Recently in TV Reviews Category

Ah, leaks! What would a journalist be without them? Well, each year it seems that more and more of the new season TV pilots get leaked on to the 'net and while I deplore piracy, I do believe that leaking TV shows on to the 'Net may only serve to drive viewers to a show. What do I mean by that? Well, if enough intrepid bloggers watch a show a month or two in advance of its airing and then write about how cool it is, it starts buzz and thereby drives eyeballs to the airing of the premiere. Whatever you may believe, the number of people who can actually navigate Bittorrent and download a show is still relatively small, so most people are not downloading the pilots. Many people are still without DVRs, even. And before you cry "Snakes on a plane!" let me point out to you that the studio behind that bomb misread all the buzz flying around the web. They bought into the "any publicity is good publicity" canard and thought that all of the blogs "dedicated" to the film meant that B.O. would be high. Guess again. We were laughing at the film, not with it and word is, you had to actually be high to like the film.

I have managed to get copies of a few of the upcoming season's pilots and will endeavor to let you know how cool or, well, not cool they are. As I've said, I suspect that these particular pilots have been officially unofficially released in order to create buzz, but if that's the case, I am more than happy to indulge. I mean, what might have happened to Threshold, Invasion, Surface, Eyes and dozens of other quality shows, if they'd only been "leaked" to the blogosphere? Maybe nothing different, but maybe, just maybe they'd have earned a few extra tenths of a rating point on their debut and carried some more viewers over and survived. The truth is, most of these particular shows are getting very high positives in advance of their airings.

At any rate, watch this space for some (always spoiler-free) thoughts on NBC's Bionic Woman and Chuck (anyone remember Jake 2.0?), ABC's Pushing Daisies, FOX's The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which apparently doesn't start until Spring '08), the CW's Reaper and Showtime's Californication and the new season of Weeds.

I've been meaning to post something on the 2006 fall TV season for quite some time, but the NYFF and other things kind of got in my way. As a result, we're 4-5 weeks in on some shows and I have yet to inform you all of their brilliance. Well, thank god for iTunes and the other download services (not to mention Bittorrent...Shhhhhh!). That way you can catch up on the episodes you've missed.

First on the list is Heroes, an intriguing, intelligent and utterly gripping series created by Tim Kring (Crossing Jordan). Set in New York; Las Vegas; Odessa, Texas, Los Angeles and Tokyo, Heroes is exactly what a super hero drama should be, in order to make it on TV. Interesting and attractive characters, each with their own back story and family life, excellent actors, no silly comic book jargon, and just enough supernatural occurrences to make it different. Oh...and no silly super hero suits.

The new Doctor Who series (new here, last year in the UK) is absolutely brilliant. For those of you who are fans of the old series, the new one deftly mixes more high tech effects without being too slick with the irreverent humor that fans of the old series will love. Christopher Eccleston plays The Doctor in the 2005 series that's airing starting tonight on the Sci Fi Channel and Billie Piper plays his companion, Rose. For all you old school Dr. Who fans, don't worry, the Tardis (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) is still here, The Doctor is still gleefully irreverent, sometimes infuriatingly so (to Rose, upon entering the Tardis under pursuit: "Don't worry, the assembled hoards of Genghis Kahn couldn't get through that door...and believe me, they've tried. Now shut up a minute.") and there are still hops through time and strange new life forms to meet.