Inconsistent in tone and bereft of a real handling on its titular characters' trauma, Grace and Frankie still manages to entertain thanks to a refreshing sweetness and good ol' star power.
Showtime's new half-hour dramedy Happyish is a bit off-brand for the network, which usually slots the hero-with-a-dark-secret into a thirty-minute show blueprint. The new show is less Weeds, Nurse Jackie or The Big C and more Californication: a loose character study about a middle-aged guy trying to desperately fight to establish his own existence and find a reason for it. Steve Coogan's Thom Payne has no grand, mysterious backstory or any blatant reason to tip-toe carefully around revealing a second life to his friends and family. He just goes to work, loves his family and occasionally imagines advertising characters talking to him.
Brilliant, bizarre, and occasionally bat-crap bananas, season three will assuredly leave newcomers high-and-dry, but the well-initiated Clone Clubbers can rest assured: this is Orphan Black at its vertiginous best.
Although it's not so awful as to inspire wrath, A.D. The Bible Continues is one of those rare occasions in which I can't articulate a single logical reason why anyone, devout or not, should tune in to watch.
Younger, the new half-hour sitcom premiering this week on TV Land (stay with me, stay with me) comes from Darren Star, creator of some of the biggest women-centric TV series of the past two decades: Melrose Place, Beverly Hills, 90210, and Sex and the City, amongst others. Star's work, dealing nearly across the board with themes of eking out your own persona within a very specific place and time (and, ya know, horrific head scars as plot twists), flows nicely into his new show, Younger.
So hopelessly out-of-touch with modern day LGBT issues - not to mention a level of humorlessness akin to two doses of NyQuil - One Big Happy barely makes it out of its opening scene before marking itself for NBC's big Spring Cleaning gearing up in a few weeks.
More of a pre-teen's idea for what a violent superhero show should be than anything any adult should waste their precious time on, Powers is so earth-shatteringly lame that it makes the final seasons of Heroes look like The Dark Knight.
Confusingly hazy in referencing the events of last season and scratching its head over the future, Bates Motel for the first time since its grand opening feels disappointingly stagnant.
Endlessly quotable, with non-stop gags and a sense of humor that will vivisect you in a New York Minute, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt aims to not only break the rewind button on your remote, but topple your expectations for what a half-hour comedy can achieve.
Like one of its insanity-prone followers, The Following tries to re-stage the same crimes and re-visit the same story beats, in an homage to what's come before.
