They've richly re-created a Roaring '20s world on the edge of an ocean and a precipice, and populated it with a riveting rogues gallery.

For two nights and four fabulous hours, this sequel to 1994's Baseball, still PBS' most-watched program, reminds us why baseball retains its hold on our imagination, and why Burns and Novick remain TV's pre-eminent popular historians.

Three weeks, three styles, three fine, fun hours.

The result is a sharp, funny, clever series that remains faithful to the spirit of Doyle's stories while infusing them with a vibrant spirit of modernity.

She's a smart, funny, eccentric elitist who isn't afraid to tell us what she thinks of us or herself. Listen with an open mind, and you should find her sometimes scathing honesty is bracing rather than off-putting.

A riotously, often scathingly funny showbiz satire that proves LeBlanc is smart enough to know self-mockery can be a potent weapon, and talented enough to wield it properly.

There are worse sins than looking like a Jane Austen movie. In fact, with PBS' latest British hit import, the unfailingly entertaining Downton Abbey, it might even be a blessing.

Like the show itself, Margo Martindale's performance is smart, chilling, amusing, convincing and unfailingly entertaining. And like the show, you really don't want to miss it.

What sets The Killing apart are its steady sense of dread, its dense atmospherics--that feeling that rain may at any moment pour from our sets--and its beautifully drawn characters.

Every line, every reaction is perfectly pitched, every shift from humor to menace to seduction perfectly played.

Danes and Lewis are near-flawless, keeping you off-balance and absorbed.

For anyone seeking edge-of-your-chair tension, Dead delivers. But what separates this fine series from similar shows is the honesty of its human interactions.

There's nothing in Downton you won't recognize, and almost nothing you won't enjoy.

As you'd hope from a show based on Elmore Leonard's work, the plots snap, the dialogue crackles and--to press on with the point--the characters pop.

This is such a gorgeous show to watch (at least for anyone fond of mid-'60s clothes and design) that it's easy to forget how beautifully these actors play their roles and how true-to-life they and the writers make these characters seem.

Dunham's simply writing what she knows, and incredibly well.

This is TV pleasure at its most intense, without even a shade of guilt.

Summer TV at its witty, riveting best.

Bad is too complex a series and too brilliantly distinctive a creation to be reduced to a simple "Crime does not pay" motto.

Despite its depth and ambition, this is one great drama that never becomes cumbersome--it never feels like a chore imposed upon us by the God of High TV Art.

What lies ahead for Downton fans is a first-rate run of episodes that feels less hectic and more tightly focused on the family core.

No American-made option this weekend can compare.

Out of these familiar adventure-story components and a host of pop-culture conventions, Alias' J.J. Abrams has fashioned a totally original, fabulously enjoyable lost-at-sea series. Once again, he has taken an outlandish Saturday-serial setup and imbued it with real characters and honest emotions, without sacrificing any of the old-fashioned fun.

TV has so much middle ground already there's no way not to cheer ABC's nerve in giving us something so ground-breaking, so distinctive, so you- can't-take-your-eyes-off-it or get-your-mind-off-it gripping...They've set a tone with Sunday's two-hour pilot - which succeeds best as a masterpiece of mood - that's gleefully perverse, visually glorious, splendidly acted, with a pulsating music score that heightens an already unbearable tension. [6 Apr 1990, p.1D]

As you watch the smart, sophisticated, sharply written and slickly directed Spin City strut its stuff, memories of Murphy Brown's early days may come to mind. Dominating a volatile, high-profile workplace and supported by a crackerjack cast, Fox demonstrates superb and crafty comic timing in a tailor-made role. [17 Sept 1996, p.1D]

Top of the Lake is rivetingly odd, almost oppressively atmospheric and thoroughly entrancing.

Of a handful of promising new series this season, only one shows the promise of greatness: Boomtown.

The winsome Sarah Michelle Gellar is a huge improvement over bubblehead Kristy Swanson as the new Buffy, moving with her mom to the "one-Starbucks town" of Sunnydale, Calif. She's cute and pert but nobody's fool. [10 Mar 1997, p.3D]