BBC America delivers a satirical treat in the uncannily topical Twenty Twelve.

A treat for the faithful.

Hit & Miss, the fun is just beginning, and I can't wait to see where this twisted but strangely affecting story goes next.

Damages' endgame is on, and so far it's a doozy--with a fatalistic framework suggesting not everyone emerges alive.

Political Animals is a welcome escape from the current campaign grind, leaving us already hoping for a second term.

It's also a pungent, harrowing and thoroughly captivating entertainment, a welcome reminder of the power of the classic miniseries, which the networks have shunned for far too long.

Kaling makes for an unconventional sitcom heroine, to put it mildly.

The characters, like the show, send off an ingratiatingly kooky vibe, and I look forward to getting to know them better.

Elementary brings edgy new life to CBS' procedural formula, and is just different enough from the Masterpiece Mystery! version (and Benedict Cumberbatch's Emmy-nominated spin) to prove yet again just how versatile this legendary character is.

Once again, PBS delivers the goods--and while it may be too harrowing at times to describe as a bundle of joy, the heart-tugging Call the Midwife is a delight to watch.

This movie comes most alive in those scenes when all the well-cast women (including Jill Scott as an unusually reserved Truvy) are bouncing off each other, biting but never drawing blood.

ABC has done well in filling the time period with a show that's both sassy and smart, singing a tune we can name in three words: It's a winner.

These young Chicagoans are seriously, but amusingly, Underemployed--the title of a disarmingly scruffy new MTV hour-long dramedy from Six Feet Under's Craig Wright that nails the confusion (sometimes sexual) and disappointment (usually economic) of a generation raised to expect more than today's society is offering.

Asylum delivers a much more evocative nightmare gallery without losing any of the franchise's provocative, look-ma-I'm-screaming bravado.

A treat for armchair travelers.

Archer, meanwhile, is all about the funny, and kicks off its fourth season of deranged spy parody.

Ripper Street is mighty fine bloodsport.

If what you're looking for is a good scare that's cunningly and ruthlessly executed, be forewarned. The Following is the real deal.

The juxtaposition of surface banality and the high-octane spy intrigue of their shadow identities gives The Americans a suspenseful kick.

The randomness of the action and the sense of futility (most notable in Lydia's dealings with a male rape victim) distinguish Southland from run-of-the-mill cop dramas.

Top of the Lake is reminiscent of AMC's The Killing in ways both good (its moodiness) and unfortunate--Robin has a fiancé back home who keeps pleading for her to return--but its world is so specific and transcendently trippy, haunted by mythic legends rooted in this unforgiving geography, that it feels wondrously fresh, alien and unforgettable.

Funky, freaky and fascinating, Orphan deserves to be adopted by any pulp-fantasy fan.

Throughout, Spies delivers the vicarious pleasures of old-fashioned spy movies with the bold contemporary frankness of the best of cable.

Even at its most ponderous and indulgent, Mad Men casts a mesmerizing spell, and that's true throughout this less-than-satisfying but intermittently intriguing chapter.

Heartfelt and rarely schmaltzy, call this one a winner.

The actresses' chemistry makes up for an earnest predictability in the storytelling.

Manhunt goes beyond the actual raid to explore the CIA's culture of intelligence gathering, including the internal debates on Bush-era "enhanced interrogation techniques." Even though we all know how it turns out, this is as gripping an account as you're likely to find.

Watching Nick (Peter Krause), family lawyer and honorary Darling, struggle to preserve his soul while fixing the family's messes is such fun you can almost forget the show's such a gaudy anachronism.

With relative rookies Jeremy Sisto and Anthony Anderson solving the crimes and scrappy Linus Roache leading the prosecution (with Alana de la Garza) and butting heads with his boss, Law & Order rarely feels like a show entering its 19th season.

A funny/sad Office-style mockumentary depicting a year in the life of an Australian public high school, this wildly talented writer-star loves making you squirm (à la Gervais) while submerging himself inside the skin of characters so diverse (à la Ullman) you can hardly believe it's the same guy.

There are times when you don’t whether to scream with fear or laughter. Being Human is frighteningly good.

An offbeat show that veers between wacky and truly poignant extremes.

This remake achieves an Avengers-like balance of cheeky wit amid the cheesiness.

As with Monk, the crime is largely an afterthought. Psych similarly serves up murder as a fluffy soufflé, but what a tasty way to end the week.

There's enough to enjoy in Weeds that you could get a contact high just by tuning in.

Jerry Bruckheimer's latest fun-to-watch procedural.

Reminiscent of 24 but about a dozen times more realistic (though dramatically more uneven).

You'll root for these inept amateurs, but sustaining this premise won't be easy.

If 24 is a roller coaster, The State Within is more of a cerebral maze of treachery. One's more fun, though the other has its dark pleasures.

Deeply silly, endearingly sweet, a little creepy and undeniably weird.

Less lurid than HBO's Rome, yet still quite the pageant of pomp and friskiness, it's a throwback to the old-fashioned miniseries of yore, spiced with pay-cable frankness.

The unsettling juxtaposition of Yankees fever with Son of Sam's reign of terror is intriguing, but could have used a stronger authorial voice to tie it together.... Still, even non-Yankees fans should enjoy this one.

This warm and fuzzy show could grow on you.

Self-consciously edgy while flirting with cosmic schmaltz, Saving Grace is overdone, but not run-of-the-mill.

The procedural stuff is mostly drab, but John's institutional memories of the Big Apple (dating back to when it was still a big jungle) make New Amsterdam more intriguing than it initially appears.

This slick and often scary update presents a gripping medical mystery of scientific trial and error against a topical backdrop of bioterrorism, environmental activism and 24-style government conspiracy.

It’s all very sweet and tuneful, and took me back to my days as a Hayley Mills groupie.

There’s something actually at stake this season, and the art of the deal has never looked nastie

House is already shopping for a new mate. The situation is comic yet dramatic, as House is almost dangerously distracted from his medical-sleuth work. Some powerful stuff, but many of us are even more impatient for House to reunite his old team (the marginalized Cameron and Chase). The newbies just aren’t cutting it.

A bit generic, despite the creepy particulars of this series’ science-based mysteries--think a more mainstream "Fringe."

The enjoyable if less-than-inspired two-hour pilot introduces us to the warehouse, its bizarre inventory and the mismatched new agents in charge.

If your taste runs toward the appallingly crass, then you’ll probably want to end the night with a new season of the incorrigibly amusing It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

So far, this seems a very promising ride. Maybe not one for the ages like BSG, but for the next few weeks, I’ll be curious to see how these space castaways cope.

While an industry darling, 30 Rock has never been what you’d call a mainstream hit. That’s unlikely to change.

Scrubs has lost none of its endearing ability to mix earnest sentiment with sardonic gag-centric humor.

It's all very entertaining, and extremely well acted, but feels overly hectic. Not until next Sunday's episode, when Bill and Barbara's daughter Sarah makes a move toward determining her own future, does Big Love approach the kind of emotional, transcendent high that made so much of last season so memorable.

Stick around past the disappointing opening night, and on Monday, you’ll get a terrific third-hour cliffhanger and, in hour four, the arrival of a seriously damaged Renee Walker (Annie Wersching), who contributes to a shocking climax that, in fabled 24 tradition, leaves you wanting more.

The show's a little frantic and more than a little crude, but the jokes keep coming and many of them score in this depiction of Courteney Cox as a newly divorced and woefully insecure mom of a teenager.

An efficient if predictable procedural that arrives on the scene after last spring’s two-part “backdoor pilot” with plenty of fistfights and gunfights and the sort of jovial camaraderie that endears classic NCIS to its millions of fans.

Even critics and fans who are intrigued (as I am) by the often riveting pilot--which ends on a whopper of a cliffhanger twist--can’t help projecting a bit into our own future, one that’s informed by a past that’s littered with ambitious pilot episodes that ultimately didn’t measure up.

The mayhem that ensues isn't exactly unexpected, but it is pretty funny. On ABC, that's definitely a step in the right direction.

Even when the show gets a bit silly, there's a healthy sense of wonder at the origin of the artifacts our heroes regularly track down.

The Big C is tonally all over the place, to the point where a terminal illness almost seems a relief. Linney has her best moments as she tries to reform an overweight student (Gabourey Sidibe, way sparklier than in Precious) and befriends a cranky neighbor widow (scene-stealer Phyllis Somerville).

The pilot is such a mixed bag it's hard to predict. Often very entertaining as it piles on the mysteries and cliffhanger climaxes, it's also hopelessly and almost comically convoluted, presenting scenes with a "23 minutes earlier" or "13 months earlier" or "11 days earlier" tag with such frequency you end up barely knowing, let alone caring, when and where you are at any given time.

Besides the location, there's little about Detroit that is particularly new or groundbreaking, but it should easily satisfy the millions who seem to have a bottomless appetite for this genre. There are plenty that do it worse.

It's like the biggest-budget USA Network show you ever saw, fun to watch but rather forgettable, because the stakes just don't feel all that high. Still, for those who've had their fill of dark drama, Undercovers may be just the ticket for a good snuggle.

This one is trying something different, although its look and tone are conventional enough not to shake the TV fan from their comfort zone.

Is Conan the sort of show that's going to revolutionize TV? Probably not. But Conan O'Brien remains a singularly appealing and wonderfully silly voice in the crowded clamor of late night, and it's good to see him back where he belongs.

There is nothing heightened or cheapened by contrivance as the detectives and patrol cops go about their often sordid business.

Like the notorious family that bribed its way into the Vatican's papal chamber while sullying many a Roman bedchamber, we want our money's worth. And The Borgias wickedly delivers, serving up an operatic feast of delicious malice and unbridled lust: for power and wealth, for carnal pleasure and vulgar theatrics.

With only three hours to develop character and story, it can't help but suffer by comparison to the Emmy-winning '70s series that helped put Masterpiece Theater on the map, as well as to the recent Masterpiece triumph of the similarly themed Downton Abbey. But there are considerable pleasures.

HBO's punchy, pungent but ultimately facile Cinema Verite dramatizes the making of 1973's revolutionary PBS (!) docu-series An American Family, a precursor to today's exhibitionistic "reality" freak shows.

Our heroes' new companions may be less than electrifying, but there's plenty of action to compensate--and, as always, sex (though Capt. Jack now asks about protection)--and a chilling adversary in Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman), a psycho killer who survives execution and becomes a perverse cult hero in the media.

The humor isn't exactly subtle, but much of it rings true.

The first episode opens and closes on the cliffhanger of Bridget-as-Siobhan being stalked by an unseen menace, but which sister is the actual target? As long as Ringer keeps us asking questions like this, and Gellar keeps us engaged in the deluxe and twisted sister act, we're more than happy to be put through the romantic-suspense wringer.

Rudolph is the wacky comic icing on what otherwise is a more grounded and endearingly realistic comedy about two exhausted new parents (Christina Applegate and Will Arnett) who are still adjusting to the loss of their it's-all-about-me, hard-partying lifestyle to make way for adorable baby Amy.

This show goes for Broke with its snappy dialogue, occasionally crossing the taste barrier with its grotesque ethnic caricatures (the girls' Asian boss in particular). But the girls have great chemistry.

It feels awfully dated, except when Bello takes matters in her own hands to keep things fresh.

If you can make it past the exposition, and the earnest family cliches--a rebellious teenage son, an awkward brainiac daughter--there's plenty of satisfying dino action. And it all looks gorgeous.

Work of Art itself manages to elevate this often schlocky genre into an entertaining celebration of the process of creation, with some startling and visionary (and occasionally disturbing) pieces produced under intense pressure.

The series is low-key to a fault but likable, not so different from Bones in its sense of off-kilter humanistic humor, though never as graphic.

[Touch is] emotionally compelling but wildly fantastical and undeniably manipulative.

While not quite as inspired as last year's breakthrough comedy Awkward, MTV's Pants appears to have legs.

Comedy isn't pretty, but in the Short run, it can be painfully hilarious, even when it feels like Gervais is retreading some awfully familiar material here.

Mostly, despite a title that sounds like a roofie, this is good harmless fun.

Bent is the sort of funky offbeat comedy that grows on you, so watching more than one episode at a sitting turns out to be a good thing.

Sarah isn't easy to warm up to, and neither is The Killing, though I respect its moody insistence at depicting even the most sympathetic figures in the worst possible light.

This may not be Peabody material, but if you like a show that's not afraid to go bananas, this might just be your type of low-hanging fruit.

It never takes itself very seriously, yet there is serious chemistry between these guys.

HBO's woozy and often intoxicating Hemingway & Gellhorn [is] a sprawling docudrama (overlong at 160 minutes) about glamorous world adventurers whose weapons are words.

It is satisfying in its own low-key way, a solid companion piece to the laid-back charms of The Glades

The show's predictably melodramatic rhythms and telegraphed twists will be like nectar to those still pining for this old-school style of skullduggery.

Falling Skies has amped up the dramatic stakes this season, even offering a glimmer of hope when an unexpected visitor drops into their midst, balancing the earnest family values with a visceral survival saga that keeps the hokum mostly at bay.

Watching things go to hell was great fun. Being stuck in sitcom hell turns out to be a bit more trying.

It's the absurdly over-the-top machismo of countless firefights and explosions and high-body-count carnage that makes Strike Back such a cheese-tastic guilty pleasure.

It has sharpened this season (judging from the first five episodes) into a bolder, though still hardly subtle, urban melodrama of moral, political and sexual chicanery.

As you'd expect from co-creator Ryan Murphy (Glee), the tone can wobble from sappy to flamboyantly snarky, but there's a real emotional undercurrent that makes Normal a good fit with Matthew Perry's new sitcom Go On.

Some of the episode is forced--Sarah's babbling job tryout with Hank, for instance--but in those universal moments of family togetherness and transition, as these grown-ups who sometimes still feel like kids marvel at the mystery of parenthood, Parenthood is worth its weight in sentimental angst.

Sons may be as busy as it is brutal, but at least its heartlessness is in the right place.

Glee is off to a good start. Please let it last.

It's a solid premise executed with the usual CBS professionalism.

Familiarity points deducted, Arrow is still a very slick piece of work.

The twists are solid, if never as electrifying as on Showtime's Homeland, while George clearly learned her lessons well at the feet of Sydney Bristow.

At just 90 minutes, The Girl can feel rushed and only occasionally convinces us that an actual movie is being made--this is so focused on Hitch-and-Tippi you'd think The Birds was a one-woman show.

This agreeable, though hardly groundbreaking, hour-long buddy comedy-with-music is almost as catchy as the cover tunes these wedding (and occasional Bar Mitzvah) singer/musicians specialize in.

Cougar Town is as unrepentantly shallow and silly as ever.

It's a step above the typical CW soap, and worth penciling in an appointment in your own TV diary.

Their [Jim and Billy's] relationship deepens as the series continues, and while I'm not sure there's an actual series in this set-up, for now Legit achieves a legitimately engaging balance between the shockingly grotesque and the genuinely heartfelt.

Once again the veterans wipe the floor with the young whippersnappers.

The cast is solid and admirably diverse.... While never as engaging as Grey's Anatomy nor clever enough to make us forget the void left by House's departure, Mornings at least does no harm.

Smash introduces its winsome ingénue Karen (Katharine McPhee) to a headstrong young songwriter with hip Rent ambitions (rising star Jeremy Jordan, who headlined two real Broadway musicals last year). This subplot, like much of Smash, is cheesy and corny, but works when the impassioned singing starts. Which, for a musical drama about musicals, is what matters most.

Curiously compelling.

His easy camaraderie with these women [in prison] forms the core of the film, HBO's eighth collaboration with filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, and their mutual affection and hope for a better future is genuinely inspiring.

Recovery won't be easy, but so far it's an enjoyably bumpy ride.

Much of the casting is disappointingly flat, and the character development as shallow as in any video game.... Still, ambition counts for a lot in this expansive genre, and Defiance gets better with each episode.

The intriguing three-part The Bletchley Circle, which admirably avoids preciousness as it depicts the teamwork of four women who during WWII worked secretly for the government as code breakers (Bletchley Park was their HQ).

The sardonically squirm-inducing Maron alternates between slice-of-rant sitcom and self-obsessed podcast from the comedian's garage.

Like many HBO half-hours, this is a slow, slow burn to get to a payoff. The smiles here are of recognition that even the most ordinary families can have wonderfully strange roots.

Fringe returns in fine form for its second season.

Mostly overcomes its contrived premise and clichéd courtroom theatrics with well-played characters you might actually root for.

An entertaining mishmash that uneasily juggles jargony sci-fi theories with elements of military conspiracy, action-adventure, disaster movie and surreal psychological suspense.

It’s painfully derivative, but we’ve seen worse.

The skating is slow and rarely pretty, and it’s not live.

More of a curiosity than a necessity.

The disaster-movie clichés pile up in 10.5 Apocalypse.

A divertingly original but awfully precious comic fantasy.

On the glossy surface, it’s an earnestly predictable but impeccably produced soap opera. [13 Sep 2006]

If NBC must use game shows as spackle to fill holes in its schedule, it could do worse. It already has.

My Boys can overdo the voiceover sports metaphors, but at least it's agreeable.

It's like Deadwood in togas, a violent and bawdy tapestry of a vanished civilization.

One thing's for sure: Raines is weird.

Cheerfully cheesy.

Miss/Guided is silly but sweet and would be more embraceable if it would drop the misguided (sorry) gimmick of having everyone deliver jokes right into the camera.

The show is entertaining enough on the job that it doesn’t need so-called comic relief.

Well-made, but heavy-handed and hardly inviting.

Caprica takes itself awfully seriously, with plenty of thematic integrity but not so much intensity. So far, it’s a bit dramatically anemic.

Think "Ally McCouric" in a bubbly slapstick trifle that plays like David E. Kelley lite: less offensive, also less original.

As a weekly series, this predictable but agreeable comedy-soap about spurned Hollywood wife Molly (Debra Messing, her neurotic sitcom mojo intact) is less heavy-handed than the starter miniseries.

Yes, there’s much that’s awful here, as there always was--some laughably bad acting, portentous flashbacks telegraphed so obviously you expect the screen to do one of those wiggly dissolves, writing that won’t cause Matthew Weiner (or his kids) any sleepless nights--and yet there’s an enjoyably lurid energy to this place that makes it only about 1,000 times more instantly watchable than last season’s dreary redo of 90210.

The overstuffed pilot piles on a few too many weepy crises, many involving Adam’s young son (who may have Asperger’s syndrome), but the strong cast’s considerable charm breaks through.

The show almost lost me early on with a clumsy gag when Molly's workout routine is upstaged by mom and sis eating chocolate cake right in front of her. (Who would do that?) But it gets better from there, although the whole enterprise seems like a lot of empty (for now) calories.

It's not a bad sitcom, just a bit ordinary given the company it's keeping.

The chats are amusing, quirky and strangely obsessed with monkeys (which, granted, is always a funny topic), but the illustrations tend to overemphasize the throwaway moments, draining them of spontaneity and often of their original humor.

This nearly six-hour adaptation is an over-indulgently languid showcase for Winslet to shine as the iconic and ultimate Mother Martyr.

From the few episodes I've seen so far, Body of Proof is just ordinary enough to be a success. There's nothing in it you haven't seen several hundred times before: a blend of CSI science, Bones banter, Mentalist uncanny acuity, House haughtiness, Rizzoli & Isles eye candy.

The episodes play out in a series of uneven vignettes: droll, ironic and twisted. It's great to see Kudrow back on TV, but this visually static and comically stunted gimmick wears thin pretty quickly.

It's all a bit edgier than you might imagine, and I'll be giving this another look--though it's probably not going to keep me home on Fridays.

The hot mess of American Horror Story is berserk to a fault, though it does have an unnerving originality compelling us to watch while we cringe, or perhaps smirk.

Ultimately, this is an easier show to admire than it is to recommend.

Substantive without being stuffy, workmanlike but something less than a wow, the show often seemed indistinguishable from his Nightly News gig, albeit with longer stories and more opportunity for in-studio banter.

The final twists and reveals are inelegantly dramatized, but as TV, it's still a pretty fair page-turner.

The plot is as stubbornly slow-burning as Hoffman's sharply reined-in performance and ultimately far less inspired.

With most of The Closer's original crew staying on, it's almost business as usual--though with Sedgwick no longer at the center, replaced by Mary McDonnell's inscrutably smug and unsympathetic Capt. Sharon Raydor, the franchise can't help but be diminished.

There are worse ideas. And far worse shows this fall.

The broad comedy in 1600 Penn derives from familiar sitcom clichés being magnified by the Oval Office fishbowl. It's a gimmick that may have trouble holding up to a second term, though the cast is certainly game.

Banshee is a mangy mutt of a TV show and doesn't care if you know it.

Making things more intriguing this time, Spartacus' main adversary as the series builds toward its final showdown isn't the usual sniveling, craven, oversexed patsy.

Not quite as riveting as some of Tyra Banks' Top Model panels, but the prospect of Naomi getting in her rivals' faces to save her girls should entice the Bad Girls audience to give it a look.

The satire is vicious, the behaviors of all parties reprehensible, which makes for a bracingly unsavory series but also one that's ultimately sour and predictable.

Gravity may be weighted down by cliche, but it’s not without interest.

Smart fun.... But Report often feels like an overlong, overindulged sketch.

The movie's fun to watch, but also rather hollow, reminding me of last season's HBO movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Both are well acted but with such obvious stories to tell they soon grow tiresome.

The Loop is half funny.

This is what you'd get if Without a Trace somehow turned into a cartoonish conspiracy chase thriller.

Too much pretentious hooey about destiny obscures an unfocused saga of normal folks with odd powers.

Like on House, we go inside the body, zooming from nerve endings to the mind's exotic landscape, where surreal images convey mystery maladies. If only 3 LBS were as provocative.

As fast-paced as it is preposterous.

If you like Lifetime, you'll probably love this one.

Taylor gives a forceful performance as a wronged wife who lapses into hallucinations during therapy sessions, but a bitter tone pervades most of the rest of the show.

Replacing "Oz"'s joyfully timeless charm with perverse irony and nightmarish, hallucinatory imagery makes this three-night miniseries more of a lavishly quirky curiosity than a keeper.

The action is fast-paced, the plotting dense, if often simplistic, and the tension generally sustained, as long as you don't overthink the improbabilities of the cover-up over who's responsible for the bomb attacks.

A good girl’s surprise pregnancy is a strong premise, but creator Brenda Hampton (7th Heaven) undercuts it by surrounding Amy with an uninspired ensemble of precociously cardboard classmates.

The frantically violent mayhem, including a tasteless cannibalism gag, is paced swiftly enough that you can almost ignore the silliness of a show that isn’t above resurrecting characters long thought dead. Still, it beats last year’s miserable detour in a Panamanian sweatbox.

Reminiscent at times of "The Bourne Identity" or "Face/Off," to name a few movie influences it does not improve upon, the beyond-high-concept Enemy asks us to believe Christian Slater as a cold-blooded assassin named Edward who doubles, when a switch in his brain is flipped, as a milquetoast family man named Henry.

Crash doesn't burn so much as it simmers. It's provocative and intriguing, but leaves you wondering if the whole setup might not simply work better as a movie.

When everything and every moment is studiously and heavy-handedly unpleasant, and each humorless, colorless detail seems designed to impress us with its “edge,” the overall effect ironically becomes somewhat monotonous.

A newspaper writer whose one-night-stand with a baby-faced young-un leads to predictable complications when she gets, you guessed it, knocked up.

Not much interesting going on here, although it can be intriguing to watch an old-fashioned-style sitcom shoehorned into the Gossip Girl age, as ABC Family continues to try to be relevant yet family-friendly.

While there is much talent associated with this show, Parks still feels pretty much like the pits, an uneasy and uneven clone that has yet to achieve a comedic purpose of its own.

I’d like to say the self-consciously literary Bored to Death lives up (or down) to its title, but it really doesn’t even leave that much of an impression.

I simply hope Hot in Cleveland can give us more than the lukewarm pilot promises. Ohio deserves better, and so do these fabulous ladies.

As it wrestles with Big Moral Questions, Rubicon is unquestionably smart but undeniably sluggish.

It's all very fast-paced but relentlessly and annoyingly simplistic, with virtually no dramatic nourishment along the way. The show's other gimmick is to add a reveal at the end of each episode to let us know who was really responsible for the crime and whether justice was served. In the two episodes I watched, can't say I really cared by the end.

It may be a cliche to say that New York is an essential character and component of the Law & Order brand, but it's true. The distinctive grit and energy of the urban metropolis are lacking in the sprawl of L.A., which is also so overexposed on TV in its sun-drenched glamour that LOLA feels old hat before it even arrives.

Moments and characters like these take us out of the reality that Shameless otherwise aims to portray, falling victim to the pay-cable impulse to push the shock envelope just because it can. Which ultimately is less shocking than irritating. A shame, really.

If all of this is new to you, the appealing mix of humor and horror may very well hook you. If you've already fallen in love with the British version, as I have, this uneven carbon copy will seem wildly unnecessary.

Legal is fairly banal, and its focus is often as fuzzy and vague as its by-the-numbers title. Thankfully, Shahi has more than enough personal charm and sex appeal to keep this vehicle afloat until it finds its own voice.

Too bad that's not more wonder in this very familiar show. There's nothing really wrong with Mad Love. There's just nothing new about any of it.

Some of the situations they encounter on the dating and relationship circuit are promisingly wacky, but the tortured jokes lean way too heavily on pop-culture references.

It may be just ordinary enough to work.

Having peaked a few seasons back in the amazing John Lithgow season, Showtime's hit Dexter at least seems to be enjoying itself as year six kicks off.

Though the stories provide plenty of jolts, Bedlam becomes less scary with repetition during its six-episode duration, because we can see these persistent ghouls all too easily.

I wish I were as invested in Amy's journey as she is, but as she blathers on about being an agent of change at her uncaring corporation, I find myself restless to change the channel to something that's actually entertaining or, yes, enlightening.

A more conventionally crass buddy comedy about a Jersey whale-out-of-water (voiced by Book of Mormon star Josh Gad) who moves to the California beachfront with his buxom mom (Debi Mazar),

If only Grimm didn't also feel like we've seen it before, only executed with more verve and humor back in the glory days of Buffy and Angel.

The action and whimsy help compensate for an overall flatness in the rest of the ensemble casting and low-budget production.

The mysteries of the mythology--Where were they for the last half-century? Who's pulling their violent strings?--are more compelling than the plodding mechanics of the weekly manhunt.

With overripe dialogue that sounds like Shakespeare ground through a blender of baroque profanity, punctuated by action sequences of almost comical brutality amid orgies of debauchery, Spartacus is back with a vengeance.

Their [Matthew Perry and Laura Benanti's] wary cat-and-mouse game doesn't exactly break new comic ground, but it temporarily lifts Go On from its jarring tonal shifts between mockery and mawkishness.

This posh address, which could yet become catnip for occultists, looks to be for amateurs only.

This is a family that could use some ruffling, with precious little chemistry between the series leads.

The hour-long pilot of Mockingbird Lane [is] a monster mash of a hot mess.

I'm still waiting for this overqualified cast to get material that allows them to act like grown-ups as opposed to squabbling, whiny, gossipy, neurotic, sex-obsessed nimrods.

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.