Paul Brownfield

If the most overly praised TV dramas hit you over the head with their stiff coherence, Huff goes the other way, sketching in a world that is suggestively there but not quite, and swinging at big "Angels in America"-type themes more often than nailing them.

Clearly, he cares about firefighters and knows them, knows the cadence of their speech, what matters to them. But Rescue Me feels like a misguided gesture of goodwill -- one that serves Leary's vanity in addition to his heart.

It's all kind of pleasingly thematic, alternately gritty and funny and caked with moral decay. Milch loves the wordplay; the show's language is one of its constant sources of pleasure. Not everyone's drunk in "Deadwood," but the liquor flows freely, lubricating the mood; the way the show is lighted, it always seems like late afternoon, and the set is a dingy, muddy Main Street with little side neighborhoods that function as slums. [6 Mar 2005, p.E28]

"Carnivale" is beautiful to look at, but it drags. ... To watch "Carnivale" is to feel you have purchased a moody Tom Waits concept album, where he's banging on trash can lids and mumbling about Satan into a megaphone. [7 Jan 2005]

Highly watchable. ... The show, an obvious riff on "Desperate Housewives" and "Laguna Beach: The Real OC," is less glossily executed than those but also, for all this, trashier and more believably grotesque. [21 Mar 2006]

As comedy it's hit-and-miss; what sells the show are the in-between things, the nonsense sibling spats between Dennis and Dee, the way Charlie's voice rises as his anxiety level does, the loose play of the banter. But if giving DeVito a prominent role will up the attendance, it doesn't immediately up the comedy. [28 Jun 2006]

A small-scale gem. [3 Aug 2005]

The result is another finely acted cable drama with great production values and the germ of an interesting idea behind it but no coherent tone or character development or story, even -- just a series of attempts to pass off creatively exaggerated behavior, the more desperate the better, as some kind of social commentary.

"Project Runway" treats the contestants, the majority of whom are either from New York or Los Angeles and in their 20s, with an air of contempt and condescension. [30 Nov 2004]

It's "Desperate Housewives" all over again -- the whodunit overlaid by a titillating comedy of shame-based suburban manners and shame-based depravity, the word "bitch" used scandalously. [24 Sep 2006]

The devices are in place, and there's intelligent writing, but here the approach feels a bit tired, like a better version of those commercials set in offices, where the drabness of corporate life is mocked to sell some shiny new gadget, or to make you feel superior to it all. [23 Mar 2005, p.E1]

This kind of straight, no-chaser approach to patient care is what makes House a satisfying riff on any number of doctors I've seen on TV and know I will never have taking care of me. [16 Nov 2004, p.E1]

It's promising material, even if you rarely get to experience it without the sudden intrusion of a Counting Crows-like dirge or the strange sensation that Sarah Jessica Parker is wondering, in voice-over, whether she has what it takes to be a brain surgeon. [25 March 2005, p.E29]

It knows the buttons it wants to push (fear of flying, fear of abandonment, fear of the unknown) and pushes them, repeatedly, like a kid playing a video game.

The problem with "Modern Men" is that the scenes between the guys and the life coach don't play.

[It] instantly displays a commitment to slapstick in direct proportion to a state of comedic denial.

"Free Ride" is a bit more than passably good, but like "Arrested [Development]" it feels hard to love.

We're to believe ABC took a look at all this and said, yes, yes and yes.

Stale.

Here it feels as if Sorkin has chosen an outdated media milieu for his secular humanist dramaturgy. His first TV series, "Sports Night," was ahead of the times, but "Studio 60" is behind them.

"Love, Inc." is as unintentionally unfunny as "Room and Bored" -- the sitcom within a sitcom on HBO's "The Comeback" -- was meant to be bad.

What can I tell you about "Four Kings" that you won't already know? It premieres tonight at 8:30 on NBC. By 8:46, or thereabouts, you will understand everything.

Their team of comedy actors has some spunk and talent, but the show more closely resembles a commercial for mystery dinner theater, complete with testimonials by real audience members about how fun it all was in the end.

It isn't a bad gimmick, establishing a certain tension, but the premise is about the only thing that recommends "The Evidence," a show that otherwise seems to be moving you -- rather than moving -- through its procedural paces.

It feels as if you've happened across a British sitcom or a rerun of "MADtv."

Hewitt is quite good, or as good as the show allows; there are some potholes along the way, as the script sacrifices sense to sentiment.

In the run-up to the show it all sounded a bit hard to get your head around, but in the flesh the show zinged, at least this first week.

It's very well-acted and meanwhile, when it can stand it, kind of tender, although it's far more interested in "Curb"-like moments of uncomfortable confrontation.