This series is back with a new episode after its hiatus, and its previous-episode reveal of exactly who killed whom. So now that that mystery is solved, will we continue to see flashbacks to the murder? My guess: Yes. But it’s only a guess… and, for ABC, how to get away with more of a successful gimmick.

2015

Jan

PARENTHOOD By David Bianculli

SERIES FINALE: One of the best surprises of this excellent show’s final seasons has been the ever-evolving, always impressive dramatic acting by Ray Romano as Hank. In last week’s episode, Sarah (Lauren Graham) accepted Hank’s marriage proposal, then asked that the wedding take place within a week so that her ailing father (Craig T. Nelson) could walk her down the aisle. Tonight, as the final episode of one of television’s all-time best family dramas, that wedding takes p

2015

Jan

FORTITUDE By David Bianculli

SERIES PREMIERE: The playbook, by now, is a familiar one. A new or unnoticed cable network or streaming service tries to get attention by presenting an ambitious new series, with star power and an unusual setting or premise. The latest network to try that trick is Pivot, with tonight’s premiere of a 12-part mystery series called Fortitude, set in the Arctic and starring Stanley Tucci. If you‘re saying to yourself, what and where is Pivot? – well, that’s the whole point. A

2015

Jan

BREAKING GREENVILLE By David Bianculli

SERIES PREMIERE: This is a warning, not a recommendation. Here we go again. In 2007, the Fox network persuaded a CBS affiliate in Tyler, TX to hire a new anchor for the local news, while Fox’s camera crews filmed the hire and subsequent events for a new reality series called Anchorwoman. The gimmick was that the new anchor, Lauren Jones, was a former beauty queen and World Wrestling diva with no journalistic experience. The good news, quite literally, was that Anchorwoman was cancelled alm

2015

Jan

THEY BLINDED US WITH SCIENCE By Linda Donovan

As the New England Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick tried to illustrate, all this kerfuffle over underinflated footballs can be explained through simple science: the weather made them do it...

2015

Jan

SNL REWIND: 2015-1975 By David Bianculli

Last year, the little-viewed, seldom-visited FXX network got millions of viewers to sample it for the first time by scheduling an enticing – in fact, a positively brilliant – programming gimmick. It presented every episode of The Simpsons in a massive mega-marathon that covered 25 years of TV history and included many hundreds of animated half-hour shows. What could be bigger? Potentially, this: Beginning tonight at 7 p.m. ET, VH1 Classic – another cable network sorely in need

2015

Jan

THE MENTALIST By David Bianculli

Tonight’s guest star is Dylan Baker, who’s played such a great, creepy villain on multiple episodes of The Good Wife that you almost know that his bad-guy character in tonight’s Mentalist will be a guy you’ll love to hate.

2015

Jan

EMPIRE By David Bianculli

This show has built a strong following, and decent reputation, in its first three weeks on the air – and tonight, it not only ups the dramatic ante another notch in the recording studio, but also makes room for a noteworthy guest star: supermodel Naomi Campbell. But don’t expect even Campbell to upstage Taraji P. Henson as Cookie (pictured) – because that’s not the way this Cookie crumbles.

2015

Jan

THE AMERICANS By David Bianculli

SEASON PREMIERE: When this series began, Russia was viewed as much more of an international “friend” than what has happened since, as Vladimir Putin began encroaching on neighboring countries and the Cold War began to freeze again. Today’s headlines have a way of informing and deepening this Reagan-era drama series about sleeper Soviet agents in the United States – and so do yesterday’s headlines, because the story line of The Americans, this season, brings us to 19

2015

Jan

MAN SEEKING WOMAN By David Bianculli

This is the third episode of this impressively surreal sitcom series, in which Jay Baruchel continues to see the world of dating from his unique, sometimes upsetting, usually hilarious perspective. And tonight, he and a friend go out on the town – which means, no doubt, some situations, and metaphorical images, you’ll unlikely to see anywhere else on television tonight. Among them: A laugh-out loud sequence that gives new meaning to the phrase “talk to the hand” – a

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