Even by CW standards–and this is a network where shows that could barely hold a slot in basic cable get renewed–THE LA COMPLEX is a clear flop, watched by about  2/10 of 1% of the 18-49 year old audience and less than half a million people in total. So although it’s been reported […]

  REVOLUTION was sort of a sad story.  The lights-are-out sci-fi adventure was NBC’s top priority in Fall 2012, promoted like crazy and given the network’s prized post-The Voice timeslot.  At first the show looked like the hit NBC desperately needed, but once it started dropping in late fall it didn’t stop, and by the […]

  A serialized drama without major stars, a familiar genre or a grabby premise simply can’t afford to take half its season figuring itself out.  (Having a title that says absolutely nothing about what the series is about doesn’t help either.)  That almost certainly sealed the fate of HALT AND CATCH FIRE–although it’s AMC, so […]

  The first season of BROADCHURCH was a phenomenon in the UK, one that prompted the ill-fated FOX US remake Gracepoint, and also, back in England, the somewhat controversial decision to renew the series beyond its seemingly self-contained initial season.  Against the odds, though, in Broadchurch Season 2, writer/creator Chris Chibnall wove a more inventively plotted, less monotonously paced […]

  In their teardown season as new showrunners of FEAR THE WALKING DEAD, Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg didn’t solve all the problems inherent in the franchise, and the season was uneven, only partly for reasons of transition.  Still, they accomplished a lot, more or less creating a new series from the one that had […]

  ELEMENTARY is a very classy, enjoyable network procedural that has the misfortune of existing at the same time as the altogether more dazzling BBC/PBS Sherlock, which has the same premise:  Sherlock Holmes as a modern-day detective.  Both the strengths and weaknesses of the CBS approach were evident in last night’s 2-hour season finale. What […]

  Not even HAVEN‘s worst enemy would have wished on the series its season finale experience of the past few weeks.  More serialized than ever before, the season was approaching its ending with a second-to-last episode that featured deadly violence in a school (although directed at older graduates attending a reunion, not at children)–in the […]

  After 5 seasons of declining success, if ONCE UPON A TIME were less synergistic for Disney/ABC (the movie studio used tonight’s 2-hour season premiere to showcase summer spectacles Alice Through The Looking Glass and The BFG), and if the rest of ABC’s non-Shonda Rhimes dramas were less mired in low ratings, series creators Edward […]