It's not a perfect show, but to judge by its pilot, it has good bones and excellent prospects, with a cast that knows just how much fun it can have before it seems as if it is just having fun.

As redeveloped by Cynthia Cidre (the 2007 CBS prime-time soap "Cane"), it is very much its [the original "Dallas"] heir, in spirit and execution.

It's a sweet summer treat.

Copper has come to entertain, not to educate, and it discharges that duty well.

It is smartly written and well played.... This series is also going to be very much a matter of taste.

As schematic and derivative as it is, as invested in piling on the feel-good moments past the point even of suspended disbelief, there is something quite likable about Made in Jersey.

In a world without cable dramas, Chicago Fire would be considered television at its more compelling and realistic. As it is, it walks the line between shameless entertainment--hot guys, hot girls, the fires within, the fires without--and intelligent storytelling.

It is, for all its two and a half hours, a streamlined retelling, organized more around energy and atmosphere than facts and figures.

As these things go, The Job is rather mild-mannered and amiable--everyone is on their best behavior, because there is no advantage in being nasty.

The situations are stock--John Hughes wrote this playbook pretty thoroughly--and the dialogue does not exactly crackle. But it is all well-staged and believably played and at times it becomes quite lyrical and, even, moving.

Jefferies' comedy is by turn smart, obvious, thoughtful and irritating, and quite as much may be said of his series--though his stage demeanor (loud, brash and in control) is softened considerably here by dint of his being a character living among other characters.

After a relatively overstated first episode (relative to what follows, that is, not to cartoons as a whole), it settles down into a gentler, more delicate, behind-the-beat groove.

Director Coky Giedroyc leaves enough dramatic headroom that when forces draw together toward the end, with one last frontier to cross, he can deliver what feels like pulp-fiction thrills without getting loud or fancy.

What Vice offers is not deep or thorough, but it is not without value. The news comes in pieces now; to get the full picture, you have to assemble it yourself.

That he is a difficult character is not lost on Maron, or the collective superego that runs his show. Other characters--the supporting performances are shaded and excellent throughout and help take the edges off--find him difficult as well; they stand in for the audience, criticizing him on its behalf.

There are some hectoring musical passages and the narration, delivered by Tom Selleck, foregrounding the folksy creak in his voice, can run to the precious and dramatically over-personified.... It is gorgeous clean through.

The show is indeed diverting. Nothing surprising, but pretty consistently interesting and as easy to watch as any invented procedural.

Nevertheless, this is a kind of American classic that goes right against the grain of what cartoons are supposed to be.

It does get a little pretentious at times, especially during the opening and closing narrations, but its pretensions are very much comic-book pretensions, and therefore allowable in what is, fundamentally, a comic book.

As with most things Wolf, it is superbly cast, almost too well... But every small role is well cast too -- the judges, the defendants, the policemen. They help create a lively world that's more believable than it sometimes deserves to be, and it is almost always engaging.

It's an amiable show whose main purpose is to give Prinze a place to be amiable in, and it does that well enough, when it isn't straining for laughs or wandering too far from the path of probability.

It's a comic book, basically, a B-movie, a pulp fiction, and low enough in the cultural reckoning of things to set its own rules with impunity.... Part of the pleasure of the series is that particular pleasure of watching a super-heroic character who can't fail.

It's too schematic by half, the banter rarely ascends to the level and wit, and it contains barely a believable moment... but it is not without a certain energy and cast-based charm.

Perfectly fine and nothing special.

The show's shifts in tone can seem ungainly; the comedy, of which there is more than usual in such shows, sometimes rubs uncomfortably against the premise.... Yet the show is best when it's funniest.

This is news that never quite rises to the level of an event: "David Mamet Came to Television and All We Got Was a Better 'E-Ring.' "

"Casanova" only gets into trouble when it wants to mean something, and the more pointedly emotional moments seem cooked up to the point of hokum, but it's fun when it wants to be, and most of the time it just wants to be fun.

While the performances are first-rate, and the film is never less than enjoyable, it doesn't quite take off.