HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  Tuesday 10PM on AMC HALT AND CATCH FIRE is AMC’s charity project; every episode could bear a credit saying “This series is brought to you thanks to the generosity of The Walking Dead.”  That show’s mega-success has allowed AMC to indulge itself with a drama that has only gone downward […]

  THE GOOD PLACE:  Thursday 8:30PM on NBC starting 9/28 The Season 1 finale of NBC’s THE GOOD PLACE was a tough act to follow.  Michael Schur’s series pulled off the plot twist of the season, which turned out on further examination to have been hiding in plain sight all along.  We learned (2016-17 spoiler […]

  9-1-1:  Wednesday 9PM on FOX – Surprisingly Unsurprising Saying that FOX’s 9-1-1 is the Ryan Murphy team’s version of a Dick Wolf procedural makes it sound far more subversive and original than it actually is.  In fact, for the most part its opening hour is virtually indistinguishable from one of the cogs in Wolf’s wheel […]

  BILLIONS:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime The fourth season of a successful series can be an inflection point.  By the time Season 4 begins, the show’s makers know what works, but it’s still early enough that the talent isn’t beginning to itch for their next big things.  It’s easy enough to glide along the path […]

  REBEL:  Thursday 10PM on ABC Krista Vernoff is one of network TV’s most prized showrunners.  She’s successfully guided Shonda Rhimes’s Grey’s Anatomy into a remarkable 17th season of success (which will be extended further if the necessary deals are made), and when she took over Station 19, that show became an effective one-two punch […]

> WHERE WE WERE:  Contra Security, a wacky high-tech firm run by the extravagantly enigmatic Oz (Christian Slater).  Contra tests the security measures of its clients by cracking them wide open, staging mock break-ins, robberies, and similar hijinks.  Its roster of idiosyncratic experts include hacker Cameron (Bret Harrison), gadget guy Cash (Alphonso McAuley) and, for […]

  TREME:  Sunday 10PM on HBO   WHERE WE WERE:  New Orleans, of course, and hip-deep in the lives of a dozen struggling, striving, stubborn, idiosyncratic natives and recent arrivals.  These include the feckless trombonist Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce), who reluctantly supports himself and his family as a high school music teacher; radio DJ/composer/rapper/dreamer Davis […]

  Within the first two minutes of its midseason premiere tonight, BUNHEADS featured a Harold Clurman gag.  For those not up on their celebrated left-wing Depression-era theatre directors, Clurman was–well, yeah.  (This particular gag took place in a kitchen perfectly constructed in miniature–including working electricity–in a cardboard box.)  I’m going to go out on a […]