A fresh approach can take you only so far when the material is this tired.

The very definition of generic.

The cast is strong... But the characters come off as icky, wretched backstabbers.

Improv techniques aside, I'd just settle for a funny script.

Uneven.

The Riches is hard to believe and not much easier to embrace.

The first three episodes of this peculiar series bored me silly with its pretentious mannerisms, and I can't help thinking that many HBO subscribers will tune in and wonder: They dropped Deadwood for this?

The pilot is neither thrilling nor funny enough to earn notice.

This feels like the kind of show ABC used to churn out in its sleep.

This contemporary remake is cheerfully B-movie cheesy--watch an alien attack a bowling alley--but also stubbornly flat, settling for cute when sublime camp would be preferred.

The gimmick's in the scheduling of this tediously claustrophobic though sometimes searing half-hour drama, set almost entirely in a psychotherapist's office.

We know Ullman has range. What this Union needs is focus.

No one is more than skin-deep, so there’s little in the way of irony or metaphor to disguise the fact that Swingtown is so determined to be shocking it seems a little quaint.

Suspense should be nerve-tingling fun, not necessarily punishing, and most of what I’ve seen so far has been about as enjoyable as taking a sledgehammer to the temple. And just about as cheesily predictable.

As often happens in this genre, the more you learn about the lurking evil... the less scary it gets.

The animation is primitive, and so is the straining-to-be-hip writing in this deadpan sitcom.

The only moment anyone’s likely to remember from the colossal dud of The Jay Leno Show's opening night--which felt more like an off night of the old Tonight Show--was a moment where no joke was cracked, indeed where no word was spoken.

An odd tonal mix with uneven casting that never quite produces the intended magic, it feels like a misfire to me.

Hank does fill a network void where family-friendly comedy is concerned, but Grammer is just going through the paces here. And I’m not sure a void actually deserves another void.

The supporting cast is diverse, but uniformly bland. Three Rivers isn’t as laughably awful as NBC’s "Mercy," but it’s possibly more forgettable.

This reimagined version, which feels a bit old hat in a post-Matrix fantasy landscape, is more leaden, pretentious and solemn, a tone embodied by Caviezel’s brooding Six, who’s more dour than dashing.

If you’ve never seen a legal show before, maybe you’ll get something out of this; otherwise, it’s about as refreshing as wading in a kiddie pool on a scorching summer day.

Spartacus is derivative as entertainment and primitively pandering as a diverting spectacle of campy historical fiction.

The show isn’t as self-important and whiny as Hung, or as precious and smug as Bored to Death, or as repulsive as Eastbound and Down (to name a few of HBO’s recent comedy misfires, all of which were renewed). Sadly, this one’s just a bit threadbare.

The problem is that Scoundrels is never as funny as it thinks it is.

Unclear and, at first glance, very uneven, but it's still a lot more inviting than ABC's DOA "Happy Town."

There's nothing about Haven that isn't derivative at best and dispiriting at worst.

There's not much there here, as Chase engages in violent cat-and-mouse pursuits between a team of U.S. Marshals (led by Giddish's Annie "Boots" Frost) and psycho criminals on the lam.

When Steve and Emmy reconnect in the mansion where they grew up, sparks are meant to fly. But the chemistry is lacking, maybe because the creators are too busy loading up so many elements of the bizarre around them.

There's no surprise to this, just a sense of resignation that such a hokey climax is the way these shows are supposed to work. Which doesn't make V a terrible show, just a terribly ordinary one.

This isn't a catastrophe, mind you. It's not Knight Rider-Bionic Woman awful. It's merely forgettable. Which is just sad.

The conditions at the clinic and surrounding villages are unnervingly primitive, which adds to the drama and the stakes of many of these emergency triage cases. But it's the painfully earnest dialogue that could really make you ill.

What in the original incarnation was shockingly cheeky, in its graphic and profane depiction of teens indulging in sex-and-drug debauchery, has been neutered and tamed in a remake that is unconvincing, amateurishly produced and very poorly acted.

This is assembly line rom-com TV.

Mr. Sunshine never really comes into focus. I'm regarding this as a work in progress, and am hoping it finds its way in weeks to come the way Cougar Town quickly did.

You say potato, I say dramatic arsenic. This actors' exercise is what it's like finding yourself trapped in a pretentious, self-important off-Broadway "experience," wishing you'd chosen to go to a movie or stay home with TV instead.

It's business as usual on Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, an uninspired spin-off of the undistinguished (except in its degree of gruesomeness) long-running hit.

This one pushes the zany aspects too hard, trivializing the missions while neglecting such elements as grit, wit and heart.

It's ploddingly earnest when it isn't crudely scurrilous....There is some fine acting.

Rarely has the story been rendered so dreary and insipid.

This isn't a terrible show, because that might make it memorable. Instead, it falls into that category of being fairly clever without really being funny or all that amusing.

Your enjoyment of Franklin & Bash may depend on your tolerance for frat-boy antics and smarmy whimsy.

Saving the least for last, Entourage feels awfully washed-out and washed-up, kind of like Vince Chase's dormant career, as the show counts down to the end.

To say Secret Circle isn't spellbinding is an understatement. Originality and surprise are the main ingredients missing from this tepid witches' brew.

An insipid and unconvincing attempt to position bunnies at the forefront of a social and sexual revolution.

Some are embracing this as a juicy guilty pleasure, a return to Dynasty times by way of The Count of Monte Cristo. I found it all a bit predictable and thick, like I was choking on Crisco.

AMC's sprawling but heavy-handed attempt to revive and redefine the Western (a newly hot TV-development trend) is solemn business indeed, with precious little wit or originality.

This Bag is sadly empty of surprises.

Even host Ben Bailey (of Cash Cab) can't seem to get too worked up about it.

Yes, the banter is forced and precious, and the premise of the show remains rather fuzzy. But they're all so darned pretty, which is just how USA likes it.

The voyeuristic thrill of watching the unguarded reactions of people--in this case, famous people--to outrageous situations has worked ever since Candid Camera, but I'll admit the only moment that brought me joy in the first episode is when one of Bieber's marks refuses to fall for the set-up, insisting, "Are we on Punk'd?"

The Client List wants to have its beefcake and eat it, too. Just beware the gristle, which would be the scripts.

Even good actors like Linus Roache (the Earl of Manton, as starchy as his collars), Toby Jones (as his obsequious lawyer) and Maria Doyle Kennedy (as Jones' harpy wife) fail to rise above these contrived circumstances.

White Heat proves to be a warmed-over and tepid mishmash of changing-times clichés.

In other words, another uneasy mix of the spiritual and the medical.

Unfortunately, The Great Escape comes off more like an elaborately silly game of hide and seek.

Sullivan & Son certainly feels like something you've seen before. Only done much better.

Dramatically, the show feels as stalled as the trains, which have nowhere to go. Studiously gritty but rarely convincing in its clichéd characterizations and pretentious posturing, Wheels is hell on one's endurance.

It doesn't lack in ambition. It's in the stilted, stiff execution where things fall apart.

Jersey's painfully familiar but easy-to-take act, which plays like a USA Network show on auto-pilot, feels "Made for Fridays."

The pacing is sluggish, the twists telegraphed and rarely shocking, turning this whodunit into a "who cares?" Deception gets NBC's midseason off to a dreary start.

There is one clever gimmick--the winner gets to sit upon a "Throne of Games"--but the very-long-hour opener is a tedious affair.

The Taste is like an endless retread of MasterChef by way of the multiple judge/mentor set-up of The Voice, only this time with blind tastings as the gimmick. Which isn't nearly as enjoyable as watching judges operate those revolving chairs. The judges are a mixed bag.

While it's all meant to be aspirational, it's more desperation-al watching these professionals jump through hoops for our entertainment.

Now comes this unnecessary makeover, starting with Friday's two-hour premiere, which transforms Touch into a tiresomely ordinary chase/conspiracy non-thriller.

Claustrophobic, stagey and muddled, the movie offers two memorable set pieces.

The lavish Selfridges is a fine setting for class-conscious if derivative period drama--with shopgirl gossip and staff romances--and what we learn about the history of commerce is often entertaining, but the philandering showman whose name is on the door makes you feel you're being sold an inferior bill of goods.

Rogue has all the attributes of pay cable--rough language, extreme violence and no-kidding graphic sexuality and nudity--but little of its depth and nuance.

Between the cutesy on-screen captions and an anything-goes sensibility that flirts with child endangerment (just kidding, kind of), Parents ultimately just feels like it's trying too hard.

Demons is possessed by pretentiousness when it tries to be serious and by silliness whenever Leonardo becomes an instant swashbuckler.

Wedged between the superior company of The Middle and Modern Family is the bumbling blandness of the slapsticky Family Tools.

The "games" in the pilot include a specially designed version of Trivial Pursuit where all the questions reveal aspects of this unhappy clan's back story. That's as clever as Goodwin gets, and except for Newton's daffy sparkle, there's no real incentive to play along.

While the purpose of all of this is to urge you to skip this version and try to get your hands on the saucy British original, it's only fair to report that one of the four--Jes Macallan as Milano's unrepentantly slutty sis, a real-estate broker having it off with her boss--captures the Mistresses spirit of naughty fun (never without consequences).

The more promising [of the two TNT shows--the other is "72 Hours"] is The Hero, which at least allows the contestants to develop as characters--although you might wish there was less focus on the sniveling crying of mother-of-three Patty.

The game's the only thing in companion piece 72 Hours, which feels like an amped-up leg of The Amazing Race or a condensed version of Survivor if not its Eco-Challenge predecessor.

An otherwise drab reboot of the British series that earned acclaim during its intermittent run on BBC America.

[A] generic dud.

Heist is a tiresome mess.

Bores by being relentlessly glum.

Like a sunnier version of thirtysomething, lacking only the inspired casting, the insightful writing and the wrenching realism.

Downbeat and earnestly preachy about community and survival, this weird show is further hampered by glum Skeet Ulrich’s miscasting as the all-purpose prodigal hero.

It's partially improvised, which comes off looking like they're having more fun than we are.

Silverman reminds us how quickly the novelty can wear off while watching a pixie with a potty mouth.

Rules would be more engaging if it weren't so familiar, but there is at least one consistently hilarious performance: Patrick Warburton.

All together now: "I don't!"

More attention [is] paid to recreating the glam disco milieu than to developing character.

[A] colorless angstfest.

Overwritten and underacted (by the kids anyway), it strings out its weekly climactic shockers — some of them truly unnerving — with artery-hardening blobs of moldy adolescent whining.

Welcome to the Captain, a tepid comedy about would-be wackos in a Hollywood apartment building, is such a dud that it's likely to only make some of us miss the funnier "Big Bang Theory" (which it temporarily replaces) even more.

Even without a death slot on Fridays, this strained story would be a tough sell.

I find The Riches emotionally flat, borderline pretentious and (metaphor acknowledged) dramatically phony.

This shockingly ordinary new legal drama from Steven Bochco should seem right at home amid TNT’s ubiquitous Law & Order reruns. It feels like something you’ve seen before, maybe from way back when L&O was new.

This lightweight medical drama still needs serious script surgery.

It’s not that The Vampire Diaries is a truly terrible show. It’s just so insipid and uninspired.

It's not only the trash that's stinking on Melissa & Joey.

The mock-retro sitcom Big Lake, which boasts big-name producers (Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy, whose The Other Guys is currently in theaters) but little in the way of actual comedy.

This show does not bring it on.

If you have the misfortune of meeting their tiresome friends, you'll sympathize with them. And I can't imagine anyone wanting to come back for more.

Even the people who matter to him most are sketchily drawn, while others are almost laughable caricatures, including a friend's saucy cheating wife, purred by Kim Cattrall.

Weirdly, both the pilots of Breaking In and Comedy Central's execrable new time-waster Workaholics include multiple references to urine.

Talky and grim, and more than a little bland, Outcasts almost entirely lacks humor, wonder and engaging characters.

An unpleasant show about miserable people working in an environment (corporate public relations) that's about as welcoming as Chernobyl.

Relying heavily on sex talk and slapstick, Whitney is the kind of show where less funny people surround the star, always commenting on her zany actions.

Watching Hart of Dixie is like mainlining praline. Your mind will rot before your teeth do.

It couldn't be more forgettable, but what's really irksome is the waste of a strong supporting cast.

A charmless buddy comedy where three tiresome stooges question their embattled masculinity.

The Exes feels like a stale Frankenstein sitcom cobbled together with spare parts--by which we mean veteran actors--who made their names on better shows.

[A] toothless hourlong teen-com.

It feels the opposite of relevant and fresh.

With a look recalling the glories of King of the Hill, but no discernible point of view or comic fuse of its own, Dynamite is a dud.

If the show were as exciting as it is improbable, Missing could qualify as a guilty pleasure. All it's missing are a few crucial ingredients: originality and intelligence.

This spinoff of Jersey Shore has possibly even less substance, as the high-haired DJ from Rhode Island gets a residency gig at a Las Vegas casino, and brings his motley crew of homeboys with him to marvel at their swank new digs.

The writing telegraphs every trite and derivative twist, whether violent or sexual or some combination of the two to remind us this is pay cable and not some musty rerun.

NYC 22 isn't even trying. It's not too too, it's too little.

Men at Work is junk of the most disposable nature, a sex-obsessed comedy set at a phony-even-by-sitcom-standards magazine.

Crystal (previously seen in the Night at the Museum movies, the second Hangover film and a memorable cameo on Community) steals what little show there is here.

A trite and drab melodrama about women on the WWII homefront who go to work on the dangerous front lines of a munitions factory, assembling bombs that aren't nearly as lethal as the corny dialogue and the comically stilted performances.

There is exactly one interesting storyline.

This buddy sitcom feels contrived, derivative (instead of Megan Mullally, we get a stereotyped sassy and buxom Latina secretary) and sadly lacking in essential chemistry.

Chicago Fire isn't half bad when the fires and other crises take over as the star of the show. It's after the smoke clears and the stories kick back in that you begin to realize the only way to salvage these sorry stereotypes in uniform is to burn them the only way we know how.

Unfortunately, there are few shows this season worse or more grating than tonight's Malibu Country, where the beachfront corn grows awfully and annoyingly high.

You've heard of open-and-shut cases. Motive is more like open and yawn.

This shrill parable of redemption, being burned off in back-to-back episodes, is like a spiritual Enlightened for the tone deaf.

Worth watching? First you’d have to stay awake.

A far cry from Boston Legal or even The Practice, this is so clumsy in its mix of the procedural and the personal that it should barely be legal.

It wants to be shockingly frank but is mostly dour and phony.

Huff is stubbornly inert, going all over the place tonally while going nowhere emotionally.

Painfully derivative.

The season's silliest new action-fantasy-adventure.

An especially silly descent into incoherence.

An embarrassing dud that's both trashy and self-pitying.

To say these guys are stereotypes does insult to the clichés they clumsily represent.

Nearly everything feels stale in this sitcom.

Which "Sex and the City" knockoff is worse, ABC's "Cashmere Mafia" or NBC's Lipstick Jungle (based on Sex author Candace Bushnell's best-seller)? It really depends which one you're watching at the time. Both are simply dreadful, failing miserably at making their glamorously high-powered heroines sympathetic, credible or remotely interesting.

This exercise in tedium is better suited for its original home on the Internet, where it should have stayed.

The culture-clash premise drowns in a sewer of offensive caricatures and lame jokes.

It's pretty much impossible to care, since we've heard it all before, and it was funnier and fresher the first time around.

Sandra Brown's Ricochet is simply dreadful.

The writing is so trite that when the teens balk in an upcoming episode at the idea of a Family Night (to which the ever-present ex-husbands are invited), we share their despair.

The smarmy and incessant innuendo is more deafening than the laugh track, and yet no matter how low it stoops, it still lacks the zing and bite of Handler's cable antics.

An embarrassingly slapdash time-waster.

I'm pretty sure there aren't drugs strong enough to get me to the bittersweet end of this series.

Run, don't walk, from this depressingly generic retro-sitcom about--guess what--guys with kids.

A laughable medical thriller that does irreparable harm to one's belief in such storytelling staples as logic and credibility.

An average episode of The Vampire Diaries offers more wit, surprise and true horror than this derivative amateur night of mannered, feigned fright.

This new version violates the primary commandment of epic filmmaking, biblical or otherwise: Thou shalt not bore.

An unsatisfying and predictable jumble.

It's just more of the same martial artlessness. I kept expecting to see Batman-style OOF! BAM! graphics on screen.

Big Day should be retitled "The Longest Day," as it spends an entire season showing us how many dreadfully unfunny complications can spoil a single wedding day.

[A] shapeless, pointlessly annoying comedy.

Dreadful. Worse even than those awful Olympics promos.

Yes, I saved the worst for last. NBC’s mawkish new nurse melodrama Mercy has no mercy.

My goose bumps fell asleep waiting to be roused.

It's kind of like Dad says: "If it looks like manure and smells like manure, it's either Wolf Blitzer or it's manure." $#*! My Dad Says is no Wolf Blitzer.

David E. Kelley hits rock bottom in the derivative courtroom cartoon Harry's Law, which makes last fall's defunct and equally ridiculous Outlaw look as noble as The West Wing.

It's hard to imagine a worse idea than The Paul Reiser Show, creating a new void to replace the void that was Perfect Couples.

Not buying it. Not watching it. Feel free to hate H8R, and should they come knocking, don't let them in. No one needs to be on TV this badly.

It's not just a lazy idea, it's atrociously executed, pathetically acted and cynically conceived.

BFF is about as fun as a multiple hernia operation.

If there's any justice, Brand X With Russell Brand will be as quickly forgotten as his blink-and-you-missed-it union with Katy Perry.

With its deafening laugh track and its banal barrage of gamy insult humor, it intrudes on FX's otherwise distinctive comedy lineup like an obnoxious drunk uncle who's not as funny as he thinks he is.

An aggressively preposterous mash-up of medical and mob clichés that results in the sort of hack-work melodrama that would defeat even the most brilliant script doctor.

Neighbors settles for charmless performances, stupid jokes and sight gags that might be funny once, such as naming all of the aliens after famous sports figures (like Larry Bird and Jackie Joyner-Kersee), but with repetition grows fretfully stale.

The original Beast was a beauty. This one's a bust.

Watching this inane New York story of four neurotically babbling sisters, each trying to outcute the other, is like swallowing vanilla lip gloss while someone's screaming in your ear.

The woeful sub-Dawson's Creek dialogue caused me actual pain.

This crudely mean-spirited cringe of a show isn't even medium well-done, and here's this customer's tip: Avoid at all costs.

ABC's atrocious Work It fails miserably.

Rob feels as if it were written by people who aren't on a first-name basis with comedy.

Think a less charming Ally McBeal in scrubs, acting out with all the maturity of the dancing baby, and that still can't approximate the annoying aftertaste of this cringe-inducing misfire.

An epic of stunningly cynical and pathetic miscasting, a TV-movie so laughably inept it doesn't deserve to be on a first-name basis with anything resembling humanity.

Even in a year that has given us clunkers like The Mob Doctor, Emily Owens, M.D. and Animal Practice, it's tempting to declare Zero Hour the worst or at least silliest show of this or any other recent season.