Posts Tagged ‘Showtime original’
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “I’m Dying Up Here”

  I’M DYING UP HERE certainly wasn’t the worst show of the summer, but it did make one wonder how it had made its way through the development process and onto Showtime’s air.  Series creator Dave Flebott...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Homeland”

  If HOMELAND hadn’t once been so good, it wouldn’t be so painful now to see what it’s become.  Season 5 was by no means terrible:  it was crisply produced, Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin remain enviab...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Billions”

  BILLIONS:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime (pilot available via VOD and streaming) – Potential DVR Alert There’s a gag in The Big Short where an esoteric piece of financial information, crucial for understanding the...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Homeland”

  In a way, tonight’s off-key Season 4 finale of HOMELAND was the hour its seriously odd season deserved.  As bipolar as its main character, Season 4 began with misguided attempts to recapture something of the early...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Shameless”

  SHAMELESS:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime John Wells comes from the broadcast network school of showrunning, where he kept ER going for 22 (or more) episodes per year for more than a decade, and barely missed a beat when Aaron...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “Penny Dreadful”

  PENNY DREADFUL:  Sunday 10PM on Showtime Previously… on PENNY DREADFUL:  In 1890s London, a mysterious set of figures exist in a world where literature’s classic horror characters are as real as Jack the Ri...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Series Finale Review: “Californication”

  CALIFORNICATION knew going in that this 7th season would be its last, and we’ve grown used to series in that position, from Breaking Bad to Friends to–God help us–Lost, making a special effort to provid...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Ray Donovan”

  RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime It’s a bit surprising that RAY DONOVAN has been a steady performer for Showtime, considering that its tone tends toward the glum and monotonous, but next to Homeland, it’...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Roadies”

  In recent years, Cameron Crowe has had trouble keeping his scripts coherent even when they only have to last 2 hours.  It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise that giving him 10 hours to play with was asking...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Ray Donovan”

  Replacing a show’s creator with a new showrunner isn’t the preferred way for a series to proceed, but the change did some good for Season 3 of RAY DONOVAN, although tonight’s season finale didn’t ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Homeland”

  HOMELAND:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime We’ve recently acquired the concept of “legacy media,” referring to things like newspapers that are actually printed on pieces of paper–still potentially useful,...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Shameless”

  It made plenty of strategic sense for Showtime to reclassify SHAMELESS in its 4th season as a Comedy for Emmy Award purposes, since television is now swamped with contending dramas, but if the plan works, the result will...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Billions”

  The lesson of the 2d season of Showtime’s BILLIONS is that a show doesn’t have to dramatically reboot itself in order to improve.  Billions Season 2 had the same premise and core characters as Season 1:  he...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “The Affair”

  It’s difficult, even after a full and absorbing season, to know exactly what to make of THE AFFAIR.  The series hasn’t fit neatly into either of the genres it seemed to be invoking:  despite the title and o...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “House of Lies”

  In its third season, HOUSE OF LIES tried to have more substance than it did in previous years, and part of the time it worked.  The end of Season 2 had scattered the cast, with Marty Kaan (Don Cheadle) forming his own c...
by Mitch Salem