CITY ON A HILL – Sunday 9PM on Showtime Showtime’s new CITY ON A HILL wears so many influences on its sleeve that there’s hardly any garment to be seen.  The show hails from Executive Producers Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and it’s sort of a subtweet of Affleck’s The Town, with a plot […]

> Until now, LAW & ORDER:  SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT has been unique to the franchise in not having undergone a periodic reshuffling of its cast.  For 12 seasons, SVU had been the only one of the series to be star-driven, anchored by the team of Chris Meloni and Mariska Hargitay.  But Meloni and NBC were […]

  WEEDS:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime   WHERE WE WERE:  After a season largely concerned with a battle for supremacy in the New York drug trade, both within and outside the family, there seemed to be a moment of comparative serenity for Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) and her clan at the upstate enclave she’d […]

  HOMELAND:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime WHERE WE WERE:  Wincing, as bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) underwent electroshock therapy, which we knew was going to make her forget the proof she had that former POW, current Congressional candidate and all-around American hero Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) was actually a deep-cover terrorist, working for […]

  The historical significance of HOUSE OF CARDS in the evolution of television is by now well-established.  It’s the first original production created specifically for Netflix, and the company made its first bet a huge one:  26 one-hour episodes, 2 full seasons worth, ordered without even a pilot (at a reported cost of $100M), and […]

  TWISTED:  Tuesday 9PM on ABCFamily – If Nothing Else Is On… ABCFamily’s TWISTED has an arresting premise.  11-year old Danny Desai was arrested and convicting for strangling his aunt to death while she was babysitting him and his two best friends Jo and Lacey.  (The crime is committed off-screen and out of Jo and […]

  MODERN FAMILY:  Wednesday 9PM on ABC MODERN FAMILY has now won the Emmy Award for Best Comedy in each of its four years on the air, putting it one behind Frasier‘s record-setting pace.  The TV Academy nominates smaller, more complex shows like Louie, Girls and Veep, but its heart is with Modern Family, and […]

  BONNIE & CLYDE:  Concludes Monday 9PM on Lifetime/A&E/History It’s been 46 years since the classic movie, and besides, plenty of historical events and figures have been the subjects of multiple productions, so the idea of a new BONNIE & CLYDE was perfectly legitimate–until, that is, the present one turned out to be resoundingly phony in […]