This is just the kind of amusingly off-center comedy now missing from NBC's lineup, one of those rare, delightful meshings of concept, cast and execution, with producer Tom Cherones providing inspired direction. Nothing is forced. [31 May 1990, p.F9]

It's high-pitched, unforgettable, knockout, electrifying TV...There should be a law requiring more series like NBC's new L.A. Law. [15 Sept 1986, p.C1]

Gandolfini and Falco are excellent, as is the supporting work of Imperioli and others. And that grande dame of troupers, Marchand, is so coldbloodedly plausible as Livia that her eyes are ice and you can almost hear her heart freezing over. [8 Jan 1999, p.F1]

Twin Peaks teeters on the very edge of exquisite absurdity. Its genius is that it plays both on the level of subtly ludicrous melodrama and on the level of a baffling whodunit, as most lines of dialogue appear to contain a hidden meaning, most faces a dark secret.

Sunday's premiere delivers spectacular fun with great style edged in melancholy, its balance of breathless action and tenderness providing still more evidence of this fall's crop of new shows being the best in years. [29 Sept 2001, p.16]

If there's a better written, better acted, more originally conceived show on television, I defy you to name it.

Downton Abbey, which premieres Sunday, is this generation's "Upstairs, Downstairs," both in theme--the daily dramas of a titled British family and their many servants--and in stature.

Though some of the visual cues will be very familiar to fans of "Lord of the Rings" or even "The Tudors," Game of Thrones quickly finds that rare alchemy of action, motivation and explanation, proving, once again, that the epic mythology remains the Holy Grail of almost any medium.

In early episodes, Big Love quickly reclaims its astonishing ability to balance the insightful and the absurd, hilarity and heartbreak and the personal with the political. The hours race by and already the final season seems far too short.

Many heads bend over this adaptation, each belonging to a master of his or her craft, and what emerges is a truly new, and miraculously accurate, definition of epic television.

It's the first telling of a post-9/11 story that is all the things it should be: politically resonant, emotionally wrenching and plain old thrilling to watch.

Smash is a triumph.

Given the extravagances of the plot and the characters, that it feels plausibly seated in the real world is a testament to everyone involved in its production. But it is especially due to the actors.

It isn't just good TV, it's revelatory TV. The genre's biggest potential game changer since AMC debuted the one-two punch of "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad."

Once your eyes adjust to the bedazzled opulence of Liberace's life in '70s and '80s Las Vegas, Behind the Candelabra becomes a darkly moving and provocative look at two lonely men who briefly found something like love before the maelstrom of fame, money and drugs, all churning within the confines of the sexual closet, blew it apart.

Deliciously funny satirical gore. [10 Mar 1997, p.F1]

The sexy, urbane Friends -- from Marta Kauffman, David Crane and Kevin Bright, the people responsible for the HBO super-comedy "Dream On" -- starts fairly strongly tonight, improves next Thursday and in week three gets on a grand, hilarious, rip-roaring roll. It's the perfect series to bridge "Mad About You" and "Seinfeld." [22 Sept 1994, p.F1]

Not only does The Golden Girls offer meaningful portrayals of women in their post-middle-age years, but, as a bonus, it's one of those TV rarities, a comedy that's funny. Very funny. [13 Sept 1985, p.C1]

The cast is fine and Steve Miner directs with sensitivity. There's real poignancy in the last scene between Savage and McKellar. It's a refreshingly gutsy half-hour, a look back at how things were -- and weren't. [31 Jan 1988, p.C-13]

Spin City just happens to be very funny. [17 Sept 1996, p.F1]

Among the most gratifying and promising new series of the fall season. [29 Sept 1998, p.F1]

The thing about "The Sopranos" is that strands of character detail -- Carmela Soprano's fingernails, the way Tony breathes through his nose when he eats -- stay with you long after you've forgotten whose cut of a garbage route has precipitated a beef between which wiseguys.

Although the humor begins broadly, it grows on you as you adjust to its rhythms, and ultimately you hear yourself laughing out loud. This is easily NBC's best new series. It's also one of those distinctive comedies in which everything meshes. [2 Oct 2001, p.C2]

This Sense and Sensibility is truer not only to Austen's narrative, it more successfully captures the quiet precision of her singular mind--she was the master of finding poetry in domestic detail, and for that, the small screen is much better suited than the large.

A scorching look at the drug trade in a Baltimore housing project through the eyes of mid-level dealers and police. [31 May 2002, p.C1]

In a more refreshing fantasy, Boomtown's L.A. appears to be almost a one-medium town. In early episodes, at least, there are no local TV pests to harass Little and her publication, who have the news all to themselves. Which is one more reason why some of us think so highly of this series. [28 Sept 2002, p.C1]

At once more modest and more ambitious than its predecessor; more focused on detail and yet more expansive. It is also excruciatingly funny, with an emphasis on excruciating.

In the run-up to the show it all sounded a bit hard to get your head around, but in the flesh the show zinged, at least this first week.

The domestic version... is every bit as good as the original.

In its emphasis on character over plot it reminds me of movies from the pre-Spielberg '70s, and is in so many ways what I want from television that I feel almost like phoning each of you personally to deliver the news.

It is, to put it bluntly, a cast to die for. Each story line is well-drawn and compelling and each subtly represents a thread of Paul's own issues that come together in Gina's office even more effectively, if a bit more sentimentally, than they did last season.

What is remarkable about "Life Support" is how it avoids every pitfall of the standard issue-based TV film and, indeed, of most TV films, period.

Mad Men has found a strange and lovely space between nostalgia and political correctness and filled it with interesting people, all of them armed with great powers of seduction.

For those Americans who have fallen through some wormhole and have never seen "Law & Order," the British version is as good a place to start as any--Walsh, Bamber and Agyeman in particular deliver fine performances. And those put off by the new "Law & Order: Los Angeles" or just jonesing for the good old days, will no doubt find a trip to London positively...brilliant.

Terrific acting, crackling dialogue and geek-hip crime are not the only things that make this the most electric drama to premiere this fall.

With Treme (which refers to a New Orleans neighborhood and is pronounced treh-MAY), Simon, co-creator Eric Overmyer and their team of writers (including the late, great David Mills) have proved that television as an art form cannot only rival Dickens, it can hold its own against Wagner.

There are only three patients this time around, and their stories, written by executive producers Anya Epstein and Dan Futterman, offer a thematic cohesion that seems richer, though perhaps more familiar. More important, the show remains a rare and wonderful opportunity to watch fine actors work their way through excellent material, earning it consistent praise and HBO's commitment, despite low ratings.

The filmmakers do not beat a political drum, they do not use an impassioned script or a soundtrack comprising brass and strings; they do not attempt to incite anger or outrage, sorrow or resolve in any way. Instead, they present the facts, simply and gracefully, and the result is devastating.

Haynes has created not only a rich and nuanced vehicle for his A-list cast--among them Kate Winslet, Evan Rachel Wood and Guy Pearce--he has given us a rare and valuable gift: an American melodrama about class.

Becoming Chaz is undoubtedly one of the most thought-provoking films you will see on any screen this year, a frankly chronicled tale of Chaz's life as a transgender man that opens a more than occasionally mind-blowing conversation about the essentials of gender, and subsequently, sexuality.

It is big, beautiful, beautifully acted and romantic, its passions expressed with that particular British reserve that serves only to make them burn brighter.

Enlightened is to my mind the most interesting and ambitious series of the fall season.

This may be the better work [than "No Direction Home"], for its depth of feeling and its relatively more forthcoming and knowable subject.

Notwithstanding a certain stylistic chilliness and my sense of it having been pitched on the back of "Inception," it promised to be one of the year's best and most interesting new series. Having seen four episodes now, I'd say the promise has been largely kept.

Highly arresting. [20 Sept 2002, p.C1]

Parade's End must be taken on its own terms, because it is offering something rare and provocative: a poetically precise consideration of what it means to be caught out of time, clinging to the lip of one era or reaching desperately for a foothold in the other.