For 892 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 50% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

David Hinckley's Scores

  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score:
Critic Score 100
Lowest review score:
Critic Score 0
Score distribution:
892 tv reviews
    • Metascore: 40
    • David Hinckley 38
    It's a show where neither the world being created nor the characters populating it are remotely convincing - or interesting.
    • Metascore: 62
    • David Hinckley 38
    It's not a very artistic or compelling documentary.
    • Metascore: 33
    • David Hinckley 38
    If we're going to root for these guys, however, it would help to like them. These guys don't make it easy.
    • Metascore: 35
    • David Hinckley 38
    Even the best home run hitters can swing and miss badly, though - and on "The Wedding Bells," all of them do.
    • Metascore: 48
    • David Hinckley 38
    The show feels recycled.
    • Metascore: 37
    • David Hinckley 38
    Carpoolers, despite a few likable cast members and passable jokes, is in so much trouble, it's pulled over, on the shoulder.
    • Metascore: 66
    • David Hinckley 38
    Its humor, which dominates, isn't funny enough, and its occasional stabs at dramatic scenes aren't serious enough.
    • Metascore: 50
    • David Hinckley 38
    The Captain [is] a historic hotel now populated by every Hollywood stereotype ever dusted off for a sitcom pilot.
    • Metascore: 44
    • David Hinckley 38
    Let's say Unhitched just isn't very funny.
    • Metascore: 43
    • David Hinckley 38
    There's more pathos than humor in "Dice Undisputed," and very little "reality" that seems real rather than self-consciously staged.
    • Metascore: 35
    • David Hinckley 38
    You know a show needs work when its show-stopper is the mime.
    • Metascore: 57
    • David Hinckley 38
    It doesn't bode well for this series, however, that tonight's premiere features a magnetic, dynamic, no-nonsense female cyborg who steals every scene she's in--and it isn't Ryan as Jaime Sommers.
    • Metascore: 44
    • David Hinckley 30
    Waters may kill me, but the rest of "'Til Death" doesn't have the same pitch-perfect tone.
    • Metascore: 44
    • David Hinckley 25
    Neither the characters nor the cases in "Conviction" generate much of anything. Not drama, not comedy, and certainly not viewer loyalty.
    • Metascore: 40
    • David Hinckley 25
    The drama has more false frights than a student horror film, and such an uneven and incompatible tone that it's tough to tell which is funnier, the scenes of alleged humor or the scenes of alleged drama.
    • Metascore: 45
    • David Hinckley 25
    "The Loop" is much more failure than success.
    • Metascore: 32
    • David Hinckley 25
    Cold-hearted and dreadful.
    • Metascore: 39
    • David Hinckley 25
    Desperately trying to be mysterious like "Lost," this show, by any other name, turns out to be an ironically diluted version.
    • Metascore: 39
    • David Hinckley 25
    The network may feel that Bratt could stand there, read the phone book and attract millions of adoring female fans. Starring in "E-Ring" may be the closest thing to finding out whether that's true.
    • Metascore: 43
    • David Hinckley 25
    "Head Cases" has good leading men but a crushingly bad premise.
    • Metascore: 40
    • David Hinckley 25
    NBC has reestablished another Thursday night tradition: sticking another unfunny, almost unwatchable sitcom at 8:30.
    • Metascore: 42
    • David Hinckley 25
    "Criminal Minds," which generates almost no creative energy of its own, has the aura - or is it odor? - of being patched together from scraps of failed CBS dramas of the past.
    • Metascore: 36
    • David Hinckley 25
    Stiflingly reverential, sadly superficial.
    • Metascore: 46
    • David Hinckley 25
    It's all surface and very little substance.
    • Metascore: 39
    • David Hinckley 25
    Thou shalt not watch.
    • Metascore: 25
    • David Hinckley 25
    Lacke is the only person, or thing, in "Happy Hour" that made me laugh.
    • Metascore: 44
    • David Hinckley 25
    It would be obvious and unfunny to dismiss Rob Corddry's new Fox sitcom, "The Winner," by saying it's a loser. But since the alleged humor in this new series is even more lazy and less amusing than that, it seems only fair.
    • Metascore: 23
    • David Hinckley 25
    A sort of perfect storm of bad writing.
    • Metascore: 53
    • David Hinckley 25
    Nothing to see.
    • Metascore: 31
    • David Hinckley 25
    Since these "Book Club" women do not seem inclined either to read or discuss their books, my advice is to follow their example - and neither watch nor discuss "Tuesday Night Book Club."
    • Metascore: 42
    • David Hinckley 25
    He's polite-looking and very likable - but aside from some quick ad libs during on-location segments, he doesn't get any chance to establish, much less assert, his personality.
    • Metascore: 24
    • David Hinckley 25
    It's not good.
    • Metascore: 65
    • David Hinckley 25
    The word "juvenile" doesn't begin to describe "The Sarah Silverman Show." It completely describes it.
    • Metascore: 38
    • David Hinckley 25
    This one is almost impressively wonderless.
    • Metascore: 29
    • David Hinckley 25
    Everything feels forced, right down to the dialogue, wherein the characters all talk the way writers write when they're stretching to set up a joke.
    • Metascore: 19
    • David Hinckley 25
    If, years later, you're still trying to wash away the foul taste of Fox's "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance," the idea of putting family members and friends through emotional anguish for the sake of prime-time entertainment isn't any funnier than it sounds.
    • Metascore: 38
    • David Hinckley 20
    It's stunning that ABC's new sitcom In the Motherhood, built on stories of life as Mom, manages to come off as stiff, disjointed and curiously unlikable.
    • Metascore: 36
    • David Hinckley 20
    It may remind some viewers more directly of the British sitcom "Absolutely Fabulous," except that "Ab Fab" was hilarious and this one just gives you a headache.
    • Metascore: 57
    • David Hinckley 20
    In a perfect world, Dollhouse would be a good show. It's not.
    • Metascore: 34
    • David Hinckley 20
    The producers are dependent on their contestant and the kindness of baffled strangers to develop an interesting impromptu drama, and it just doesn't happen all that often.
    • Metascore: 62
    • David Hinckley 20
    The lesser problem is that all the gags are telegraphed. We see them coming long before they arrive. The bigger problem is that when they get here, they all feel forced, as if someone thought of the gag first, then tried to manufacture a situation, however contorted, that would lead to it.
    • Metascore: 37
    • David Hinckley 20
    Hidden camera gags often now settle for crude instead of working a little harder to achieve clever.
    • Metascore: 35
    • David Hinckley 20
    There isn't a person on this show selling anything more compelling than shallow vanity.
    • Metascore: 33
    • David Hinckley 20
    The two-night miniseries "The Storm," the latest production in NBC's summer of the apocalypse, suggests the network may be running out of creative ways to terminate life as we know it.
    • Metascore: 65
    • David Hinckley 20
    He's supposed to be a neurotic slacker who escapes into this cool new world, but even there, he still comes off as a neurotic slacker. You want smack him and tell him to go sit down. And if you did, he probably would.
    • Metascore: 50
    • David Hinckley 20
    The writing is uneven, so is the tone, and all put together, it's just not very engaging.
    • Metascore: 50
    • David Hinckley 20
    It's a waste of Cox's comic talents to have her spend the whole show trapped in lines like, "We had sex three times without you needing a nap or a pill or anything."
    • Metascore: 55
    • David Hinckley 20
    The fragility of these women sucks the fun out of the meeting-and-culling process that should be the entertainment heart of any dating reality show.
    • Metascore: 42
    • David Hinckley 20
    At first these actions, which feel extreme, seem to have little relation to the problems at hand. It soon becomes clear, however, that they do. As he promises, Robbins is attacking deeper problems, not symptoms, and as with any good infomercial, the results look compelling on the screen.
    • Metascore: 28
    • David Hinckley 20
    If it's any solace to the handful of organizations that are boycotting this new William Shatner sitcom over its attention-getting title, the title is the least of the reasons not to bother watching. A better one is that it's not very good. In the process, $#*! My Dad Says wastes the talents of Shatner.
    • Metascore: 43
    • David Hinckley 20
    My Generation solves that problem by creating fake people. There still could be a worthwhile drama, or least an entertaining soap opera, in "life 10 years after high school." But not when your characters are all stereotypes.
    • Metascore: 38
    • David Hinckley 20
    Everybody in the premiere episode of Strange Days turns out to be a nice guy or gal, and that's a great thing in life. It just doesn't make for a very strange, or interesting, TV Show.
    • Metascore: 39
    • David Hinckley 20
    You wish them all well. But in the end, watching the Hasselhoffs isn't much more interesting than watching a mechanic rebuild the transmission on KITT.
    • Metascore: 55
    • David Hinckley 20
    Well, the plot doesn't offer a lot of possibilities. The jokes are predictable even when the delivery is hip, and none of the characters is especially likable, nor do we care that much which of them mix-and-match with which others.
    • Metascore: 41
    • David Hinckley 20
    At the very least, you'd think the Miami edition of this franchise would have some striking pastel visuals. But even the look, alas, is no brighter than the content.
    • Metascore: 53
    • David Hinckley 20
    In the end, visiting the lives of self-absorbed rich people is about as interesting as visiting people who have saved all their toenail clippings. And named them.
    • Metascore: 57
    • David Hinckley 20
    They're profane, contentious and come off hard as nails, given to saying things like if a man is good to his family, his crimes are not that important. For most viewers, it's a glimpse into another world--a world where a glimpse is enough.
    • Metascore: 49
    • David Hinckley 20
    His wavelength is extreme narrowcasting, and most viewers are likely to find Angry Boys just rambling and dull.
    • Metascore: 20
    • David Hinckley 20
    She wears 4-inch heels to her community service program, as if she expects her community service will involve a pole. Most intriguing of all, she seems vaguely bored. What a coincidence. So are we.
    • Metascore: 33
    • David Hinckley 20
    Everything in Mike's life seems contrived to set up ba-ba-boom punch lines.
    • Metascore: 30
    • David Hinckley 20
    If you like smart women who hide the iron fist under the velvet glove, you'll get more satisfaction elsewhere--like from, oh, say, Nikita over on the CW, who is better drama all by herself than this ill-served new trio of Angels.
    • Metascore: 55
    • David Hinckley 20
    It isn't invested deeply enough in magic to create an alternative world, and while Giuntoli is perfectly fine as a cop, the police procedural part feels routine.
    • Metascore: 31
    • David Hinckley 20
    In the end, it doesn't feel much more enduring than a tweet.
    • Metascore: 36
    • David Hinckley 20
    The setup could be mildly amusing if it weren't more common than Starbucks.
    • Metascore: 36
    • David Hinckley 20
    To make them all screwy but lovable, in the vein of "Raising Hope," requires more work than this show seems to want to do.
    • Metascore: 19
    • David Hinckley 20
    The show lumbers like a 200-pound man trying to impersonate a 95-pound ballerina.
    • Metascore: 28
    • David Hinckley 20
    The main problem with Rob is that instead of finding fresh insight and perspective from his inside position, Schneider just slams a piñata full of familiar and predictable ethnic jokes.
    • Metascore: 50
    • David Hinckley 20
    Watching Best Friends Forever is like going to the sitcom thrift shop and poking through the leftovers. It gets old quickly.
    • Metascore: 33
    • David Hinckley 20
    There just isn't much about Bristol's life that's of much interest to anyone outside of family and friends.
    • Metascore: 48
    • David Hinckley 20
    It's hard to see this show lasting too far beyond the initial taste.
    • Metascore: 67
    • David Hinckley 20
    As it's set up here, the comedy part doesn't work if Ben isn't genuinely annoying, and the larger arc doesn't work if he isn't genuinely endearing.
    • Metascore: 55
    • David Hinckley 20
    1600 Penn mines none of the more subtle and satisfying possibilities of poking fun at a staid institution. It's more like a drug-fueled "Saturday Night Live" sketch that won't end.
    • Metascore: 58
    • David Hinckley 20
    The plot often just seems to be killing time between endless battles in which throats are slashed, limbs severed and torsos bisected.
    • Metascore: 42
    • David Hinckley 20
    The producers don't even pretend to focus on the girls, however. They focus on the parents, a not very endearing bunch whose ongoing mental games with each other and whose drive to push their daughters creates the drama TV cares about.
    • Metascore: 57
    • David Hinckley 20
    If you’re a sci-fi fan for whom this stuff can never be too complex, have at it. If you’re not, wait an hour and watch “Revolution.”
    • Metascore: 46
    • David Hinckley 20
    Some scenes play like those stiff “re-creations” in crime reality shows and the camera’s constant quick-cuts promote headaches, not intrigue.
    • Metascore: 48
    • David Hinckley 20
    The outrageousness becomes cartoonish and the conciliatory moments so forced and predictable they lose their healing power. That’s what happens with How to Live.
    • Metascore: 43
    • David Hinckley 20
    Heche, a strong comic actress, can’t fully conquer the material here, and while the rest of the cast tries hard, there isn’t much with which to get traction.
    • Metascore: 48
    • David Hinckley 20
    Princesses proves Jewish women who are mostly from the affluent North Shore of Long Island are at heart not much different from the Italian women who populate Bravo’s most popular series, "The Real Housewives of New Jersey."
    • Metascore: 29
    • David Hinckley 12
    "Twenty Good Years" is so bad, its pilot doesn't contain 20 good seconds.
    • Metascore: 23
    • David Hinckley 12
    "Modern Men" is a waste of money, time and only an elder generation of talent.
    • Metascore: 28
    • David Hinckley 12
    Yes, it's "Married ... With Children" all over again, except that it's not played as broadly, or as successfully.
    • Metascore: 32
    • David Hinckley 12
    "Inconceivable" is so sappy and syrupy, it's the sort of program that even the Lifetime or Oxygen networks might reject.
    • Metascore: 31
    • David Hinckley 12
    "Hot Properties" is such a stiff and unfunny sitcom that it's hard to imagine how it got on the air.
    • Metascore: 59
    • David Hinckley 12
    It gets nothing right - not the potential sexiness, not the negligible drama and certainly not any solid shot at explaining, much less popularizing, the alleged sport of roller derby.
    • Metascore: 28
    • David Hinckley 12
    "Rules of Engagement" is no more believable than it is amusing, and it's never amusing.
    • Metascore: 27
    • David Hinckley 12
    "Desire" is so cheesy that the restaurant ought to specialize in fondue.
    • Metascore: 33
    • David Hinckley 12
    Big Shots is a big waste.
    • Metascore: 31
    • David Hinckley 12
    "Lil' Bush" is more than a lil' awful.
    • Metascore: 26
    • David Hinckley 0
    "How to Get the Guy" doesn't have to worry about a slow slide: It starts out about as low as you can go.
    • Metascore: 45
    • David Hinckley 0
    The original "I've Got a Secret" was such a simple game show, and such a simple pleasure, that the only way to botch a remake would be to either spice it up or dumb it down. The Game Show Network... manages to do both.
    • Metascore: 33
    • David Hinckley 0
    Dating shows tend to be bottom feeders in the "reality" game, but not even the oiliest episodes of "The Bachelor" have ever felt as creepy as "The Cougar."
    • Metascore: 52
    • David Hinckley 0
    Workaholics is crude, dumb lowbrow comedy, which means it's doing fine right up until the last requirement of the genre, which is that it should be funny. Workaholics is not.