The comedy has all the ingredients, and Greer is perfectly cast... The problem so far is the writing. The jokes in the pilot were broader and more obviously than I'd have hoped, but the big isssue is that the writers need to find the right balance for Becky.

Tara has the potential to be a great comedy about identity, but it needs to be less self-conscious about its strangeness.

I feel that there's a really good dark comedy about the decline of the American dream struggling to emerge from the often-forced plots.

If you don't want or need to be surprised, it's a pretty well-paced, gorgeously shot and fast-moving pilot, and Maggie Q, who is practically computer-designed to play the role, seems worth all the publicity investment The CW has placed in her.

There are at least the slivers of promise that the show could get better. Neff is amiably charming, Dillahunt and Plimpton give their characters a realism that belies the pilot's often-contemptuous jokes, and maybe 20% of the first episode shows a sweet-heartedness that rises above the easy white-trash humor.

It's almost a non-premise sitcom, whose main attraction is how well the vocal actors bounce its digressive dialogue off each other. I did laugh at the pilot, if not as much as I wanted to, so I'll put this one on probation, and hope.

Cinema Verite is not a bad movie at all but its failing is an ironic one: it smooths out the messiness and non sequiturs of real life to fit its story into a neat feature-film arc.

Its early episodes are a mix of power and disappointment.

Rock Center may not be a ratings smash, and not all of its experiments may work. But the good news is, Williams and Stewart can both keep their day jobs.

I found parts of this series I could get invested in. You might find even more. Just don't go in expecting more than heck on wheels.

As an actual network drama--for me, the most important test--it relies too much on conventional showbiz plotlines and characters for me to get invested in it.

Political Animals, an inconsistent, sometimes ludicrous, but also juicily fun political soap, is about something that ultimately makes for better TV: the idea of Hillary Clinton.

The pilot is aiming for a balance of dark humor, heart and flat-out funny that it doesn't quite manage.

The pilot of Revolution comes across better than either of the aforementioned shows [FlashForward and The Event], but there are still too many forgettable characters, stock scenes and flat patches of dialogue.

The new episodes don’t have the old complexity, messiness and poignance. They don’t inspire the wild excitement of having no idea what’s going to come on the screen next. They don’t have that electric sense of experimenting on the fly. And they don’t seem to do what Harmon had them do, what Community itself did, which is: grow.

Sometimes unwieldy, sometimes beautiful, Parade’s End is--like the turbulent new order it ushers in--a bit of a mess, with no easily identifiable good guys. This miniseries doesn’t tell you how to feel, and it’s not exactly bursting with charming, loveable characters. But there’s a poignance to its story of people realizing their orderly parade is breaking up all around them.

Eastbound & Down, is a funny show if you don't expect too much.

It's the kind of setting that befits a cop show more focused on characters than cases, and The Unusuals delivers there. The problem is the policing; after one episode, it doesn't really grab me as a cop show yet--partly, perhaps, because the show is so whimsical its stakes don't yet feel real.

Ten years ago, Southland would have seemed revolutionary on TV. But now it does feel like network playing catch-up with cable.

From the mood lighting and stirring music to the hot-button story lines to the characters' arias on the august legacy of their show, Sorkin makes running a comedy program seem like negotiating an arms treaty.

There's something missing from this postapocalyptic drama, namely, a realistic feeling of apocalypse.

As a glorified romance novel, it's perfectly fine, but don't expect Shakespeare.

The tumult of Henry VIII's reign, especially the schism between him and the Catholic Church, is rich material, and the soap opera of his multiple wives is naturally absorbing: it's just a crime that Showtime couldn't do better with the material than the thinly written eye candy it came up with.

Hannah's normalcy is refreshing, and it keeps the show light and funny. But it also makes her seem a little dull and shallow.

Fallon's monologue was understandably nervous and unremarkable joke-wise, but there were glimmers of potential.

It's competent. It also seems a little familiar and unnecessary.

Like many of ABC's post-Lost attempts at serials, this one has a great premise with tremendous potential, but I wish more attention had been paid to fleshing out the characters and generally bringing a fresher voice to the dialogue.

While I like how Lee's laid-back style translates to a police drama, there's not enough here to separate the show from the umpteen other slightly-quirky-guy-solves-crimes cable dramas.