But sprawl it must. "True Blood" is a soap opera at its core, which is why it is so overpopulated with sexy characters.

Covert Affairs (could there be any title that sounds more like being stuck at the airport with nothing to read?) at least does us the favor of introducing storylines that transcend the usual case files.

Shows like those lean more toward seriousness and away from the colorfully ridiculous old comic books. Although this often strikes non-fanboys and non-fangirls as woefully atonal, it mostly works here, but it would be nice if No Ordinary Family had more humor about it.

Every detail has been attended to, every format and traditional segue honored; there is absolutely nothing to quibble over with the show's tone and pace. Which is, itself, a quibble.

What makes Teach: Tony Danza worth watching are the teenagers themselves and the glimpses of other teachers who make the place work. Danza, meanwhile, becomes an irritating, whirling, self-aggrandizing bundle of nerves.

Just a dose of the show leads to sweaty palms and heightened anticipation--always a good sign. It's funny how little it takes: Everything about the way Million Dollar Money Drop is built relies on one modern game-show trope after another.

As stupid as it looks, and as much as you can hate yourself for watching, it's a complex show about the nature of sin. There's a tendency to examine it too cerebrally in that regard, to think of Jersey Shore as pure performance art. Sometimes critics can be wrong in typing too many words.

Not everyone is going to respond to its purposeful languor and subliminal intent. Winslet is at once wonderful and yet enigmatically blank--very much as written in Haynes's and Jon Raymond's screenplay.

All of which is to say that even for the most open minds, Game of Thrones can be a big stein of groggy slog. On the plus side, the first six episodes are impressively free of sorcery and special effects, and instead rely on the stuff of any deeply dark HBO epic: corruption, deceit, illicit sex (incest in this case), unflinchingly gory violence, and a willingness to kill off a prominent character or two in the service of plot.

It's often difficult for them to shed the topical baggage they are made to carry and simply be themselves. Still, if you stick with them, you'll see Treme becoming a well-paced work of fiction rather than see Treme spending too much effort speaking truth to an indifferent power.

The film, which kicks off HBO's long, annual summer of well-curated documentary offerings on Monday nights, is certainly absorbing. For those only vaguely familiar with the competitive chess circuit (or even the game's 1,500-year history), Bobby Fischer Against the World is both an easy introduction and a thorough recounting of Fischer's improbable rise to superstardom some 40 years ago.

Ostensibly an objective inquiry into the tragedy, the film is perhaps better interpreted as a study in the infinite and even seemingly inappropriate ways that people experience profound grief.

Even with the cross-pond cultural differences, young adults who are perennially baffled by their aging boomer parents will feel right at home here.

An engaging yet taciturn new miniseries.

Sing Your Song is broad and complete, but like most biographical documentaries of legendary performers that we've seen of late, it is also hagiographic.

The result was assured, quick-paced and enjoyably flavored with a few spicy dashes of Brian Williams's dry rub.

The show seems markedly improved from its earlier efforts and somehow more confident in its writing and sense of nuance. It's also funnier.

Enough happens to keep you from changing the channel, but there are hints of a show that could get dull fast.

Smash is a case where not bad is plenty good enough.

Tiny flaws come close to undermining the success of Game Change as a mere film.

The show misses its mark--but not by much and not in any objectionable way.

It is stylish, hammy, sexy, dirty, devilish, laughably bad TV, the guiltiest pleasure since the network unveiled "Revenge."

Sherlock is too often a petulant know-it-all, which grows tiresome and makes a viewer painfully aware that each episode is 90 minutes long.... Sherlock's redundancies are improved by a couple of longer story arcs.

Henderson gives a lunky, forgettable performance, coming nowhere near anyone's idea of a stronger, meaner version of J.R. Thanks to the rest of its ensemble, however, the new Dallas gains some traction and kicks up a little dust.

While it's not perfect, Bunheads is a happy find, a ray of authenticity on a summer TV schedule filled with so much artificial light.

For those who don't mind getting sent off in lots of false directions, or aren't going to even try to keep up, Perception offers the chance to just go along for an enjoyable ride.

Within a few episodes and with slightly lowered expectations, it gets a good buzz going.

The first half of Vito plays almost like a 45-minute "It Gets Better" ad. [Then] Vito exchanges its subtle storytelling technique for a sobering session of gay rights homework, resembling a recent raft of documentaries about the early years of the AIDS crisis.