Posts Tagged ‘serialized drama’
 

 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “Downton Abbey”

  DOWNTON ABBEY:  Sunday 9PM on PBS In its fourth season as the most successful regular series in PBS history, DOWNTON ABBEY operates as smoothly as a well-staffed ancestral estate.  Even though the larger subject of the...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Midseason Finale Review: “Suits”

  SUITS is USA Network’s last remaining scripted hit, yet it finds itself in a bind:  with tonight’s midpoint of Season 4, it’s taken its original premise–Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) having been h...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Fall Finale Review: “Scandal”

  The concept of a “finale” as an event calling for special plot revelations and narrative shockers is almost irrelevant to SCANDAL, where every episode brings massive twists.  This is a show, after all, set i...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Penny Dreadful”

  If nothing else, this first half of 2014 has been marked as The Year of Eva Green.  Green will probably never be a mainstream Hollywood star–there’s something too feral and broken about her for wide audience...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “Chasing Life”

  CHASING LIFE:  Tuesday 9PM on ABCFamily – Change the Channel ABCFamily is launching all its summer shows over the next week or two, so it appears to be luck rather than careful planning that’s resulted in it...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Halt and Catch Fire”

  HALT AND CATCH FIRE:  Saturday 9PM on AMC The links between AMC’s HALT AND CATCH FIRE as a television series, the stories it tells, and its characters have gone unusually deep.  The positive part has been that a...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “The Good Wife”

  Season 6 of THE GOOD WIFE has a tough act to follow:  its own dazzling Season 5, which brought the show back from previous signs of subdued middle age and established it once again as one of the best shows on any form o...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Turn: Washington’s Spies”

  TURN: WASHINGTON’S SPIES:  Monday 10PM on AMC After its initial season concluded, the reruns of AMC’s Revolutionary War drama TURN acquired the subtitle WASHINGTON’S SPIES, presumably in recognition of...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Aquarius”

  How on earth is NBC going to bring back AQUARIUS next season?  In the history of broadcast television, it may well be the lowest-rated series ever renewed by a major network, with viewership so abysmal that the show cou...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Murder In the First”

MURDER IN THE FIRST:  Monday 10PM on TNT Unloved by most critics and viewers, MURDER IN THE FIRST was lucky to have survived to a second season on TNT.  The return came with a fair amount of revamping, in the apparent hope th...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Scandal”

  Watching Shonda Rhimes’ SCANDAL has more than once been likened to an addiction, and as with a drug, the danger is that users will build up a tolerance over time, requiring more and more to achieve the same high. ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Defiance”

  DEFIANCE:  Friday 8PM on Syfy The second season of Syfy’s DEFIANCE was often jarringly different from its first, shifting from its initial post-apocalyptic-western procedural form to a heavily mythological storyli...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “Manhattan”

  MANHATTAN:  Sunday 10PM on WGN America Previously… on MANHATTAN:  Starting in 1943, the New Mexico desert housed a mysterious, ultra-secret military and scientific operation code-named The Manhattan Project, its ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “The Leftovers”

  THE LEFTOVERS:  Sunday 10PM on HBO Previously… on THE LEFTOVERS:  3 years ago, 2% of the world’s population simultaneously and spontaneously vanished, in what may have been the Rapture (albeit a Rapture tha...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Summer Finale Review: “Chasing Life”

  CHASING LIFE, which aired its not-quite-half season finale tonight, could better have been titled What Not To Do If You Get Cancer.  That, in itself, isn’t a criticism:  a story about a narcissistic idiot who get...
by Mitch Salem