After a dark and often depressing season four, it's refreshing to start things off on a more jovial, lighter note. That's not to say the premiere is devoid of angst, disappointment and drama. It's just buoyed by an unusually high amount of humor.

This is a show worth watching, and worth the effort it might take for newbies to get up to speed.

Few television shows are as addictive as this pensive, wonderfully paced suspenser.

The beauty of this series is that it's so entertaining and so well-executed.

The season five pre­miere "Live Free or Die", more than maintains the series' record of excellence.

Reunited with "Family Ties" creator Gary David Goldberg, movie star Michael J. Fox scores a landslide victory in his terrific TV comeback. [16 Sept 1996, p.35]

Take away the nude lovemaking scene, the revolutionary level of potent cussing, the curiosity-stirring controversies surrounding Steven Bochco's premeditated shock elements, and NYPD Blue remains one helluva cop show. [21 Sept 1993, p.35]

The quality of talent in front of the camera matches the high standards behind the scenes. As a cop ensemble, the Homicide squad has the spice, dry wit and ethnic diversity of the "Hill Street Blues" crew, with even more eccentricities and a heightened sense of realism. Like the New York partners in "Law & Order," the Baltimore detectives grind it out with street-tested police procedures. [29 Jan 1993, p.55]

Boreanaz and Deschanel stir good chemistry as a crime-fighting duo.

The show's appeal is its breezy verbiage and well-suited cast.

The casting is for awesome, flat-out too-good-for-TV acting.

What is special about "Ghost Whisperer" is the way it gets everything else right -- casting, acting, writing, directing, pacing, music, you name it.

Finally, a "Sex and the City" clone comes through.

"Heist" is good TV -- not great yet, but good -- from the cast to the suspenseful pacing and a cool musical score.

Despite high praise, there are two serious problems: (a) The first new episode is crazy confusing, and (b) over the course of the first batch of episodes, the story lines don't develop quickly enough.

Fans of Sorkin's years on "The West Wing" will likely enjoy "Studio 60." And there should be enough mature viewers who crave bright writing to make the show a sudden mainstay.

I don't want to spoil the great lines, delivered with perfect comic acting. To me, it's bliss.

If the series doesn't peter out after its first two great episodes, Comedy Central may at last have on its hands a live-action comedy as funny as "Chappelle's Show."

It's hard for an artistic entity to balance that kind of American duality. Mad Men does so in a subtler and more natural way than "Natural Born Killers" did satirically.

As usual, he's demanding, brutal and fearless. He repeatedly insults egotistical managers and chefs and yells, "Just smell that for me!" And they do.

It's very appealing. Aliens in America pulls off its absurd, touchy situation by handling everything with a relaxed tone and excellent film work.

It's really quite good and oddly entertaining, as cynical as it is.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles" begins as an intense, thoughtful, exciting, fun spectacle. The first episode will kick your ass.

There's nothing objectionable about the messages of the piece: always be true to yourself and treat everyone with dignity and respect. But teens and adults may find it a little saccharine.

Based on the first episode of the second season, "Mad Men" is still one of the best series currently on television, if not the best.

Bloody, sexy and violent, the show is also both occasionally funny and frightening.

The time-travel element puts enough of a twist in it to move it a couple of notches above all the other entries in the fall season, not to mention all the same-old police procedurals clogging the networks.

A refreshing dramedy that captures the hard-boiled world of New York City homicide investigators and their twisted sense of humor