomplished and well-acted, it’s difficult to tell what kind of show it plans to be.  The premise is straightforward enough:  a prequel (although [...]

  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 [...]

  RED WIDOW:  Sunday 10PM on ABC The “2-hour premiere” of RED WIDOW actually consisted of the pilot that was shot before last year’s upfronts, combined with the first regular episode (both halves written by series creator Melissa Rosenberg, with the pilot directed by Mark Pellington and episode 2 by Daniel Sackheim).  Watching the combination [...]

  GOLDEN BOY:  Friday 9PM on CBS (special previews on Tuesday 2/26 and 3/5) – Potential DVR Alert CBS tries to have its procedural cake and eat its serialization with GOLDEN BOY.  Think of it as How I Met Your Mother as a cop show:  the story is structured, by veteran procedural writer Nicholas Wootten [...]