Nancy Franklin

Rescue Me is a daring, unflinching show—a worthy companion to FX’s dark-hearted police drama “The Shield”—and it is unafraid to expose the not always pretty particulars of firehouse culture and the more fallible side of those we count on to save us.

So “Jersey Shore” is itself an amusement on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights, a Ferris wheel of quotation marks, and yet it really isn’t fun to watch. It just goes around and around.

The new shows are more concerned with hitting their marks and getting the sociology right than with character, but Pan Am has a bit of style to it, and a note of darkness, and the formula might just work.

I said that The Playboy Club might be promising. Guess what? I lied.

Their take on human nature may develop, but right now it's cartoonish in the worst way and too reminiscent of similar shows.

We come away with a new understanding of the extent of the Kennedys' dysfunction but without a sense of what made them special or of how they harnessed their talents. But what you see in Wilkinson's eyes--they're black holes, devouring everyone in sight--almost makes up for what's missing from the writing.

We do meet her parents, but nearly every other moment comes across as calculated--including, in the first episode, the absence of her daughter Bristol--and we find out nothing about Alaska that we didn't learn in elementary school. I know that some Americans think Palin is stupid, but I never realized that she thinks we're stupid.

Rock is able to find humor in every aspect of his childhood.

The result, with its strong, complex, funny, flawed central character, feels truer to life than the zillions of one-dimensional (or no-dimensional) nurses on television.

In Treatment, while offering viewers a seemingly intimate look at this process, doesn't capture the emotional mise en scène: the characters on the show have all too easy a time expressing themselves, and the element of suspense is mostly absent.

It’s not that much fun to watch an actress who, except for the occasional times when she lets loose one of her charmingly loud second-soprano laughs, seems always to be asking more of us than she’s giving, but Secret Diary of a Call Girl does get better as it goes along, although it doesn’t greatly distinguish itself from most other shows you’ve seen about young single women in the big city

There’s no question that the creators of The Pacific set out to honor the marines’ experience; they haven’t exactly failed to do that, but neither have they succeeded in leading viewers to a deeper appreciation of this--then and now--faraway war.

Over all, the show has a little something, but it doesn’t have outstanding curb appeal, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a foreclosure notice in the window sooner rather than later.

While the ideas behind “The Riches” are often satisfyingly satirical, Izzard’s role—he plays Wayne Malloy, a husband and a father of three, eager to escape the marginal life that he and his family have been living—is stagy and overblown.

Mad Men is smart and tremendously attractive, and it stirs you more than it probably should.

[A] lump of lead.

Colbert is very skillful at parodying people who are already parodies of themselves, and his show is a lot sharper than most of what passes for comedy on TV. At the end of the day, though--a day, say, on which a President says something foolish, or a Supreme Court nominee has to step aside, or a White House aide is indicted--the voice you’ll most want to hear is still Jon Stewart’s.

A gorgeously living thing.

In general, there's a pat, familiar quirkiness to The Big C that keeps you at a remove from it, and too many easy appeals to your emotions.... Still, with Linney at the heart of The Big C, there's reason to think that the series will improve.

Compelling, if not quite riveting.

The plot is difficult to follow - shot sequences, at least in the first two episodes, often pair sex and death (an FX trademark, practically; it’s the network that looks our animal selves in the eye), whether or not their pairing helps the story--but you’re strung along deftly enough so that you do want to know how it’s all going to play out.

McBride is comfortable improvising, and in Eastbound there’s a lot of pleasurable tension in watching Kenny create difficult situations with his poor judgment and get out of them with his escape artist’s quick brain.

There are many of them [good moments] in Parks and Recreation, in fact; virtually every scene in the first two episodes contains good bits, with quotable quotes, twists of language that viewers feel smart for getting, and visual gags. But the minutes don’t flow; they merely accrete, one bit on top of another.

It's a big production-the first episode alone cost nearly twenty million dollars-and it looks authentic in a way that, paradoxically, seems lifeless. You're constantly aware that you're watching a period piece, albeit one with some vivid scenes and interesting details.

Men of a Certain Age is bound to attract attention, because its co-creator, and one of its co-stars, is Ray Romano; what shouldn’t be overlooked, however, is the fact that the show is also good. Surprisingly good.

There is not a single fresh moment in the three episodes that have run so far; it turns out you can be controversial without being the least bit interesting.

If we got to know any of the characters in Generation Kill, the show might be more interesting, or, at least, more memorable.

For a lot of viewers “Big Love” is going to need time to settle in; it doesn’t have much dramatic texture until about the fifth episode.