What a strange but stunning achievement Twin Peaks is... For television, Twin Peaks may be the summit of off-the- wall originality. [8 Apr 1990, p.H4]

With smart dialogue, intriguing plots, an explosive cast and an inclination to peer into life's dark corners, it is the most captivating new program in years. The Shield slams home like a bullet; wear your body armor. [11 Mar 2002, p.E2]

Homeland is an absolutely riveting immersion in the paranoia and burnout of America after a decade of the war on terrorism.

It's messy and confusing, often complex and contradictory, and moves in fits and starts, sideways and backward. It's the most startlingly original program on television in years, maybe ever, and it's also one of the best. [28 Sept 2002, p.E1]

Boardwalk Empire plays much like Sopranos: The Roots, a malignantly alluring exploration of the emergence of organized crime in the United States. A checkerboard of hazy intrigue and garish violence, of ruthless ambition and easy sexuality, it's an epic tale told darkly and well.

Sweet but never treacly, nostalgic but never dishonest, startlingly frank about race and always painfully funny, Everybody Hates Chris is the sitcom for which the networks have been yearning for the better part of a decade.

Superb in nearly all regards, from sharp, insightful writing, to a marvelously textured performance by star Keri Russell, to its movie-like pace and photography. [29 Sept 1998, p.1C]

Longford is never less than gripping. But it unconsciously apes the moral myopia that afflicts its protagonist.

Those patient viewers who do stay will be richly rewarded with a humanist story that gains traction as it goes--a vivid and intimate character piece meant to be savored like a spicy gumbo.

This is L.A. Law, which not only is the best offering of the new television season, but the best pilot for a new show since Hill Street Blues' debut six TV seasons ago. It will, as they say, make you laugh; it will make you cry. It brandishes a superior cast and a wit and style that elevate it immediately into the rarefied Hill Street/St. Elsewhere atmospheres -- shows whose structure of interwoven story lines that dangle from episode to episode it shares. [14 Sept 1986, p.K1]

For the first time since Married...With Children stood the genre on its head two decades ago, somebody has come up with a new take on the family sitcom, and the results are riotously funny.

The Pacific is as brutally simple and direct--and as oblivious to modern PC sensibilities--as the Marine's letter. Produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, this 10-part HBO miniseries is a loving but anguished tribute to the men who fought on the bloody island hellholes that comprised World War II's Pacific theater.

Creepy and cockeyed, unholy and unnerving, Top Of The Lake is riveting stuff.

Pushing Daisies is by far the best new series of the fall season.

The engaging, honest commentary is just what a DVD set should provide, and once again The Office extras don't disappoint.

The recipe may go back to your grandma or beyond, but that doesn't mean you won't eat two helpings and beg for more.

Sharply contrasting with the florid Borgias is AMC's emotionally spare and atmospherically dank series The Killing.

A striking, crisply edited show. The raw language, the series' other point of controversy, gives NYPD Blue an authentic flavor. Here is a series about bruised people, seemingly beyond redemption. This is the way they would talk. [21 Sept 1993, p.E1]

This wonderful half-hour pilot has distinguished this show as the very best of the crop of new series this fall. The writing, by the bawdy, brilliant Susan Harris, who was lured back to television by the promise of doing a show with the kind of characters seldom seen on the tube, is on a par with her wittiest days as the creator of "Soap". [14 Sept 1985, p.D5]

This dark gem of a show about a zombie apocalypse gleams with hellfire incandescence.

An ugly little glimpse into our hometown community...A cinema-verite, hand-held camera walk on the wild side with the Broward County Sheriff's Office.. A televised tour into (Broward's) heart of darkness...It had real energy. It was tense, taut, a video knuckle sandwich. You were with those cops as they chased fleeing perps, wrestled with muscled smugglers. And you couldn't help but be impressed with the heroism and dedication of the men and women on the streets -- Sheriff Nick 'I Never Met A Camera Angle I Didn't Like' Navarro's grandstanding antics notwithstanding. [Jan 1989]

Reaper is a hilariously fractured commentary on Gen Y.

If you're willing to invest some time and brain cells, The Nine is an absorbing experience.

[Glory Hounds] is too grim to be poetry. Though, like all true war stories, it is something of a love story; and like all true love stories, it will break your heart.

A raucous, raunchy and utterly loving account of life at the bottom of the military food chain.

In a season of too many three-child sitcoms, Frasier reminds viewers how good an adult sitcom can be. In its own way, Frasier is a family sitcom, one with meaning for middle-aged children. The father character brings a dark, but not oppressive, tone to the show, and Mahoney offers a performance full of pain and bitter humor. He gives Frasier a weight that other sitcoms, even Cheers, rarely have. [16 Sept 1993, p.G1]

The gloriously bloody and depraved spirit of the novels is intact and even enhanced.

A drama so well written and artfully executed that if tonight's debut were expanded just a bit, it could stand as a feature film. [22 Sept 1999, p.1E]