BLESS THIS MESS:  Tuesday 9:30PM on ABC The six-episode order ABC gave BLESS THIS HOUSE (after FOX had passed on the project) is about as small as any network show can get.  That doesn’t leave much time for series creators Lake Bell (who also stars and directed the pilot) and Elizabeth Meriwether to show […]

  FOSSE/VERDON:  Tuesday 10PM on FX A pair of shadows loom over FX’s limited series FOSSE/VERDON.  One is the ultra-meta fact that its story has to some extent been told by Bob Fosse himself, in his barely fictionalized 1979 masterpiece All That Jazz, all about a chain-smoking, pill-popping, self-destructive womanizer who was also a brilliant […]

  IN THE DARK:  Thursday 9PM on CW The protagonist of CW’s new drama IN THE DARK is blind, but the show wants it to be very clear that Murphy (Perry Mattfeld) isn’t TV’s typical high-functioning disabled role model.  Murphy is disaffected, sarcastic and often downright rude (she’s even dismissive to her adorable guide dog, […]

  WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS:  Wednesday 10PM on FX The deadpan vampire mockumentary cult hit WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS is the latest piece of IP to find eternal–or at least extended–life on the small screen.  In some ways, it seems like that was where it belonged all along, since the format […]

  THE ENEMY WITHIN:  Monday 10PM on NBC NBC’s spy thriller THE ENEMY WITHIN is a variation of The Blacklist, itself a variation of The Silence Of The Lambs, all telling stories about ingenious master villains recruited by the FBI to help track down other fiendish criminals.  But series creator Ken Woodruff’s script (his previous […]

  WHISKEY CAVALIER:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC ABC capped Oscar Night with a bit of dessert, very much a trifle:  a “sneak preview” of WHISKEY CAVALIER, which will officially premiere on Wednesday night with the same episode.  The genre is Romantic Intrigue Lite, very much in the tradition of Charade, one of the classics of […]

  PROVEN INNOCENT:  Friday 9PM on FOX PROVEN INNOCENT is even worse than you might expect from a broadcast drama that premieres on a Friday in February.  The creator is David Elliot, whose previous scripts have mostly been action movies (GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Four Brothers), and the writing […]

  BLACK MONDAY:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Showtime and Don Cheadle didn’t look far afield for their follow-up after 5 seasons of the network’s House of Lies.  In that series, Cheadle played a fast-talking, rule-breaking business consultant whiz, while in the new BLACK MONDAY… he plays a fast-talking, rule-breaking Wall Street whiz.  (For its part, […]