Posts Tagged ‘2016-17 network TV season’
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Midseason Finale Review: “The Walking Dead”

  In the best case scenario, this first half of THE WALKING DEAD‘s 7th season has been a necessary evil.  While ponderousness has been built into the show’s DNA more or less from the start, Walking Dead has n...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Feud: Bette and Joan”

  FEUD:  BETTE AND JOAN:  Sunday 10PM on FX – Potential DVR Alert It’s a testament to Ryan Murphy’s clout that FEUD:  BETTE AND JOAN even exists.  8 hours set in the early 1960s about Bette Davis and ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “The Flash”

  Did we really need THE FLASH to go dark?  What had been the peppiest of CW’s DC/Berlanti-verse shows spent its 3rd season marked by existential angst, 22 episodes of Barry Allen’s (Grant Gustin) penance for ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Westworld”

  WESTWORLD:  Sunday 9PM on HBO – Potential DVR Alert HBO’s mega-series WESTWORLD began its run enigmatically and laden with multiple layers of meta-narrative, so much so that it’s not entirely clear fro...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Victoria”

  VICTORIA:  Sunday 9PM on PBS – In the Queue Female British monarchs are certainly having a television moment, with Elizabeth I a regular character on CW’s soon-to-return Reign, her current namesake at the ce...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “The Young Pope”

  Viewed in its 10-hour entirety, THE YOUNG POPE encompassed much of the good and bad of Auteur TV.  HBO, by all appearances, wrote a (very large) check to the arthouse filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino as creator, director and ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

ShowbuzzDaily Series Finale Review: “The Catch”

  No one can say THE CATCH didn’t try.  Today’s cancellation announcement concluded two seasons of seemingly constant adjustment and revision (probably attributable in part to ABC’s commitment to non-wri...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Star”

  STAR:  Wednesday 9PM on FOX (returning January 4) – In the Queue The writer/producer/director Lee Daniels makes his home in wild melodrama, and he’s had success at two extremes:  with the almost hallucinato...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “The Americans”

  THE AMERICANS:  Tuesday 10PM on FX THE AMERICANS is inevitably one of those pieces of pop culture that feels more queasily topical these days (in this case, despite its 1980s setting), with its tale of Russian agents in...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Timeless”

  TIMELESS:  Monday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… NBC’s TIMELESS is strictly B-movie escapism.  That’s a bit of a surprise considering that its creators are Eric Kripke of the densely mytho...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “The Strain”

  FX’s THE STRAIN is doing something that The Walking Dead and its cohorts in the undead genre won’t:  telling a (more or less) coherent story from beginning to end, and exiting when it’s over.  During ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Doubt”

  DOUBT:  Wednesday 10PM on CBS – If Nothing Else Is On… As highly prized as the talents of Shonda Rhimes are, it takes the continuing line of her failed imitators to remind us just how difficult it is to dupl...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

ShowbuzzDaily Season Finale Review: “Riverdale”

  Even after a full season of RIVERDALE, it’s not entirely clear what the show is trying to accomplish.  The high-concept premise is clear enough:  take the fresh-faced characters from the Archie comics world, and ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Finale Review: “Rectify”

  The fourth and final season of Ray McKinnon’s Sundance series RECTIFY, perhaps the most universally acclaimed television program of the post-Sopranos era, was its most conventional.  There were few surreal stretch...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Finale Review: “The Vampire Diaries”

  Vampires may live forever, but TV shows don’t, and tonight the coffin closed on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, the pre-superhero champion of the then-fledgling CW network when it debuted 8 years ago.  In truth, the close of...
by Mitch Salem