Washington Post's Scores
- Movies
- TV
For 623 reviews, this publication has graded:
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38% higher than the average critic
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1% same as the average critic
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61% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 11.2 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average TV Show review score: 52
| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
0
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 230 out of 230
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Mixed: 0 out of 230
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Negative: 0 out of 230
230
tv reviews
- By critic score
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Countdown has transported itself from MSNBC to Current without major incident or much innovation.- Posted Jun 23, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Same Name prefers the usual bunk of the genre, smoothing over significant matters of a class chasm that is an everyday reality for all Americans with dreamy ideas of how we're all not really so different from one another.- Posted Jul 22, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
There's no time for anthropology, psychology or cultural criticism. Whisker Wars, it seems, is no different from those shows about extreme couponers or the woman who eats the stuffing out of sofa cushions.- Posted Aug 5, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Though handsomely assembled from the spare parts of a dozen other evil-twin stories that came before it, Ringer quickly downgrades itself to a fairly ho-hum night soap.- Posted Sep 12, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Whatever triumphant feeling it initially evokes, Weed Wars drags as the lackadaisical attitudes of both the suppliers and the customers begin to grate on a viewer's nerves.- Posted Dec 1, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
The old clips are still a hoot, but there's a limit to how much compressed air a viewer can take, listening to a bunch of old men talk about how funny their friend was.- Posted Dec 16, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Unsupervised doesn't explore emotional story threads. It's mainly a Beavis and Butt-head echo.- Posted Jan 17, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
I think its jokes are predictable and its '60s-era styling is tired.- Posted Jan 18, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Although it has some nice moves and the occasional tense moment, the show's visual allure quickly leads to aggravation.- Posted Feb 7, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Comic Book Men's idle chit-chat about comics comes off as remedial and boring.- Posted Feb 10, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Almost everything about Life's Too Short somehow echoes pieces of all of Gervais's previous TV work, which makes this show seem particularly limp.- Posted Feb 17, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Despite its meandering soapiness, there are passing moments of enjoyable "Downton"-like momentum wherein a viewer can eventually let go of the Cameron version (and "A Night to Remember" and the many, many documentaries in cable rotation) and simply enjoy the tilt.- Posted Apr 12, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
A lushly produced but ultimately unthrilling dramatic miniseries version of the story.- Posted May 25, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Hemingway & Gellhorn is overly enamored with its ridiculous sense of sweep.- Posted May 29, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Nothing in Anger Management is all bad, but not much of it is better than half-good.- Posted Jun 27, 2012
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Reviewed by
Emily Yahr 40
The show is so low-key that it borders on tedium through the hour.- Posted Jul 26, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
GSN's new game show, The American Bible Challenge, is just as dull as it sounds, like mandatory fun time at Sunday school.- Posted Aug 23, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Banshee has the audacity to behave as though its bloody violence, implausible set-up and studied ugliness is somehow vanguard television. In fact, it's just more of the same.- Posted Jan 10, 2013
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Monday Mornings, TNT’s new hospital drama from David E. Kelley, takes what might have been a fresh angle and overdoses it with the usual sappy storylines and cheap, melodramatic editing style.- Posted Feb 4, 2013
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 40
Firefly does some pretty fancy flitting now and then, but for the most part it's a trip that's been taken too many times before.- Posted Feb 24, 2013
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
The film is a sturdy but ultimately stifled exercise in the most polite methods of interrogation--to which its subject is entirely immovable and not prepared to surrender anything, even a smile.- Posted Mar 12, 2013
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 40
The din of familiarity is fairly deafening. Brown's dead wife pops up for posthumous chats with him the way departed loved ones have already done on "Providence" and, more notably, "Six Feet Under." The town is right off a Christmas card -- picturesque and cozy and full of quirky locals. [16 Sept 2002, p.C01]Posted Mar 20, 2013 -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Phil Spector is a wordy and unappealingly clinical character sketch.- Posted Mar 22, 2013
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
What Pelosi has here is the start of a more meaningful film about second chances and forgiveness, but what she ends up with looks more like a greeting card.- Posted Mar 28, 2013
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Reviewed by
Emily Yahr 40
Whether or not the shows ["Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life" and What Would Ryan Lochte Do?] are good is almost irrelevant (both fall in the category of "entertaining in an aggressively mediocre way").- Posted Apr 19, 2013
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Reviewed by
Emily Yahr 40
Whether or not the shows [Ke$ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life and "What Would Ryan Lochte Do?"] are good is almost irrelevant (both fall in the category of "entertaining in an aggressively mediocre way").- Posted Apr 19, 2013
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 40
Does Someone Have to Go? provides little in the way of a grand statement or meaningful takeaway.- Posted May 22, 2013
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 33
It was too much like what you see in an afternoon at Tyson's Corner.- Posted Sep 21, 2011
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
It's an imitation of something already being imitated here, there and everywhere. -
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Critic Score 30
The result is rarely funny, often humdrum, surprisingly predictable fare. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
The characters' lives just aren't fascinating, and by reverting to a more traditional way of telling crime stories, Wolf simply reminds us how superior his other version is. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Actually, the calamities and catastrophes occur with such frequency and ferocity that, yes, indeed, "Apocalypse 10.5" suffers the curse of being unintentionally funny -- even hilarious -- no matter how guilty one might feel about laughing even as hordes of extras are being turned into Kentucky Fried People. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
If the prospect of accompanying comedians on a comedy bus does have a certain allure, don't get too excited. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
It might sound callous to say that "Jericho" has managed to make nuclear war look boring, but there you have it. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
It's not so much a narrative as a collection of character studies, and the characters aren't particularly fascinating. -
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Critic Score 30
"Big Day"... doesn't have an original bone in its carefully constructed body, which would be a pardonable offense if it were actually funny. Which, alas, it is not. -
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Reviewed by
John Maynard 30
All the slick production values and some decent music in Nashville can't make up for these one-dimensional subjects, and their angst over their fledgling careers grows tiresome. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
It's not so much an exercise in socialization as the indoctrination of children into a consumer culture. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
The facetious drama series--not quite a comedy, not quite not one--gathers together an annoying collection of eccentrics and misfits, all of them rich and greedy, few of them worth knowing. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
The two Samanthas are simply irritating and hyper in different ways, and don't add up to one complete, compelling kook. -
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Reviewed by
John Maynard 30
The characters of Cashmere are utterly lacking in that quality, and it's not long before their self-absorption and selfishness become unbearable. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
It's nearly a certainty that someone will call Lipstick Jungle, NBC's new drama series about sensual and successful women, a "guilty pleasure," but it's really more of a guilty horror. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Regardless, what made it to the screen is something that is no stranger to television--whether it's aired or wired, blogged or beamed, uploaded or downlinked--and that something, sad to say, is mediocrity, with a portion of sheer annoyance thrown in. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
There's not "a lot" of heart in the unhilarious Unhitched--in fact, barely any. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Although Winfrey might imagine she's doing something fresh and innovative, the trite staples of competitive reality pop up predictably. -
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Critic Score 30
Finally, a reality show that doesn't even try to pretend it's not a big, cliched setup. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
It's the end of the hour, and we're still waiting for the real show to begin, too. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Just about everything in Privileged has popped up before, and what hasn't popped up before should never be permitted to pop up at all. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Instead of opting for the trite title, Higginbotham should have looked harder for something more novel. He could have found one suitable title right there in his own dialogue: We're thinking, of course, of "Don't Let This Happen to You." -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
My Own Worst Enemy can be recommended only to people who can imagine themselves saying, "I'm in the mood for a mediocre version of a fairly good spy movie." -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
None of this is really funny, most of it is excruciating, and the half-hour would be entirely abominable if Craig weren't such an unruffled good sport. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Swayze seems to be taking Charlie Barker seriously, and Charlie's not worth it; he's just another in TV's increasingly populous community of bellicose antiheroes, supposedly macho loners who throw away the book and operate according to their own primal codes of behavior. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Trust Me shares another characteristic of those series("Nip/Tuck" and "Mad Men": dumb, numbing soullessness. It has the emotional intricacy of a Ritz cracker. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
If Dollhouse, a pretentious and risible jumble premiering tonight on that most quixotic of national networks, were a piece of music, it would have to be some sort of funky-junky, hip-hop, rinky-tinky, ragtime madrigal. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Viewers who stumble into this misbegotten "Moonlighting" imitation will likely be bored, too, but not because of too much success. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Throughout the show, his behavior is quirky and smug in cloying and annoying ways, which seems a self-destructive miscalculation. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
It has the air of something two teenage pals concocted while goofing around on the Internet, but the result of that would probably be fresher and bolder than Surviving Suburbia is. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Fox is plopping the series into its Sunday-night animation pit starting this weekend, with executives presumably hoping the audience won't notice that it isn't any good and will numbly sit through it. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
The premiere is filled with flaws that may well be endemic to the series, one of them being that the characters behave so stupidly that one loses sympathy for them. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
One view of the skyline against Lake Michigan is breathtaking. It's kind of a bad sign when you wish there were more scenery in a show and fewer scenes with characters and dialogue and stuff like that. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Spun clumsily and greedily off "Grey's Anatomy," the new series seems shallow and smirky. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
13: Fear Is Real is cruel in its premise, drably inevitable in its concept and supremely dull in execution. No one risks being scared to death, but being bored to death seems a credible threat. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
This new version works so hard to not fall flat on its face that of course it falls flat on its face. -
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Critic Score 30
Why would you want to watch a show about this lame league when you could just use the time to play in one yourself, or, good heavens, just watch the game? -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Buffed up with glossy polish and thoroughly lacking in sparks between characters, the only good news about this show is that it appears to have a script and actors and sets, which means it's not a reality show or "The Jay Leno Show." -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
With Kell on Earth, the producers have instead zeroed in on fashion's insipidness and cruelty. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
What we get instead is a hollow catharsis for a nation already strung out on the futility of resenting those who occupy CEO suites. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Even The Marriage Ref audience is guffawing in a way that sounds fake. Some think Seinfeld can do no wrong, but what he's created here is anachronistic, flat and even mean-spirited. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Sons of Tucson has an ugly, cheap tenor to it. It seems the writers are hoping against hope that the worse the brothers treat one another and the more the boys mouth off to Labine, the funnier it will get. -
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Critic Score 30
With their brains locked in the upright position, the "Fly Girls" take off for another contrived adventure, way up there, where the air is very thin. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
"Miami Medical" is every bit as pained as "Three Rivers," the organ-donor series that CBS tried to launch in the fall. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
The problem is that the show is strewn with an unironic, overwrought sense of portentousness and constant, blunt hints that the town is Not What It Seems. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
The first episode is a sometimes energetic effort to rediscover some of that ol' mullety magic, but it's also got the clumsy problems of all pilots, including a tendency to overstate its premise. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Surely White must have the willpower to decline some offers--especially after the long and appreciative bask she's recently enjoyed--and she could have let this job pass. The same cannot be quite so true for Hot in Cleveland's headliners, sitcom veterans who all give off a strong and desperate whiff of trying way too hard to be even mildly funny. -
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Critic Score 30
Bachelor Pad comes from a franchise that walks a fine line between sympathizing with and flat-out mocking its contestants. Clearly, the producers here favor the latter, and who could blame them? So much priceless material! -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
The film is overwrought and wearying, salvaged mainly by its occasional gory details and a few enjoyably hammy performances. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
A clumsily obvious rip-off of the Barbara Walters sensation "The View." -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
ABC's feverishly dumb new drama Off the Map takes fans of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice" on an arduous trip to a tiny village in the tropics, "somewhere in South America." It's echh in the time of cholera.- Posted Jan 12, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
At this stylish intersection of a Lollapalooza concert and last weekend's Renn faire, we will fight to the death for the crown and all that, guided by Campbell's scrawny, underwhelming, indie-rock Arthur and a malevolently intriguing, shaved-head take on Merlin from "FlashForward's" Joseph Fiennes.- Posted Apr 1, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Fact is, shows like this will never stop oozing out of Hollywood's groupthink writing rooms. "Perfect Couples," "Better With You," "Traffic Light" and now Happy Endings--each of them flat and mediocre in their own not-very-special way.- Posted Apr 12, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Wilfred would appear to be crafted from a can't-miss, indie-hipster aesthetic, which may be part of the problem: The show is cool to the point of being cold. The bark is all snark. It doesn't work.- Posted Jun 23, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
The longer the cameras stick around, the more irritating (and irritated) Roseanne becomes. Edited with what appears to be a dulled pair of scissors, Roseanne's Nuts unfolds like a random encounter with an unpleasant family.- Posted Jul 12, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Although Allen Gregory might have worked as a sardonic, sideways blow to the gifted-child culture, it is so thoroughly coated in a single flavor of sourness that it is difficult to view it as anything but pointless and quickly repetitive.- Posted Oct 27, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
A deplorably dull two-night miniseries.- Posted Dec 9, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
In trying to be about over-the-top characters, it forgets to be about people.- Posted Jan 6, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
While animation liberates Napoleon and his world from the usual physical restrictions, it somehow lessens the overall appeal of the character and setting.- Posted Jan 17, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Even as a work of harmless vapidity, G.C.B. has a difficult time enlivening its oversimplified premise.- Posted Mar 1, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Their ostentatiousness is more off-putting than aspirational and, frankly, it feels deliberately exaggerated for the camera's benefit.- Posted Mar 12, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Magic City suffers from endless predictability and a lack of creative storytelling.- Posted Apr 5, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
This trope--an actor playing a surlier, fictional version of himself--has been done to death already, and Don't Trust the B---- leans too heavily on the actor's state of celebrity limbo, filling in late-'90s jokes and references where the real laughs ought to be.- Posted Apr 10, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Collectively, the four men are derived from a hundred other canceled sitcoms about men being men while trying to navigate the single life.- Posted May 23, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Sorkin's writing lapses into self-parody, leaving savvier viewers to marvel at how quickly the show goes awry.- Posted Jun 20, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Animal Practice is a forgettable show sloppily built from comedy cliches, but it can be fixed by firing most of the cast and rebuilding the show around the monkey.- Posted Aug 10, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Bereft of better scripts, the cast goes through the motions, half-hearted and cheerfully dazed.- Posted Jan 8, 2013
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
Bombastic music cues and promises of excitement fail to persuade the viewer that Immortalized isn’t just a dead skunk in the middle of February’s road, stinkin’ up to high heaven.- Posted Feb 13, 2013
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
It's not quite sci-fi, not quite fantasy, and yet not quite realistic either. It's not quite a show, is what it's not quite...You may get an urge to take a hike too, but pity the poor critic who has to sit there with a big grin on his face and watch the whole stupid thing. [10 Sept 1993, p.G7]- Posted Feb 17, 2013
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Navy NCIS may not be ghastly, but it's a mutation, gratuitous and clunky. We don't need another criminal investigation show and we don't need another military justice show, and this series is those two, two, two shows in one.- Posted Mar 3, 2013
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 30
Sarah Jessica Parker has an in-your-face face. In her new HBO comedy series, Sex and the City, she always seems to be thrusting it forward. She's in love with the camera. Unfortunately, it's unrequited...Parker, with her scraggly hair and jutty jaw, is certainly not the worst thing about this smirky-jerky sexcom, but she usually seems so light and funny that it's dismaying to see her in bad form, looking like a walking flea market and coming across about as subtly as a tsunami. [6 June 1998, p.C01]Posted Apr 8, 2013 -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
The acrimony between the two men [Marc Maron and his father] doesn’t register as funny or entertaining. Louis C.K. has shown us, on “Louie,” what sort of deeper meaning can be mined in such deep contempt, but on Maron it just feels ugly and dull.- Posted Apr 29, 2013
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
This show is so bad, it’s beneath even MTV.- Posted May 2, 2013
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 30
You can see Sagal and his premise coming from many miles away, making precisely the irritating jokes and wry asides you’d expect him to make. The effect--educational or otherwise--rests somewhere in a parched canyon between “Schoolhouse Rock” and a “Daily Show” segment.- Posted May 9, 2013
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 25
Ostensibly an anti-bullying effort for the TMZ era, it makes the celebrities look like giant babies.- Posted Sep 13, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 25
This painfully flat American version of a British comedy stars Hank Azaria as Alex, a newly-divorced and depressed PR agent who unwisely beds another agent at the firm (Kathryn Hahn as Helen).- Posted Sep 13, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 25
There's no zing whatsoever left in leftover Patio Man material like that, but the cast members (including Christopher Moynihan and Dan Folger as Will's unlikable fellow man-children) give it whatever energy they can muster.- Posted Sep 21, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 25
There's something demeaning about the whole set-up.- Posted Sep 14, 2012
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
The heroine, unlikely in every detail including her name, Temperance Brennan, goes about reassembling corpses and then divining how they got to be that way. It's precise, tedious work and so is watching this show. -
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Reviewed by
Chip Crews 20
A big problem with "Hot Properties" is its hollow core. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
"Four Kings" isn't just tediously sitcommy, it's painfully sitcrummy. -
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Reviewed by
Chip Crews 20
In television terms, a program like this can be produced for pocket change, which explains, at least partly, its presence on the UPN schedule. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
The student characters seem weak and inauthentic, and many of the actors look as though they're going through college for the third or fourth time. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
It's lame and it's limp, and as deployed for "Six Degrees," the conceit would seem to owe quite a bit to the movie "Crash," among such other more antique inspirations as "The Bridge of San Luis Rey." -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
If you're looking for the deep emotional truths that the creators of ABC's would-be heart-tugger imagine they're after, well, pro wrestling might be a good choice. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
Hanson might be enough to fill a few paragraphs in an old Reader's Digest "Most Unforgettable Character" featurette, but the thought of spending an hour with him every week is about as attractive as having (place name of your least favorite medical procedure here) with the same frequency. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
Bluntly put, neither the writers nor the actors are good enough at what they're trying to do to justify trying to do it. They'd all be better off making "10 Items" a traditional scripted show, because then it would stand a better chance of making sense. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
What's potentially scary about "Twenty Four Seven" is that the empty, vacuous lives onscreen are apparently supposed to come across as glamorous and enviable. -
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Reviewed by
John Maynard 20
"Lil' Bush" aims for the political satire of "The Daily Show" and the crude-but-smart humor of "South Park" but fails to live up to both standard-bearers. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
The premise is weak and leaky, the star is dull and dreary, and the only trip Journeyman ought to take is right back to the shop for repairs--or off to the dump for a decent burial. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
One of those slack, campy throwbacks that really ought to be thrown out, Cane, premiering on CBS tonight at 10, tries to bring grand-opera soap opera back to prime time and ignominiously fails. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
Russo tries to pick up the gaping chasm of slack and get a little energy going, but she just looks embarrassed to be yelling at a car, arguing with a car, flirting with a car, whatever. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 20
A revivified and completely uncalled-for update of the original series -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 20
With what I'm sure are only the best of intentions (pshaw!), Live for the Moment winds up being one of the skeeviest and most exploitative things on television since...well, not that long, because television finds so many ways to skeeve and exploit in the name of "reality." -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
Among the many irritating things about today's Exhibit A--Breakthrough With Tony Robbins, yet more trash television from NBC--is that it's another daytime-caliber show that somehow crashed the prime-time schedule. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 20
Just when psychiatrists have decided to strike narcissistic personality disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (as reported last week in science journals), the Hasselhoffs make a clear case for reinstating it.- Posted Dec 9, 2010
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 20
[Happy Endings] is a dream compared with the creaky overdose of Aleve that comes with The Paul Reiser Show.- Posted Apr 12, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 20
If it sounds a bit thrown together for sitcom's sake, it is.- Posted Jan 10, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 20
Pasquale gives the Jason/Ian role his best shot, but he is dragged down by the bad writing and ridiculous transition from good guy to bad guy.- Posted Jan 31, 2013
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
The script by Shonda Rhimes, nimbly directed by Peter Horton (once an actor on "thirtysomething"), is nothing but a casserole made of equal parts ham and corn.- Posted Feb 20, 2013
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 20
Encumbered by a script that is nearly breathtaking in its imbecilic banality, The O.C. makes one long for the cold comforts of a sleazy-minded "reality" show. Fox is trying to pass off this moody, moon-faced trifle, a drama about rich young brats in Orange County, Calif., as the first series of the new fall season (in August?). But if there's any justice left in television, "O.C. will be canceled by the time the actual fall shows premiere. [5 Aug 2003, p.C01]Posted May 6, 2013 -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 16
Based on a book series from the same author who ginned up The Vampire Diaries and drawing upon every market-tested trope the witchy-poo genre has to offer.- Posted Sep 15, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 16
Maria Bello was convinced to star as Det. Jane Timoney, bravely attempting to make up for a so-so script by donning a fedora and laying things on about 10 times too thick.- Posted Sep 16, 2011
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
It's hard to imagine that viewers will be dying to learn which graduate kicks the bucket on "Reunion," mainly because none of them gives the appearance of being, or ever having been, alive. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
Amounts to a character study of a character not worth studying. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
The characters aren't dimensional, or very involving, and Freddie has a drab sort of haplessness that makes him seem at best a chump, at worst a chimp. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
Except for a few suspenseful sequences in which women and, occasionally, sympathetic parties try to escape the clutches of the slave traders, the miniseries is muddled, confused and diffuse. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
Even though the life of the Polish pope... obviously is loaded with dramatic potential, the film seems listlessly uninterested in exploring it. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
A preposterous and pretentious drama series.... Fortunately, there is a way out: your channel-changing remote, wondrous transport to that blessed refuge known as Anywhere Else. -
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Reviewed by
Chip Crews 10
The show is particularly misbegotten and -- fatal for a comedy -- not funny at all. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
An appalling amalgam of humiliating ridicule, primitive humor and heartbreaking pathos, "American Inventor" flies in on wings of sap. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
"Heist" seems derivative of an imitation of a copy of a clone -- so plastic-coated and phony that it's hard to tell what it's ripping off. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
This sitcom isn't wacky in an amusing way. It's wacky in a way that makes you want to see it whacked. -
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Reviewed by
John Maynard 10
Really rich kids, it turns out, make for really annoying reality TV stars. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
It's hard to imagine a civilized audience of any significant size wanting to sit through these trumped-up conflicts and lazy-daisy crises week after week. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
A halfhearted, feebleminded attempt at a situation comedy about that eternal and ever-fascinating struggle, the battle of the sexes. The creators of ABC's "Men in Trees," though, do seemingly everything they can think of to quash that fascination and declare the battle null and dull. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
"The Class" has very little. Considerably worse than being classless, however, is being laughless, at least if you happen to be a sitcom, and "The Class" does, albeit one that's about as rib-tickling as a migraine. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
Dreadful... unwatchable... There's nothing unlikable about the rest of the cast [other than Arquette], but their attempts at farce make you just want to get away from them. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
No one in the cast is likely to be your new favorite actor. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
The show is as commercial and mechanical as an entry-level Mercedes, but not as emotionally involving. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
Almost anything sounds preferable to NBC's "Thank God You're Here." -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
Muddled and befuddled from the outset, "Drive" represents a new kind of automotive hybrid -- a scripted treasure hunt designed to look like a reality show, well-stocked with the worst elements of both. It's basically "The Un-Amazing Race." -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
Howie Do It not only drags contestants, and viewers, through gratuitous mud and muck but it also is haunted by the aura of plagiarism; the set-up of one sequence is highly reminiscent of a bit that David Letterman has done on his late-night talk show. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
The film goes beyond mere mediocrity to a gratuitous, mean-spirited ugliness that makes watching it not a campy hoot but a near-sickening ordeal. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
"Stephen King's Desperation" is showing on ABC tonight, and Stephen King's desperation is showing, too, even more than it did in "Kingdom Hospital." -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
CW's version details the dull, dull doings of the world's clammiest vamps, who may flash fangs and skulk around in dark cemeteries (ever see a bright one?) but who come up fatally flat in terms of mayhem and menace. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
One of the strangest things about these MacFarlane shows are the mean-spirited "cultural references," all of them shoehorned in as asides and rarely having anything to do with the plot or characters. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 10
The show is so ludicrously dumb that your eyeballs will hurt from rolling so much. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 10
It reeks so strongly of unintentional parody that it should make almost any Beatles fan wince with embarrassment. It's the perfect example of a bad script basing itself in reality (press clippings, collected lore) and yet still seeming so bizarrely wrong. Even the wigs deserve a laugh track.- Posted Nov 19, 2010
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 10
This is a series for people who found "Sex and the City" too quick-witted and "The Wendy Williams Show" too intellectually stimulating.- Posted May 31, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 10
Ryan & Tatum has an unsavory viscosity to it, making all this soul-baring seem all too calculated.- Posted Jun 20, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 10
It's less of a newly conceived comedy and more of a prime-time haunting.- Posted Oct 11, 2011
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- Posted Jan 17, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 10
Even if you have a lasting grudge against all things Palin, there's no payoff here. It's a new low for anyone who makes the mistake of watching.- Posted Jun 19, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 10
Despite its dour atmospherics and some attempts at higher-caliber acting from Kevin Bacon and a large ensemble cast, The Following is a trite, gratuitously violent exercise in still more stylishly imagined American horror stories. It is filled with melodramatic sleuthing that you've seen over and over. Enough is enough, isn't it?- Posted Jan 21, 2013
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 10
The real problem with the show--besides its exploitative and sad premise--is how slow it is.- Posted Feb 7, 2013
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 10
At first glance, Alias appears to be unadulterated garbage. But then you start noticing all the adulterations...Nothing is as it seems except for the fact that this seems like a lousy show and it is one. [29 Sept 2001, p.C01]Posted Mar 15, 2013 -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 10
A stinkbomb sent to critics last summer that is now getting the burnoff it deserves at season’s end.- Posted Apr 29, 2013
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 0
The problem is not just that it's crude and gross, but that its crudeness and grossness are so pathetically forced and contrived. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 0
Most of the shows now on network television, whether repugnant or tolerable or actually worthwhile, are competently and professionally directed, edited and photographed, but "Head Cases" is a mess even as a piece of storytelling. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 0
The miniseries is about as enjoyable as toenail fungus or that sickening commercial for its cure. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 0
I cannot recall a series in which a greater number of characters seemed so desperately detestable -- a series with a larger population of loathsome dolts. There ought to be a worse punishment than cancellation for a show that tries this hard to be offensive and, even at that crass task, manages to fail. -
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Reviewed by
John Maynard 0
Do not be suckered into watching Fox's torturous new game show "Unan1mous," which in a half-hour crams in several of the worst reality show gimmicks and crosses the border of tastelessness... all while remaining flat-out dull. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 0
You might think that, considering the technical progress made in the past five decades, at least the special effects in the new version would be good. Oh you would be so wrong. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 0
Sheer, excruciating pain.... "Happy Hour" stands a good chance of being named Worst New Show, or at least feeblest new sitcom. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 0
One's first impression of "Identity" is likely to be that it is a miserably tedious mess, a reaction that probably will grow stronger the further one slogs into the Big Muddy that is the show. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 0
You're likely to find more fascinating figures and intriguing dramatis personae in the latest catalogue from J. Peterman, and somehow Peterman comes off as more emotionally authentic. -
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 0
What's so bad about The Singing Bee? Just about everything; the producers have seen to that. -
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 0
They come off as interchangeable affirmative-action figures who make Farrah and company look like early suffragettes who fought for the jiggle rights we now take for granted.- Posted Sep 16, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 0
Hart of Dixie is basically "Northern Exposure" dumbed down to a nanoscopic scale.- Posted Sep 16, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 0
Boy, has she pulled the bangs over everyone's eyes with this atrociously cutesy sitcom.- Posted Sep 16, 2011
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 0
Welcome to this year's "$#!* My Dad Says."- Posted Sep 21, 2011
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- Posted Jan 3, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 0
It's never good news when you start to watch a new show and can't get past quibbling with the whole concept.- Posted Sep 14, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 0
Reba McEntire stars in this unfortunately joyless sitcom about a woman who gave up her own singing career to support her husband's superstardom in country music.- Posted Sep 14, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 0
She's all pluck and stilettos, and when the day is done, she returns to her typical big Italian family--who might as well be cardboard cutouts eating Ragu out of the jar.- Posted Sep 14, 2012
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Reviewed by
Hank Stuever 0
Zero Hour was rancid when it got here. The dialogue is stilted and almost entirely expository. The plot is like receiving a coloring book that’s already been colored.- Posted Feb 13, 2013
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Reviewed by
Tom Shales 0
Friends comes across like a 30-minute commercial for Dockers or Ikea or light beer, except it's smuttier. One character says he dreamed he had a telephone for a penis and when it rang, "it turns out it's my mother." And this is in the first five minutes...Another ghastly creation from professional panderers Marta Kauffman and David Crane, the witless duo who do "Dream On" for HBO, Friends is more a scripted talk show than a sitcom. You keep waiting for Sally Jessy or some other cluck to interrupt the jabbering. The show is so bad that Sally Jessy would actually come as a relief. [22 Sept 1994, p.D1]Posted Feb 27, 2013 -
