RISE:  Tuesday 9PM on NBC – In the Queue RISE creator Jason Katims practically demands that viewers compare his new series with his classic Friday Night Lights.  The song that accompanies the opening scene sounds like it came off the Lights soundtrack, director Mike Cahill (an indie filmmaker whose best-known works are Another Earth […]

POWER:  Saturday 9PM on Starz POWER, like Empire, revolves around an African-American drug dealer who seeks respectability in the music business., but who will still commit murder when necessary to protect his interests.  Although the shows are quite different in tone–Power is presented more as a crime drama than a family soap, with drugs in […]

  GRAND HOTEL:  Monday 10PM on ABC ABC’s cardboard summer soap GRAND HOTEL is set at a resort hotel in Miami that isn’t as much fun as the one in Jane the Virgin.  This one has a standard-issue set of crises:  the hotel is bankrupt, its owner Santiago Mendoza (Demian Bichir) in debt to shady […]

  CHAMPIONS:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC – Change the Channel As this season’s NBC comedies go, CHAMPIONS is less rancid than AP Bio, but “harmless” isn’t much of a recommendation for a sitcom.  Despite the fact that the series was created by Mindy Kaling and Charlie Grandy, its pilot is all set-up, in the traditional […]

  SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE:  Saturday 11:30PM on NBC Opinions may differ–sharply–on whether Donald Trump is good for the US, but there’s no question that he’s been great for SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, which returned tonight for its 43rd season, hot off its most popular and acclaimed session in years, and with a bunch of Emmys to […]

  INSECURE:  Sunday 10:30PM on HBO – In the Quene HBO introduces a promising new voice to TV comedy with Issa Rae’s INSECURE, which she created with Larry Wilmore (who left after pilot to concentrate on The Nightly Show).  Rae’s vision is strongly R-rated (a key word from the Donald Trump tape gets a full […]

  ATLANTA:  Wednesday 10PM on FX Season 1 of Donald Glover’s FX series ATLANTA was, among other things, a show that went in so many directions after its premiere that judging it from its opening half-hour proved to be foolhardy.  The same may very well be true for Season 2, so we’ll deal briefly with […]

  TRUE DETECTIVE:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – DVR Alert It sometimes seems like brooding serial-killer thrillers are as plentiful on the New Television as multi-camera family sitcoms were on the Old.  TRUE DETECTIVE, though, gives the genre the HBO Deluxe treatment–premiering, no less, on the same night one of its stars, Matthew McConaughey, became […]