Despite its lead characters' fragile makeups, Free Agents is a niftily scripted, bracingly grownup comedy when in the hands of its two leads.

It all makes for a promising start on a network whose best comedies invariably wind up on Thursday nights. Whitney is already there, and looks as though it just might belong.

Living in the Material World falls short of Scorsese's terrific two-part PBS film, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.

As a fan from the start, I didn't love it, but liked it well enough.

Life's Too Short is an acquired taste worth acquiring.

You should give Luck a chance to slowly pay off. It proudly depicts a gritty/picturesque world that the ABC Family channel's Wildfire only airbrushed during its 2005-08 run.

It's all quite sturdily built and well-acted, with characters one cares about.

Comic Book Men is a pleasant surprise and an overall splash of fragrant cologne on the smell test-flunking reality genre.

So far this is solid and very picturesque entertainment, with a strong sense of foreboding built in.

It's a distinctive, signature series from a decidedly singular voice.

Despite some shortcomings, Hemingway & Gellhorn rates as time and money well-spent.

TNT's brighter, shinier Dallas makes an impressively staged re-entrance Wednesday night.

Filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (The Black List, The Latino List) might have done well to just keep the camera on [Carmen Dell'Orefice] and let everyone else hit the cutting room floor. But other former supermodels are quite interesting as well, among them Isabella Rossellini, Jerry Hall, Paulina Porizkova, Carol Alt, China Machado, Marisa Berenson and Lisa Taylor.

Revolution, which has the overall look and feel of a big budget feature, delivers some consistently terrific action scenes.

Major Crimes has the makings of a very sturdy reboot outfitted with a built-in philosophical debate over how justice is served. Supporting characters are newly invigorated, particularly Bailey's Provenza.

Whatever your religious beliefs--or lack thereof--The American Bible Challenge is good for the soul. It's also the best new game show in years.

Although Buscemi remains firmly in charge of this lead role, he's not the most interesting principal anymore. That pendulum swings to his wife of convenience, Margaret Schoeder (Kelly Macdonald).

This is way too well-made a series to be dubbed a "guilty pleasure," even if a sizable percentage of the audience may watch purely for the visceral thrills of all that weekly bloodletting.

Game of Thrones seems to be getting better all the time judging from the four episodes sent for review. It’s just that it also seems to be taking longer and longer to get there in the interests of servicing all the returning and new characters in play.

The cast is engaging, the premise is intriguing and the genre long has been CBS' ratings-rich specialty.

A&E's Bates Motel is both mesmerizing and sometimes absurd in its rewind to Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) as a repressed 17-year-old.

In the end, Phil Spector succeeds on the strength of its two marquee thespians. Mirren is wonderful throughout, Pacino scores in double figures and they have enough scenes together to make it all well worth your while.

Weiner’s end-game for his leading man does not appear to be brightly lit. Nor is Season 6 of Mad Men off to a particularly sparkling start creatively while we wait for the worst to come.

Dear Mom, Love Cher is both a pleasant and evocative way to spend an hour.

LOLA for its part shows signs of getting that old Law & Order moxie back.

What we have so far is a sturdy cops/crooks/corruption series that falls short of The Shield but is certainly capable of someday earning its own stripes.

The end result is funny in spots, overly gross in others and upbeat in Rescue Me's typically offbeat fashion.

It's obviously not for the squeamish, nor perhaps for the refined. But it's al-i-i-i-i-i-ve in so many ways. So what the hell, let's rock.