The arbitrary leap overseas moves the show that much closer to pure sitcom--an improvement. [22 Aug 2011, p.45]

The acting is flat, but the show casts a hokey spell. [19 Sep 2011, p.65]

VanCamp goes about her business with a purse-lipped Jodie Foster earnestness that makes her hard to root for. But Stowe coos, scowls, flirts and thunders. She roils Revenge. [26 sep 2011, p.56]

The show is fueled with so much soap-operatic hot air that it takes off. [26 Sep 2011, p.54]

[Bello's] sour, tough intelligence is right on the money. [3 Oct 2011, p.45]

Up All Night is adorable without being cute. [3 Oct 2011, p.41]

Boardwalk is still solid, but it's sacrificed some of its nervy power. [10 Oct 2011, p.40]

The talent is good, and on the long road to announcing a top 16, the show expertly milking every drop of pathos. [24 Oct 2011, p.39]

The show is a quietly intriguing, informative study of assimilation, identity and community. [21 Nov 2011, p.40]

This could grow into a show of more than ordinary interest. [28 Nov 2011, p.57]

This Victorian-era prequel to Peter Pan works. [12 Dec 2011, p.48]

Luckily the characters are so fully formed, and so fully inhabited by the cast, that the whole mess staggers up out of the trenches and keeps going. [9 Jan 2012, p.39]

It takes a few half-hour episodes before the tone gels. [16 Jan 2012, p.39]

A solid, well-done series. [19 Jan 2012, p.42]

There's always a laugh or two. [30 Jan 2012, p.44]

It's fun sport. [30 Jan 2012, p.44]

Girl has a surprisingly casual sense of humor and Anna Silk is physically just right in the lead role. [13 Feb 2012, p.45]

The humor is so lighthearted, the show practically skips. [20 Feb 2012, p.48]

A tricky show with serious potential. [5 Mar 2012, p.45]

This bifurcated character--Mother of the Year meets Jack Bauer--isn't always believable, but Judd welds the two Beccas together through sheer willpower. [19 Mar 2012, p.41]

The one great redemptive asset--and it's significant--is Kiefer Sutherland. [26 Mar 2012, p.41]

The humor has a light, convivial burble. [26 Mar 2012, p.45]

The story is promising. [9 Apr 2012, p.42]

Scandal is about as realistic as Mamie Eisenhower Witch Hunter but it has so much headlong energy, you may not care. [9 Apr 2012, p.40]

The jokes hop all over the place but the show, like Chloe, is refreshingly wild. [16 Apr 2012, p.49]

The show is gentle, winning and sympathetic. [7 May 2012, p.48]

If the show's isn't terribly ambitious to break new ground, it's a nice lull. [11 Jun 2012, p.42]

The show is still crazily entertaining. [11 Jun 2012, p.41]

Gilmore creator Amy Sherman-Palladino gives her actors a zip drive's worth of dialogue....Foster's got the mouth--and charm--to pull it off. [18 Jun 2012, p.43]

Their white collar cases aren't always riveting but as summer fares goes, hot guys and Manhattan backdrops are a reliably escapist combo. [25 Jun 2012, p.47]

The Soul Man isn't great, but it's the best sitcom yet developed for TV Land. [2 Jul 2012, p.40]

If it doesn't have the ABC sitcom's [Suburgatory's] satiric sheen, it captures some of those glum patches that strike in adolescence. [2 Jul 2012, p.38]

Season 2 of the Hollywood satire still plays too broad, [...] But Matt LeBlanc's understated performance as himself has gotten even better. [9 Jul 2012, p.36]

About Face addresses some deeper implications--Gia Carangi's early death is a cautionary tale--but knows better than to over do it. [6 Aug 2012, p.39]

This air of finality throws the many small, fine details of Parker's performance, the main reason for the show's existence, into sharp relief. [13 Aug 2012, p.42]

The show is cleverer than you'd expect. [20 Aug 2012, p.41]

The melodrama of it all is tasty--a jumbo macaroon. [27 Aug 2012, p.43]

Kane's visions aren't done with originality, but Grammer's performance is still powerful. [27 Aug 2012, p.48]

The Inbetweeners is a companion to the network's hit Awkward. And equally funny. [27 Aug 2012, p.48]

The color, pace and performance are vibrant, often crazily so. [10 Sep 2012, p.39]

Branagh is very fine as Wallander. [10 Sep 2012, p.40]

The overall mythology is sprouting nicely thorny tendrils. [10 Sep 2012, p.42]

The show is a birdhouse full of woodpeckers. [24 Sep 2012, p.54]

This new series is a bold military thriller. [8 Oct 2012, p.60]

The high school stories are tighter-focused, and the Manhattan ones breathe with Broadway romanticism. [5 Nov 2012, p.42]

The show works and it's fun. [12 Nov 2012, p.43]

I'll take Hour's rather sour worldview--deadlines in deadly times--over the grand uplift of HBO's The Newsroom. In a nanosecond. [3 Dec 2012, p.44]

666 Park Avenue remains good Gothic Trash. [26 Nov 2012, p.44]

Girls can still be Girls. [21 Jan 2013]

An entertainingly sinister dip in the cesspool of 19th century criminality. [21 Jan 2013]

This provocatively, almost boisterously violent thriller bolts into action with a clever premise and sustains it with good, unexpected jolts. [28 Jan 2013, p.43]

[Larry Hagman's last days on the show don't] keep Dallas from being robust fun. [4 Feb 2013, p.42]

It's tense, engrossing, mildly ludicrous--and worth checking out before the Cold War melts. [11 Feb 2013]

History's first scripted series is a headlong tumble into an irresistible and surprisingly neglected genre. [18 Mar 2013, p.41]

Preachers' Daughters, focusing on three families headed by ministers, has its hearts in the tight place. [18 Mar 2013, p.42]

The acting is good, especially Bill Skarsgard and Landon Liboiron.... I like the show's languid, dreamlike beauty, but horror fans may be less patient. [22 Apr 2013, p.47]

A lovely piece of work. [6 May 2013, p.49]

[Rectify] feels damply airless--the tension might be ripped open at any moment by a thunderclap of revelation.... It's a disturbing, impressive performance [from Aden Young as Daniel]. [13 May 2013, p.49]

Motive isn't ingenious enough to motivate imitations or spinoffs, but it's smooth and diverting. [27 May 2013, p.40]

It wouldn't hurt to pick up the pace, but Graceland is a successful move toward true grittiness. [3 Jun 2013, p.43]

Somehow the premiere hour fills in all this background without getting lost and--more importantly--with sincerity and sensitivity. [10 Jun 2013, p.50]

A smoothly executed vehicle for Rebecca Romijn and Jon Tenney, it knows exactly what it's doing, [16 Jun 2013]

An entertaining big-narrative concept. [5 Sep 2005, p.41]

The show could be compelling, especially if the cast pulls off two decades' worth of aging. [12 Sep 2005, p.46]

Finnigan's performance dovetails perfectly with Close's neat if heavy- handed dramatic concept. [17 Oct 2005, p.39]

The narrative seems unduly baggy and stretched out, nothing so sharply defined as a triangle. More like a rhomboid. [12 Dec 2005, p.39]

The show has a sheen that's distinctive from Law [& Order]--young, exfoliated skin reflects light better from waxed court floors--and promises to be more fun than In Justice. [6 Mar 2006, p.41]

This is all well done, and it's a great-looking production, but the weight of the drama keeps tugging toward a side plot about Braugher's 14-year-old stepdaughter. [10 Apr 2006, p.35]

This new four-hour version... trims back the pageantry and tries for a degree of modern psychological realism. [17 Apr 2006, p.43]

Scott's performance is totally believable, but that doesn't mean you want to ride shotgun with him in such a tired vehicle. [19 Jun 2006, p.37]

The show isn't all that different from Bravo's recent Real Housewives of Orange County, although the production values are much higher--everything has an expensive, carefully lit feminine gloss that perfectly matches the homemakers. [19 Jun 2006, p.37]

[Viewers] may get a kick out of the mix of adrenaline and murk. [26 Jun 2006, p.41]

Path sometimes feels like 24 downsized into The Office. [18 Sep 2006, p.39]

You go on the lam, and you find Laguna Beach. [2 Oct 2006, p.45]

It's pleasant enough--and thankfully it's not zany. The problem is that Danson's crisis is believable midlife comedy, while the patients' neuroses are closer to stock. [9 Oct 2006, p.41]

It feels so close to actual American life that it lacks the gut excitement that would take it over the line into true entertainment. [9 Oct 2006, p.41]

As in season 1, the acting is rich and lusty, with no costume-drama fustiness. [15 Jan 2007, p.33]

I wish the show had a little more verisimilitude--the peasants' homes look cheap, not poor--but it's zippy mindless fun. [5 Mar 2007, p.37]

Got to kick it up a notch, Chuck. [18 Jan 2010, p.41]

This doesn't have as distinctive a style as The WB's Supernatural--that's more like a jeans ad for the undead--but Kolchak three decades on still knows how to move. [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

The show, despite good stunt work, is clunkily overfamiliar. [1 Feb 2010, p.37]

This family sitcom, adapted from Ice Cube's hit 2005 movie, is a modestly conceived, somewhat blandly executed story about a stepdad (Terry Crews from Everybody Hates Chris), his new wife (Essence Atkins) and her two kids. [7 Jun 2010, p.50]

Fun enough, but the nastiness could be applied more heavily.

The premiere feels sort of like "The Closer" but doesn't clinch the deal. I'm just not sure what to make of Jason Lee without his Jason Lee-ishness. But there's a crackle of eccentric touches, including an abundance of Elvis impersonators and the charmingly off-kilter Celia Weston as his mother.

The inspiration can be heavy-handed, but how can you not feel for the couple?

The end product should be called Hellkittens--not bad, but its tiny claws neither grip nor rip. [13 Sep 2010, p.47]

Skeet Ulrich and Corey Stoll are well-paired as detectives, and Alfred Molina, looking like an irascible owl, adds some harrumping power as deputy DA. [18 Sep 2010, p.40]

The Most natural thing here is Palin's effortless command of the camera. In That Regard, the show is fascinating. [22 Nov 2010, p.38]

What we have is a light, fast show about friends and couples who hang together, banter together and drink together. [8 Nov 2010, p.40]

[Now in season 2]Courtney Cox's sitcom...is a light, fast show about friends and couples who hang together, banter together and drink together. [8 Nov 2010, p.40]

Season 2 of MTV's instant trash classic moves the Situation, Snooki and Co. down to Miami Beach for a little change of scenery and no apparent change in attitude. Actually, the scenery hasn't really changed, either.

It's a light, clever performance. But Episodes never convinces us this is really Hollywood. [17 Jan 2011, p.40]

Traffic Light is better than NBC's Perfect Couples--the jokes are more relaxed, and the cast includes NCIS's Liza Lapira, whose humor has bite. Not a killer ensemble, though. [14 Feb 2011, p.42]

Piers Morgan's first nights filling Larry King's suspenders weren't great....He's better--thorough, thoughtful--with serious figures like Rudolph Giuliani. [14 Feb 2010, p.40]

For now, Sunshine is a bit busy and unfocused. [28 Feb 2011, p.43]

As Merlin, Joseph Fiennes is more like a trainer-dietitian than mentor, but he's lively. Eva Green, as Morgan, is coldly beautiful and magnificent in Camelot couture. She's enchanting. But I don't see Jamie Campbell Bower's Arthur having the resolve of a king. [28 Mar 2011, p.54]

This sitcom has the high-tech antics of Chuck and the misfit camaraderie of Community-not bad, but no breakthrough. [2 May 2011, p.38]

Visually, it makes for odd television. Odder still is that the coaches compete too....The good news? The caliber of voices is high--better than American Idol. [16 May 2011, p.43]

The show is light, viewer-friendly entertainment, but without the conceptual novelty that gives USA dramas their oomph. [20 Jun 2011, p.48]

This portrait of Prince William's courtship of Kate Middleton is better than April's plucky Lifetime movie. [29 Aug 2011, p.36]

Even with Steven Spielberg listed among the executive producers, this distant world doesn't inspire much awe. [3 Oct 2011, p.45]

The cast would do well to have more fun, but the layered storytelling has it charms. [31 Oct 2011, p.35]

The show is likable, in a channel-surfing way: So-So Rosie. [31 Oct 2011, p.36]

The show doesn't need to be so crowded. [5 Dec 2011, p.46]

Brosnan remains totally believable whether he's borderline batty or bravely resilient. [19 Dec 2011, p.44]

The show is technically flawless--so is Macy strutting like a mangy Mick Jagger--but the Gallaghers' raucous, defiant pride never really engages me. [20 Feb 2012, p.46]

It's a well-done, somewhat sleepy ensemble drama about newbies on patrol. [7 May 2012, p.46]

It's an enjoyable enough whodunit. The problem is McCormack. [23 Jul 2012, p.38]

It's awkward, sweet, sincere--and sometimes yawningly dull. [6 Aug 2012, p.37]

[Perry] effortlessly brings out King's sorrow and even rage--[but] it loses something when thrown in with Go On's overly broad comedy. [13 Aug 3012, p.41]

Copper lacks the brains or kick to lift it above being a period piece. [10 Sep 2012, p.41]

The opening gag of this new series is not just contrived but also uncomfortable.... But the show improves from there. [17 Sep 2012, p.40]

A sitcom that veers uncomfortably between charmingly cute and cloyingly sarcastic. [1 Oct 2012, p.38]

It's like watching someone try to flirt while stuck in a revolving door. But Gummer has a whirring charm that never settles for mere adorkability. [22 Oct 2012m p.42]

It's dark, big-top sadism, and we wait for a story to emerge. [5 Nov 2012, p.41]

It's [Bobi Kristins's] aunt Pat Houston who gives the show--and, one hopes, Bobbi Kristina--some backbone. [5 Nov 2012, p.43]

It's an affable show, but at an hour long, it starts to feel like a slow dance that won't end. [12 Nov 2012, p.46]

Lohan attacks the part with a relentless, huffing-and-puffing determination that rivets attention.... While Bowler is a flawless Burton, Lohan's single-minded fierceness obliterates him. [3 Dec 2012, p.43]

It's more shoofly than pie, but amusing. [17 Dec 2012, p.39]

It's a promising setup, but Deception doesn't allow us the dirty pleasure of enjoying the awful Bowers. [14 Jan 2013, p.56]

Until, and unless, all the elements fall into place, it's more smush than smash. [18 Feb 2013, p.41]

A gauzy, pretty documentary. [18 Feb 2013, p.43]

Only Visnjic, immaculately groomed and vaguely continental, seems to understand that this over-the-top story requires not only a constant flame to boil the plot but a flirtatious sense of fun. [11 Mar 2013, p.45]

This is essentially a dialogue between baffled attorney and baffling client, which makes for an arid 95 minutes. [1 Apr 2013]

Chalke and company are all expert comic actors, but the pilot is leapingly frantic, a puppy wanting love. [8 Apr 2013, p.45]

It's a well-made hour of generic moments. [15 Apr 2013, p.44]

The ensemble remains perfect, but the show's matter-of-fact crispness has been dulled. [22 Apr 2013, p.46]

The show itself is standard construction, a framework of planks that will need more work. [6 May 2013, p.48]

To work, this overheated alchemy needs a magnetic Leo, but Tom Riley is miscast--too smart-alecky and brash. [13 May 2013, p.46]

The sincerity of the enterprise is in inverse proportion to its fun. [13 May 2013, p.49]

This new, fourth season isn't bad but it's a very different beast from the original, and it's not nearly as funny.

By and large, they all seem to know exactly how to play to the camera and signal they're in on this nonsense. That gives Princesses a thin but distinct edge. [10 Jun 2013, p.48]

Anyone who saw Team America, the movie send-up of all things Bruckheimerian, will find E-Ring hard to take too seriously. [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

Three Wishes is about sowing seeds of kindness that blossom into a garden of good feeling, but it can feel like a flower show dusted with endless sprayings of industrial fertilizer. [31 Oct 2005, p.39]

Does it deliver excitement? So far, no. [3 Oct 2005, p.39]

It's an awful story, and it deserves a better production than this. [31 Oct 2005, p.39]

The show... is partly improvised, a stunt used to richer effect on ABC's upcoming Sons & Daughters. [6 Mar 2006, p.41]

It's like Lisa Kudrow's Comeback without the satiric contempt. [10 Apr 2006, p.35]

This is all nicely produced with mild offbeat tweaks along the way... But none of this is original either. [24 Apr 2006, p.39]

I kept wishing for a rose ceremony to perk things up. [8 May 2006, p.39]

It's a gauge of how much reality programming has changed TV that I kept thinking that Mark Burnett could come in, push some situational hot buttons and produce a better show. [12 Jun 2006, p.39]

It's pleasant, but not promising enough to care about beyond a one-episode stand. [19 Jun 2006, p.37]

The show borrows from Northern Exposure, Twin Peaks, maybe the corporate drama Profit--too many to gauge how it'll develop. [24 Jul 2006, p.33]

The case seems more like a good crusade for Nancy Grace than the starting point for a series. [28 Aug 2006, p.35]

The show feels weighed down by its own clout. [25 Sep 2006, p.43]

So far, it's of interest only for watching Lithgow--who likes to shout his lines with quivering urgency, as if he'd just seen a UFO--as he goes over the top to get a laugh. [16 Oct 2006, p.39]

It's a good cast, and Arquette's peculiar charm is always welcome. But I'm tired of comedies about the desperate infantilism of panicked adults. [8 Jan 2007, p.35]

It's a hallucinatory riff on an old noir tradition (is Raines being played for a sap by his own daydreams?), but the gimmick doesn't click. [19 Mar 2007, p.39]

Something like Entourage without the manic, kick-start fury of Ari Gold. [2 Apr 2007, p.37]

Innocently goofy. [30 Apr 2007, p.37]

The cast has an ordinariness that's a little too believable. [16 Apr 2007, p.43]

The declining but not yet flatlining EKG of their relationship is captured very nicely by Williams and Matchett, both giving strong, stoic performances. Everything else is too quiet, though. [25 Jun 2007, p.41]

The premiere delivers a show that's more winkingly cute than it really needs ro be. [25 Jan 2010, p.42]

I want to root for a reality series that uplifts, but for this one to work, it either needs to be more fun or more real. [15 Feb 2010, p.43]

There isn't much of a story, though. The best thing is the terrific song in the opening credits: Aloe Blacc's "I Need a Dollar." It has the sort of itchy desperation that should have driven the whole show.

This adaptation of the hit 1989 movie is emotionally ample, as any decent family drama should be, but the premiere feels like a dowdier cousin of shows already out there.

The scale is wrong. This is an overelaborate piffle, a crate-size bon-bon. The best thinge is Papa.

This Miami trauma-hospital drama is marginally better than "Three Rivers."

Whether the show can figure out what to do with Madsen's semi-reformed brood is the challenge. Right now the show feels less like FX's recent, underrated The Riches than Brothers & Sisters set among the criminal element.

The premiere us well-shot, humidly atmospheric, but a little more urgency would be appreciated.

Season 6 staggers from incident to incident as Nancy and family run from their enemies--and the authorities. [13 Sep 2010, p.50]

Despite the backstory, the humor is conventionally jolly. [30 Aug 2010, p.38]

Smits is breezily bold, but the show feels fussy--flushed out with "interesting" details and characters. [20 Sep 2010l p.54]

It's a temperature-controlled How I Met Your Mother. [27 Sep 2010, p.56]

The series goes overboard on cutesy domestic details but as a Bret Bulletin, it should gratify and reassure his fans. [1 Nov 2010, p.42]

Some of it's funny, but revelatory? Not too. [6 Dec 2010, p.52]

Gilbert seems like the one you'd most like the one you'd like to have in your actual mom's group. The others, not so much. [15 Nov 2010, p.43]

Every time he flaps into view in his baggy hoodedness, he looks like Batman in need of a tailor. [17 Jan 2011, p.40]

It's well cast but conceptually unadventurous. [31 Jan 2011, p.39]

If anything, it moves so tentatively through the baffling investigation and trial that Hayden Panettiere seems to play a dozen Amandas: cheerful, furtive, erratic--and at times literally clueless. [28 Feb 2011, p.40]

Not a bad concept, but the casting is out of whack. [21 Mar 2011, p.46]

Thorne has the right bristling, combative energy for all this commotion, but the pilot is hard to swallow. [4 Jul 2011, p.38]

It's only fun, though, when the would-be mates turn on each other and the bat guano flies: Romancing the Stone morph into The War of the roses. [25 Jul 2011, p.40]

The "nuttiness" is contrived, but Johnny Argent, Roseanne's boyfriend of eight years, is amusingly droll. [1 Aug 2011, p.41]

It's tacky, da--or should we say duh?--but likable. [22 Aug 2011, p.45]

Her mind has repressed the clues [to her sister's murder]. Clever paradox, but as a result the show is an unsatisfying mix of razor-sharp thinking and befogged gloom. [10 Oct 2011, p.44]

A wiry, tired jitteriness has crept in. [24 Oct 2011, p.48]

The show offers genuine scares, but lines like "I already cried wolf once--you think they're gonna believe me?" cast a hokey spell. [31 Oct 2011, p.35]

It's just a plainer Ugly Betty. [9 Jan 2012, p.40]

While obnoxious luxury is always watchable, the show is lazily cookie-cutter. [19 Mar 2012, p.42]

They're just bland. [2 Apr 2012, p.44]

It's very well-done, but the opener doesn't resolve a viewer's doubts. [9 Apr 2012, p.42]

It's like watching a manor house sink beneath the waves with loud, hissing pomp. [16 Apr 2012, p.50]

It's an MRI that's lost its mapping capabilities. [30 Apr 2012, p.36]

The framework [couples counseling] is cute but irrelevant: You don't need an analyst piecing together the relationship when that's the audience's job. [14 May 2012, p.44]

Daniels is great, biting clean through clotted dialogue that's twinkly yet sanctimonious. [2 Jul 2012, p.40]

It's dumb, yes, but that miracle of reality TV named Cat Deeley hosts. [2 Jul 2012, p.38]

Cases piddle away as everyone hashes out deals at a conference table. Realistic, perhaps, but quite the buzzkill. [20 Aug 2012, p.41]

Mount needs to run this thing, and he can't if he's the caboose. [27 Aug 2012, p.44]

The stunts are a confusing mix of bullets and blowups: Apocalypse Now on the scale of Wipeout. [3 Sep 2012, p.40]

This is well-produced, but it could just as well be Mission:Colonial. [1 Oct 2012, p.38]

Miller is believably blonde, and that's about it. [22 Oct 3012, p.42]

There are rivalries and feuds and dangerous situations, as well as a complete lack of personality. [29 Oct 2012, p.38]

Most of Mornings is stock melodrama, and apart from Molina, not all that well acted. [18 Feb 2013, p.43]

Beyond the pilot, though, it appears to be a blandly generic precinct drama. [5 Mar 2013]

This is like dramatizing War and peace without commenting on war or peace. [11 Mar 2013, p.46]

These people are all more ordinary and much less fabulously neurotic than you might have hoped. [11 Mar 2013, p.48]

The show is overworked and overthought. [25 Mar 2013, p.43]

True Blood is neglecting the potent subtext of vampire myth--forbidden sex and romance--in favor of political allegory. [24 Jun 2013, p.39]

The show can be wonderfully mean... but it's too spotty. [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

In the first few episodes, nothing's happening. No pulse. Doctor, what's wrong? [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

Lee may lack the essential sweetness, or pathos, to make Earl ever seem like more than a cute variation on those lovable, loquacious losers who tumble, beer can spurting, through Coen brothers movies. [3 Oct 2005, p.39]

Maybe Prinze should just clear the soundstage of all these people, stand there alone and start over. [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

Silly. [7 Nov 2005, p.41]

It just doesn't work. [30 Jan 2006, p.38]

As an ensemble they are, like their teacher, attractive but not very exciting. [10 Apr 2006, p.35]

It feels less like Freud's fun house than an opportunity for one performer after another to launch into frenzied, vituperative speeches. [24 Apr 2006, p.39]

It's like a David Mamet parody of Roseanne. [19 Jun 2006, p.37]