The failures of HOSTAGES were many, and they separate into two dimensions. One–the more important to CBS–was commercial; the show proved to be dead in the water from the night it premiered against the launch of The Blacklist. Despite a summer of heavy promotion, NBC and James Spader wiped the floor with Hostages, and […]
For all that HBO’s WESTWORLD is deliberately obscure and oblique, one thing has become increasingly clear through the course of its second season: series creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy expect viewers to decide for themselves what aspects of the show are features and which are bugs. Most obviously, Westworld has no interest in […]
Aided by a compatible WWE Smackdown lead-in and a red state-friendly storyline, SHOOTER has been a sturdy performer for USA, already renewed for a second summer season. The series is low-ambition compared to USA’s Mr Robot or even Suits or Colony (or the awful Falling Water, for that matter), but series creator John Hlavin […]
The most tantalizing question of the Summer 2018 TV season is whether Jesse Armstrong, the creator of HBO’s slow-boil triumph SUCCESSION, knew what he was doing all along, or if the first 3-4 episodes were as uncertain as they seemed at the time. In that beginning phase, Succession felt like Billions for The Gang […]
John Ridley’s ABC anthology series AMERICAN CRIME has always worn its sackcloth and ashes in plain sight, but Season 3 was especially brutal. It was eight hours of unceasing human misery, enough to make the insides curdle of even the most earnest devotee of serious TV drama. Understandably, viewers fled, pushing the show’s ratings […]
The ratings for BALLERS have more than justified its renewal by HBO, but the pieces of the series have yet to fit together. Most of the show’s creative team hails from Entourage, and Ballers embraces the same bimbos-and-bling lifestyle porn and breezy pace, but having Dwayne Johnson as its central attraction has proved to […]
When a show is as successful as AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD, it can afford to spend virtually the entire back half of a season as little more than a lead-up to the next. But can it also provide no satisfaction at all when it reaches the end of the season finale? Of course, Walking […]
The first season of YELLOWSTONE was a feat of auteurship. Every episode of the recently-rebooted Paramount Network’s prestige series was written and directed solely by series creator Taylor Sheridan, something not even David Lynch or Sam Esmail can claim. The result was 10 hours of television that qualified, to an extent rarely seen, as […]