This is a show about religion, politics, parent-child relationships, and the moral dilemmas of insurgency. Consider it a workplace drama where the business is armed resistance.

The NBC series certainly has been one of TV’s most emotionally honest and stirring works, and it remains so as it enters its fourth season.

It's hard to know where to aim the praise first.

Gabriel Byrne is in every minute of the show, delivering one of TV's most faceted and intriguing performances....All of the new characters promise to engage as their stories and backstories begin to unfold.

It offers a great cast, and some very tight, tart scripting. Each of the season's seven half-hours is a little sliver of pleasure.

This extraordinary upstairs-downstairs drama, written by Oscar-winning "Gosford Park" screenwriter Julian Fellowes, is a dramatic, intelligent, soapy, comic, and wise piece of work, one that explores social shifts on the eve of World War I while delivering a remarkably engaging cast of characters.

Ultimately, though, even with the fantasy, Game of Thrones feels like a historical medieval saga. It's a royal, and royally good, round of musical chairs.

A taut exercise in withheld disaster, Breaking Bad is riveting.

Of all the drama pilots I watched, this was my favorite.

The creeping sense of dread has been part of what has made Breaking Bad so engrossing.

The show doesn't seem to have lost any ballast moving forward from the intensity of season one.

This is a great piece of TV work... Right from its opening minutes, after a flight to Australia has crashed on the shores of nowhere, ABC's Lost simulates the kind of dread we don't expect to find on the small screen. [22 Sept 2004, p.E1]

It's a riveting indication of what Lynch can do without words. Simple shots of traffic lights and waterfalls are enough to send chills up the spine.

The show beautifully depicts a massive game of musical chairs, a world at war with doom ever present just across the border.

AMC’s Mad Men returns for season 6 with two hours that are as rich and as deftly literary as anything in the history of the show. The premiere operates like a series of exquisitely written theatrical set pieces, one after another that add up to a moving, ironic, and often comic group portrait.

The best new network dramatic series since "Shannon's Deal" and "Twin Peaks" in 1990. [29 Jan 1993, p.21]

I love the suburban satire, which is old territory made fresh again. [Jane] Levy, from "Shameless," is tart and sympathetic, and [Cheryl] Hines is a revelation as a rabidly superficial mom.

The script is tight and ambitious, as it attempts to anatomize corruption in the big city.

Dern is fantastic as Amy--you cringe as her histrionics drive people away, and cringe again as she tries to suppress her feelings behind a veneer of New Age peacefulness.

I don't know if it will catch on - westerns can be a hard sell - but it's another fine AMC choice.

The NBC sitcom is so unpretentious and original, it will probably win you over on its own sweet merits.

'Extras" is far less terminally existential than ''The Office," less depressing to watch.

Fiendishly excellent.

A really extraordinary new drama.

From the brilliant performance by Michael C. Hall to the dryly witty scripting, Dexter secures a position near the top of another year's best list.

This knockout adaptation of the Lorraine Hansberry play is a model of both the pure power of stage acting and TV’s potential to bring us up close to that acting without deadening it.

HBO's Generation Kill is remarkable.

Mad Men returns for season 2 in excellent form: There's a rich and active subtext in this series, you just have to discover it.

This season as much as last, In Treatment brings us into more intimacy with its characters than almost any other series on TV.

Mad Men remains TV at its most artful. Like Don Draper, it's beautiful, stealthy, troubling, and, above all, addictive.

When people ask me to recommend good TV, they never seem to have heard about it. Yup, Breaking Bad is that series.

The writing remains remarkable, as it toggles between the rhythms and cliches of 1950s movies and the timeless resonance of mid-20th-century theater. You rarely find such economical and evocative scripting on TV.

Beyond the formulaic outline, White Collar, is actually one of the best new shows of the season.

This is the kind of TV that viewers ask for but rarely get, driven by characters who are more than the sum of one or two qualities and who harbor depths that are revealed slowly, subtly, and authentically.

There may be a smaller number of top-notch newbies this season, but Raising Hope, a celebration of parenthood and childhood, of small joys and big struggles, is certainly one of them.

The show isn't easy to warm up to, to be honest; it's draped in--and at times stifled by--meticulous period detail and too-perfect lighting, especially in Scorsese's premiere. But in episode two, the characters and the script begin to prevail, and the drama becomes more emotionally distinct and fascinating.

Dexter is a masterfully creepy-funny serial-killer series, and it continues to both frighten and amuse as it enters its fifth season.

[The] sentimental streak in the show is compensated by Frank's coldness and the scrappy urban realism, translated so effectively from the British original.

Based on the first three episodes, I'm thinking season 2 is going to be even better and certainly more consistent.

The Killing quickly hooks you with its steadily unfolding story line. Created by Veena Sud, based on a Danish TV hit named "Forbrydelsen," the show draws you into the tragedy of the crime, and then makes you crave its solution.

With none of the conventional plot techniques TV viewers are accustomed to, it is a collection of rich moments and poignant characters that loosely adds up to something quite powerful.

Robert James Fischer's story is astonishing on and off the chess board, and tonight's HBO documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World captures it well.

With season two, the drama has fully come to life, with moments of savagery, hypocrisy, and bittersweet loyalty that make it a must-see show.

Rarely do they strain the credulity of real situations or the constraints of the time.

Iannucci and his cast are as deft with a wonky policy joke as they are with good old-fashioned bathroom humor and Louis-Dreyfus shines, throwing herself, as she so often did on "Seinfeld" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine," physically into the role.

The Hour is not "Breaking Bad" good, or "Mad Men" good, but it's close.

It's an extraordinarily appealing series, one that's so much more than its easy label as a teen private-eye series. [22 Sept 2004, p.D12]

In its own affectionate way, Freaks and Geeks puts a pimple into the TV-ized approach to adolescence. This delightfully observed 1980s-set dramedy is high school as many of us remember it, with Twinkie-pounding bullies and Army-jacket wearing druggies and pale nerds with speech impediments and "Star Trek" fixations. It's high school unplugged, a sort of "Dazed and Confused" for the small screen, and it is one of the fall season's most likable new shows. That NBC has thrown "Freaks and Geeks" into the wilds of Saturday night - it premieres tonight at 8 on Ch. 7 - is only further evidence of network nitwitness. [25 Sept 1999, p.C1]

A wonderful, imaginative mess brimming with possibility. About a dysfunctional family of space cowboys, the sci-fi series arrives not fully formed, like an elaborate photo that's still clarifying in developing fluid. While many shows burst onto the scene with slick pilots and quickly deteriorate into mediocrity, I'm thinking Firefly is on the opposite creative journey.

The unfolding of the Parade’s End narrative has been directed (by Susanna White) and written to challenge--sometimes too much so. While you always understand the connections among the characters on “Downton,” you have to piece them together yourself in Parade’s End.... It’s the kind of demanding storytelling that differentiates “The Wire” from most other crime series.

Can Alias work on a weekly basis? While the Alias pilot plunges forward effortlessly, it also leads to some fairly complicated twists involving Sydney's father (Victor Garber) and the nature of her agency. These twists could make future episodes overly layered, or too dependent on backstory. Also, any CIA suspense series, with or without a flashy pilot, faces the challenge of coming up with 20 or so fresh espionage plots each season - no easy task.

Along with its refreshing cast, led by Keri Russell, the WB's Felicity is blessed with a sweet realism that captures the emotional roller coaster that is freshman year in college. It also offers an appealingly non-gritty look at New York City, as seen through the eyes of optimism and innocence...The show transcends formula by staying steadily focused on its characters' shifting emotional realities, and by avoiding the issue-of-the-week plot twists of a series like "Beverly Hills 90210." [29 Sept 1998, p.C1]

No, The Sopranos is not the equal of Scorsese's masterpiece ["Goodfellas"], but it manages to bring a new spin to the words "dysfunctional" and "family," and it deserves its place alongside other HBO gems like "The Larry Sanders Show" and "Sex and the City." [9 Jan 1999, p.C1]

A smart, exhilarating, well-written hour that, if anything, is a little naive about the folks who run our nation's most important office. [22 Sept 1999, p.E1]

After the forced opening minutes, it's the best multi-cam-com of the season.

The tone tips awkwardly between crude and romantic, and a little of Azaria goes a long way. But I'm game for episode 2.

This is a classic guilty pleasure, with campy twists and a fabulously diva-esque performance by Stowe.

As a weekly series, the effects need to remain impressive and the writers need to avoid falling into "Lost" and "Walking Dead" band-of-survivors rehash.

If the show can stay as gripping as its premiere... it will be a welcome new prime-time puzzle.

Like ''Friends," this is not a big-themed series so much as a bunch of little character jokes and relationship confusions getting batted around by an able cast.

Like ''Lost"... the mystery is provocatively open-ended and, assuming the writing continues to be good, absorbing.

If Rock and co-creator Ali LeRoi can continue to bring depth to the characters without succumbing to cliche or sentiment, they will be on a promising path.

One of Colbert's strengths has always been wordplay, which is in full force on ''The Colbert Report" and gives the show an added level of wit.

"The Boondocks" takes on racism the way ''All in the Family" did, by sending up ignorance and extremism rather than moralizing about them.

An eerie -- and excellent -- new series that makes ''24" look more than ever like a broadly drawn comic strip.

''24" is still an addictive amusement park ride of a show.

''Big Love,"... is layered enough to do what HBO's ''The Sopranos" and ''Six Feet Under" have done so well: make atypical heroes knowable and universal. It pulls us into its parallel moral universe, rather than keep us standing outside in judgment.

"Studio 60" is one of the best new dramas of the season, assuming you aren't Sorkin-phobic, and with some tweaking it could be the very best.

The best of a recent group of heist dramas, including NBC's "Heist" and FX's "Thief."

The ABC show... is one of the pleasures of the new season, although it may strike some viewers as too conceptually loose to love.

Like "Lost," it has the potential to grow into a cross-genre drama that reaches beyond cultiness to all kinds of TV viewers.

Berg has done a fine job of lifting his series above familiar teen melodrama and making it into a group portrait of a town.

Based on the pilot, [the] mystery promises to be surprising, psychological, and addictive.

The action is intense in "Sleeper Cell," and each episode includes at least one stunning moment of violence or betrayal. But character depth isn't sacrificed to keep the pace moving, and there are valuable calms between the storms.

To embrace "Knights," you have to have a taste for the kind of comedy that teases because it loves.

[It] passes quickly but gleefully.

You'll love "The Sarah Silverman Program," but only if, like me, you have a healthy appetite for sick comedy.

Izzard is a great surprise in FX's "The Riches," and just one of this fascinating new series' unexpectedly soulful pleasures.

It works largely because his victims are the ones doing the work, offering body language clues, lapping up subliminal messages, and proving their capacity for distraction.

Never mind the clichés, because Duchovny makes his character worth watching, as he swaggers from bad predicament to bad predicament, pretending not to care about his life anymore.

All the details have color, and so do the characters, right down to Sam's guilt-ridden parents, with whom he still lives. And there are fleeting hints of drama in the scenario that will surely gain momentum and weight.

Dirty Sexy is right on the money.

The actor [Lewis], who uses a flawless American accent, makes Life worth a gander. And he is surrounded by a distinctive cast.

Pushing Daisies is good, as well as distinctive.

The shamelessness of Nip/Tuck returns intact, which is a good thing.

Why watch The Wire if it's such tough-going--so difficult to follow and then, once followed, so pessimistic? Because it offers the kind of earned understanding that leads to progress.

British actress Lena Headey makes Sarah into the heart and soul of this series. Without Headey and her maternal magnetism, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles would probably deteriorate into a nonstop series of effects-laden fight scenes that's as cold and grim as NBC's "Bionic Woman" remake.

If you've been wondering about the art of series-TV writing, and how potent and resonant it truly can be, you need look no further than HBO's extraordinary new In Treatment.

So much of the pleasure of Lost is in the way surprise twists arrive completely out of the blue.

The world is well-constructed, down to the details: By the third episode this season, Ulrich's hair has grown into a messy and convincing frontier mullet. And the characters are intriguing; Esai Morales is notable as an Allied States Army major who might soon be convinced that his superiors are up to no good.

As much as this is a story of the pressures facing teenage girls, it's also a striking, honest look at the parent-child relationship, with its ebbs and flows of communication and trust.

It is reverent enough, and profoundly heroic; and yet it is a living, breathing piece of work that brings American history down to earth.

The beautifully filmed half-hour comedy, lets Ullman clown around with her face and her voices and her wigs without confining her to too much story line.

The filmmakers deliver a fine balance of both elated big-gun worship and humiliated bathroom cleaning, melting-pot team-making and the cliquishness of ethnic groups.

The emotional strains of keeping her secret from Ben (Iddo Goldberg) grow across the eight episodes and lend the season an unexpected poignancy.

Halter is also the most heartless of the principals, in a tough-love sort of way.... [But] Most of the time, though, this show makes you wish that the principals had sharper teeth.

This melodrama isn't high TV art, or even middling; but it's dishy, farcical, and funny, as the willowy Serena (Blake Lively) and her circle prey on one another.

I do think it has real potential to become a solid dramatic addition to the FX slate, as The Shield enters its final season.