The first two installments of House of Cards are smartly acted and written, crisply directed by Fincher, and sumptuously photographed by Eigl Bryld (In Bruges), but they’re not mind-bogglingly great, or even particularly surprising or delightful--just solidly adult, with moments of dark wit.

This show isn't art quite yet, but it's artful. Tiresome as it sometimes is, there's something to it.

It’s hard to imagine Hannibal scaling new peaks of originality as drama--not with characters and situations that have, in more than one sense, been done to death. At least there’s life in the acting and in the show’s inventive visuals.

Pacino and Mirren’s teamwork keeps Phil Spector watchable even when it’s dousing itself in dramatic ethanol and lighting a match.

This is still a charming series, and the cast gets plenty of mileage out of the role-reversal at the show’s heart.

Now and then Shameless sloughs off its mostly self-imposed constraints and fires on all cylinders, observing economic hardship, drunken tomfoolery and sexual shenanigans with a keen eye for class specifics.

Revenge might sound enjoyably soapy in the abstract, but its execution is problematic.

As we head into Season 2, it's becoming increasingly clear that they [the actors] can't make these characters interesting, because they're too thinly conceived.

Hell on Wheels didn't turn into a great drama, but it settled into a distinctive groove, growing more relaxed and confident by the week.

Both the new actor and the revamped series take some getting used to.

The movie is better than you've heard but not good enough to linger in the mind.

Missteps are balanced by bits that ring oddly true.

It's the new Revenge, but so much goofier and more shameless that it makes Revenge look comparatively measured.

It's all rather weightless: just your usual sitcom-style misunderstandings and bruised egos and "complications ensue," with no sense that anything larger is at stake.

Too much of Political Animals feels like good-enough-for-government-work drama, and I can't help believing it would have been more compelling, maybe genuinely subversive, if it had replaced some of the scenes that attack the show's main themes head-on with pick-axes, and substituted ones that showed the female characters simply doing their jobs, commanding more than reluctant respect from men.

It's knowingly dumb and aiming for smart-dumb, and over time it might get there.

Still, for all its flaws, this is an intriguing show, packed with atmospheric details and Easter-egg-style grace notes.

The weak link is Jesse Bradford's Chris.... The other couples are more humanely drawn. Because they make emotional and psychological sense, the chirpy sitcom banter goes down more smoothly.

Arrow is sincere and energetic but visually undistinguished.

The pilot for ABC's extraterrestrial silly-fest feels half-baked, and parts of it just sort of lie there, but this shouldn't be a deal breaker.

Chicago Fire gets better week-to-week, finding its own vibe, one that mixes TV-14 gore, soap opera entanglements, and working-class-hero earnestness. Sincerity puts the whole thing over.

The series' bludgeoning aesthetic is silly, but it works. Much of History's programming aims to intrigue viewers who might never crack open a book, while assuring literate history buffs that the filmmakers know what they're talking about.

While it's emphatically not a great show, it is an overheated yet intriguing one, driven more by visuals than words--and if you don't mind that its gory action and soap-opera plots aren't yet matched by dialogue and performance, it's worth a look.

Nothing in this pilot promises how fascinating the show will ultimately become, and unfortunately, the show is more efficient than truly good. ... The first four episodes contain no aesthetically pleasing shots or sequences, just tedious coverage of talk and action, and too many of its 'shocking' moments are dependent on visual/aural shortcuts. ... Nevertheless, The Following fascinates, thanks to soulful lead performances by Bacon and Justified's Natalie Zea (as Carroll's ex-wife) and the nervy way it develops and sustains its central flourish.

In its second season it's a wisecracking caper series with glossy B-movie production values, an appealing cast, an overlay of global espionage fantasy, and action scenes so inventively choreographed that you can almost forgive their cliched shaky-cam imagery and "What the hell just happened?" editing. And that's it.

Nothing in this pilot is as compelling as the idea for the show, which begs philosophical and ethical questions that Spielberg and company (for now, at least) aren't interested in addressing.

Unfortunately it's more of a survey or omnibus, so it covers many programs somewhat glancingly.

Cinema Verite is smart and often moving, but unsatisfying overall.