It takes about 20 minutes for Lynch's TV debut, an eight-episode series, to wrap you in its clutches. After that, it's as easy to watch as a good Murder, She Wrote, but 100 times more interesting. By the end, you'll feel you know a lot less than you did at the beginning.

The perfect marriage of television and literature.

Foul-mouthed, violent and potentially depressing with its unvarnished characters, The Shield also shocks your heart with pounding action and tickles your brain by presenting a cops-and-robbers world where almost everyone is at least morally ambiguous, at worst corrupt. [12 Mar 2002]

It's no lie to say you don't get this sort of stylish and challenging stuff very frequently on TV, adult subject matter treated maturely in a series that makes you squirm and think.

Sherlock strikes a perfect--and delicious--balance among comedy, pathos, murder, and mystery.

Strangely theatrical and disappointingly hollow. [29 Sept 2002, p.H03]

The predicaments of Jack and those unlucky enough to be associated with him are wholly preposterous. But the show's creators make it so much fun to watch that only the fussiest fussbudgets protest the fantasy.

In so many ways, it's as good as television gets.

Let's get this straight. Everybody Hates Chris is not the Second Coming. But it is one of the season's best new series.

Felicity is phony. It presents a fantasy world, pretending it's real. A lot of people criticize Ally McBeal for the same thing, but there's a big difference. The people in their 20s who would take life cues from Ally should be old enough to know better. The people, many not even teenagers yet, who will be learning from Felicity may not be...Actually, there are two big differences. Ally McBeal is entertaining. [29 Sept 1998, p.F1]

The sumptuous two-hour opener to Season 6 is a remarkable piece of work--beautiful, provocative, and deep. It's an unexpectedly exquisite distillation of the show's themes and aspirations.

Treme takes us beyond the tourists' view, beyond the canned performances and ersatz Big Easiness, into the soul of a uniquely fragile American city built on a bedrock of pride.

The storytelling and visual gloss we have come to expect from Mad Men are stronger than ever. If this eventful, fast-moving episode is any indication, we're in for a savory season.

Another heart-stopping adventure show from "Alias"'s J.J. Abrams...Lost undertakes the ambitious assignment of developing 14 characters, including the usual tough guys and brave gals, as well as a rotund, lovable dolt, a 9-year-old boy, and a Korean couple who don't speak English, all suddenly thrust together to fight for survival. If anybody can meet the challenge, it's Abrams. [22 Sept 2004, p.D01]

Home Box Office has telecast several of the most scintillating series of this decade, notably The Larry Sanders Show, Oz, Arli$$, and Sex and the City. You can safely add The Sopranos to that glittering gallery. [10 Jan 1999, p.F01]

Boston Med operates at the edges of real life in a way scripted shows can only approach. It is the single must-see broadcast-TV show of the summer.

Any one of these families has the potential to power a decent sitcom, but Modern Family manages to juggle all three in a balancing act that is not just funny, but heartwarming, and when was the last time you saw that on TV?

The Pacific groans with technically preposterous battle scenes, but it is the minute behavior of ordinary men both in and after those extraordinary circumstances that takes your breath away and helps put The Pacific in a class of its own among war movies.

A stunning, richly textured, feminist existential epic.

More than any of Burns' documentaries except The Civil War, Prohibition provides viewers with a real feel for the times as well as new and surprising information.

This may be one of the most beautifully crafted and original TV shows ever to get fall consideration on a big network.

Breaking Bad is tougher to watch than Showtime's "Weeds," about a suburban-mom drug dealer, or "Dexter," whose serial killer wields his bloody blades with good intentions. But the rewards of Breaking are great.

You don't have to like country to enjoy Nashville with its twisty plot threads of ego, sex, ambition, backstabbing and regret.

The Killing is also the least prepossessing, an eerily quiet, yet compelling and complex, tale of the way the murder of a teenager affects the lives of many people.

Amy Brenneman, as Licalsi, is the dark-haired, more visceral contrast to Kelly's wife, Laura, played by Sherry Stringfield. Both women add depth to the drama, as do James McDaniel as the precinct commander, Nicholas Turturro as the new kid in the cop shop and Tom Towles as the guy from the Organized Crime Squad.

It's funnier because it includes some comic sketches, but they are truncated. Further down, whole episodes focus on the Python movies, one for The Life of Brian, one for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You get funny excerpts, but also lots of blah-blah.

It's a deeply researched, visually superb two-part study of what the film terms "a decade-long natural catastrophe of biblical proportions." ... The second chapter on Monday night, "Reaping the Whirlwind," is slower and less informative.

With the tormented Luther, it's sometimes tough even to identify who is the cat and who is the mouse. Writing and acting come together to produce characters, more than stories, who are powerful, surprising, ambiguous, and all that other stuff.