[A] rare work of brilliance.

"Curb" may be ridiculously silly, but, unlike "Extras," its shenanigans are inventive.

The fifth season of this filmlike thriller is metaphorically knocking my socks off. My actual socks remain on.

Scene by scene, "Mrs. Harris" overcomes the rote nature of true crime stories.

There is a challenge to "Smith." It may be wonderfully shot so far. It may be blissfully quiet. And it may be supremely acted. But how much can a viewer care about the bad boys and girls over the course of many episodes?

The show's super strengths are its well-developed filmmaking, smooth pacing and a perfect cast. It views like the first hour of a fun, thoughtful movie.

Fantastic, fascinating, creepy, charming and gruesome.

"Day Break" asks viewers for faith, to believe unanswered questions will not go unanswered forever, and that every episode will be worth experiencing. For now, I'm willing to take that leap of faith, because the action is swift, the acting is taut and the premise is cool.

It's really kind of a glorious little miracle, a half-hour series of little pictures of simple, complex and unfamous Americans breathing everyday lives, with a twist of kookiness, while they search for the Meaning of Everything and The Big Picture.

Californication--the best new TV show in a year.

High School Musical 2 is very good. It's more than listenable. The music is surprisingly catchy, smartly penned and not annoying.

Cute, creative and slick, this is one of the best new shows of the fall season.

It's a lot of fun. It's funny. And stars Bret Harrison and Tyler Labine have better chemistry than most duos on TV.

Pushing Daisies deserves its high praise. It's the best new drama of the fall, finding sweet hope in morbid tragedy.

Dexter, one of the best shows on TV this decade. High praise, indeed. Deserved.

In Treatment is exhilarating.

It's a beauty--in many ways richer than the Broadway production--and should not be missed.

Everyone has to bring their A-game and, for the most part, they do.

It's the funniest thing you'll see all summer--particularly if you're drug-free.

The series is as compulsively watchable as ever, with Dexter's marriage, stepchildren, newborn son and stifling suburban life complicating his leisure time.

Catch up with the series while you can. These are the glory days, my friends.

Men of a Certain Age is strung together by small moments of triumph that make life worth living--and this show worth watching.

It’s a majestic, 10-part movie medal of honor for every person who ever put on a uniform because he believed he was one of the good guys.

You should feel nervous before any great date, and Don never disappoints. He'll make you feel like you are in on the joke with the innest in crowd on television. Anything these ad men are selling, I'll buy.

This fast-paced mockumentary perfectly captures the experience of parenthood.

The characters are unforgettable, and the history, of course, is more entertaining than fiction. The filming of Boardwalk Empire just may be more decadent than the decadence it's celebrating. It's not TV, and it's not really HBO. It's an event, not to be missed.

Raising Hope already has a little place in my heart. There's something about the downwardly mobile family unit (see: "Malcolm in the Middle," "The Middle," "Raising Arizona") that's just funnier and sweeter than anything else on TV.

It's not for everyone. Let's say that upfront. Eastbound & Down will either make you choke laughing, or wish that you could bleach the profanity from your brain.

Watching it was just bliss, and those of you who experienced the first five seasons in real time will probably enjoy it even more.

The 18th Amendment--that "Noble Experiment" that turned out to be one of the country's biggest civic failures--is the subject of a fascinating new documentary by Ken Burns.

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

The only reason I'm not giving the third season opener four stars is because the show is competing with two earlier, exquisite seasons. Sunday's episode feels like something is missing -- a hook, something to make it physically painful to wait for new episodes.

Next week's episode didn't have me quite as recklessly giddy, but 30 Rock on an off night is still equivalent to the kind of sugar rush you get from eating an entire Nerds Rope.

The new season looks promising. Let's just hope these kids can sing.

The financial stakes get considerably higher this season. Bill's new "casino and family fun center" results in briefcases full of cash.

Things are looking up for the underdog show.

It’s a lot to juggle, but you can count on the payoff to be worth the trouble. Power, weakness, greed, violence--what’s not to like?

The bleakness is a little relentless for my taste, but you have to marvel at the series' dark vision. Odenkirk is working with the best of the best, and he knows it.

It has wit, humor and a set of flawed but likable and offbeat characters not unlike the ones on the sophisticated "Arrested Development."

Alicia's cases are intriguing, and the background drama would be melodramatic if it weren't such a common story these days.

ABC knows that "Lost" is coming up on its last season, and it wants to ease the transition for you with this sci-fi grand-mystery series. On the basis of one episode, it's hard to say whether it will live up to its promise. But there is promise.

The Middle isn't the kind of sitcom you laugh at; it's the kind you laugh with.

The personalities are so appealing, and the jobs are so humbling, that this would have been a great one-shot documentary. Can they keep up the impact week after week? Or will we suffer from empathy fatigue sooner rather than later?

Olyphant's devilish looks balance his white-cowboy-hat principles.

The rest of the original crew is back, in varying degrees of denial, cluelessness, incompetence and narcissism. They have been missed.

It was filmed over four months and distilled into eight episodes, with brilliant results.

The drama can be over the top, and sometimes it feels like one big ego trip for Leary.... But the show is like the comic: imperfect but lovable.

There are some great characterizations and attention to detail. If you stick with the series, you'll be treated to a lecture on the perfect briefcase by the droll Michael Cristopher that's worth the price of admission. And if you think your office banter is entertaining, try swapping in-jokes with the intelligence community.

Ken Follett's 1989 historical novel had a resurgence in popularity as a 2007 Book Club selection, and should finally achieve world domination with this adaptation. Who knew the Middle Ages were so soap-operatically . . . dark?

It's unclear how many more seasons Cathy will survive, and how much humor can be mined from her pain. The visuals just might stay with you, though, as long as you live.

Ah, the joy of Glee. I thought the show had lost its way last season, trying to jam songs into theme episodes ("Hello"). But tonight's season opener proves that "Glee" is back in its groundbreaking groove, bringing music to the masses and making fun of itself in the process.

The charm of the show--and of the Gallagher family--is in its anarchy.

The action is fast, and I was pleased to find that scenes play out unpredictably. I do look forward to less explaining, though, and more insights.

There's some smart slapstick, and I believe that Perry could be the one sane man in an arena that holds 17,505 people.

It's "The A-Team" meets ... really good writing.

Showtime has tantalized me for ages with glimpses of Jeremy Irons growling and groping his way through a role as history's most debauched pope. It finally arrives Sunday, and you won't be disappointed.

With their moody new mystery series The Killing, AMC clearly knows what's good for us.

The kingdoms are gorgeous to look at, down to the last loving detail - you could be entertained just by watching for the inventive suits of armor. The violence is spectacular; the sex is twisted. The producers even had a language invented for the Dothraki, which should please the Dungeons and Dragons crowd.

At the end, Cinema Verite shows how the Louds dealt with the notoriety after the series aired, and where they are now. Cinema Verite blurs the lines even more - but there's a perverse logic to that.

It's "Jericho" meets "V," with the good from both and the bad discarded. It'll raise the summer-TV bar significantly.

As FX's hit series Rescue Me begins its seventh and final season tonight, the melding of comedy and drama is as deft as ever.

The show sometimes lays on the misogyny a bit thick, but Timoney's alienation feels painfully realistic, thanks to Bello.

The cable network's political drama even has my vote for the best new show of the season.

Almost nothing about this series is conventional. That's part of the appeal.

After watching four episodes, I can say that Awake has an addictive quality to it.

Seeing Game Change is like living again through the campaign of 2008.

Its distinctive voice makes it feel fresh and original, and the poignant comedy gets better with every episode.

[Boss brings] back its intoxicating blend of soap-opera sudsiness, Shakespearean tragedy and scathing insight into big city politics, Chicago-style.

[A] witty-but-poignant look at what it means to be a modern family.

This third season is more in keeping with Downton's first [season].

It's a fresh, compelling story about a couple of KGB operatives pretending to live the American dream as a married couple with kids in suburban Washington, D.C.