Rick Porter

There's enough detail in the setting and characterization to keep it distinct from the mothership, but also more than enough of the template (down to the freeze-frame tic at the open and close of each act) to make it go down like a comforting plate of crawfish etouffee.

Silicon Valley has its share of pause-the-DVR laugh lines, but it's not as relentlessly funny as, say, Judge's "Office Space." It does, however, get better as it goes along.

The disconnect between what Mind Games wants to be and the show bubbling just under the surface makes it a bit of a puzzling viewing experience.

The new season returns to the show's more familiar structure. But the character beats that played out last season--and in previous seasons, for that matter -- linger. The result is that the Harlan, Ky., and environs of Justified feels like a very familiar, lived-in place--in the best possible sense.

Lowe's job of selling Alice's yearning for Wonderland is all the more remarkable for the fact that her world-spanning love with Cyrus comes off a little bit limp in the premiere.

Merchant uses his gangly physicality (at 6-foot-7, he towers over everyone else on the show) to good effect in scenes when Stuart is on the make. Despite that, though, and despite the fact that Merchant is willing to make himself the butt of the joke, Hello Ladies doesn't quite pull off the trick of making Stuart someone you want to spend week after week seeing.

You might feel bad for the wine, and maybe for the hour you could have spent doing other things. You probably won't feel bad for Sara or Jack.

It's hardly the worst show of the fall, but it never really lands.

The show is likely to score big ratings for its premiere, and early evidence indicates there's enough to keep people coming back.

It's the kind of sitcom writing that gives sitcoms a bad name.

The four guys at the center of the show, in addition to actually being friends before the cameras came around, are portrayed as caring, involved dads, albeit with a few sitcommy quirks.... But thinking the dads on Modern Dads are somehow unique is really not capturing the whole picture.

Broadchurch doesn't come with many stylistic flourishes--it's a pretty straightforward crime story. But the care given to its characters and the damage the crime inflicts on the town make it one of the best scripted series of the summer.

After about 10 minutes of "Jersey Shore," I needed to pick my slack jaw up off the coffee table, so stunning was the display of mookitude.

Lifetime chose to tell a by-the-numbers tale of passion gone wrong rather than the potentially compelling (if lurid) courtroom story that played out on news channels for weeks earlier this year.

It's anchored by several great performances, and it's among the more distinctive and gorgeously filmed shows on the air right now.... What did turn me off a bit in the first couple episodes of Hannibal was the victims were all young women.

Just know going in that you'll be far better served by acknowledging the towering silliness of the plot, because it's just about impossible to take it seriously.

Through its first three episodes, The Carrie Diaries works quite well as a coming-of-age story, thanks in no small part to Robb's winning performance and a pretty solid cast of young actors around her.

The cast is good enough and the premise strong enough to carry it. Right now, though, Deception is a show that doesn't know what it is.

The show has one of the most thrilling pilots of recent years, but there are a few growing pains in the subsequent two episodes as the show sorts out the weight it gives stories involving the sub's crew, the locals on the tropical island they commandeer and the people back home who have connections to the sub.

Where the show stumbles a little is in the case itself.

A cool premise can only take a show so far, and there's some work to do on the character front to make the show worthy of using all available technology not to miss.

The show feels like it should be better.

Now that finished episodes are out there, we can tell you that it's not great.

The new Dallas isn't a game-changer, but it's a solidly built, easy-to-take soap that does right by its predecessor.

Veep is a show, though, that finds great comedy in the space between that idealism and the reality they face every day.

There's enough in the premise and the performances (particularly those of Garcia and Neill) to keep us watching, but to really hook us in Alcatraz needs to decide what kind of show it wants to be.

Lucas is actually quite good as Mitch, as is Molly Parker as his wife, Abby. The issue lies more with the mechanics of the plot.

When you add to that a string of obvious, unfunny cross-dressing jokes and a set of female characters that are barely even one-dimensional, the premise pretty much collapses entirely.