S.T. Karnick

**Spoilers ahead** Monday night’s episode of the ABC crime series “Castle,” the second of its fourth season, signified a return to the show’s winning, quirky formula after the near-stumble of its season premiere. I’ve praised “Castle” in the past, and

I suppose that I am somewhat unusual in never having liked the lead characters of the crime drama Law and Order: Criminal Intent, nor thought the performances of lead performers Vincent D’Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe particularly appealing or praiseworthy. D’Onofrio,

A friend and colleague has informed me that there appears to be a groundswell of outrage among conservatives regarding last night’s episode of the ABC TV mystery series Castle. The complaint is that the episode is anti-Christian, pro-Muslim, politically correct

After a long hiatus, ABC’s sci-fi drama series V returns to the network’s regular lineup tonight at 8 EST. It’s a show well worth watching. Based rather loosely on a 1980s limited-run series from NBC, the new show tells the

Both NBC and Jerry Bruckheimer Productions have hit some hard times in recent years. Bruckheimer’s signature programs–notably the CSI franchise–are past their prime, and recent series such as The Forgotten and The Whole Truth have failed to generate the hoped-for

The first thing the viewer will notice about the new CBS series Blue Bloods (Fridays, 10 EDT) is its impressive cast: Tom Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, and Len Cariou lead a very talented group of performers. But what makes

If you’re interested in watching The Whole Truth, the new ABC legal drama (Wednesdays, 10 p.m. EDT), you might want to tune in tonight. It may not last long. The show is on life-support after debuting to an anemic total

As the fourth-rated broadcast TV network, NBC has made plenty of mistakes during the past few years, under now-ousted CEO Jeff Zucker. These failures actually arose from NBC’s longtime corporate culture and mission, which have been in place since the

Sure, the new CBS sitcom $#*! My Dad Says is based on a very thin gimmick: a snarky but funny and very popular Twitter feed by Justin Halpern. And sure, William Shatner plays a parody of his recent TV persona,

As ABC attempts to solidify its popular block of Wednesday sitcoms, the new show Better with You premiered last night, nestled comfortably between returning ratings successes The Middle and Modern Family. Thematically, Better with You makes sense as a transition

Although CBS’-TVs new cop show Hawaii Five-0 is a reboot of a highly popular 1970s CBS series that entered the poplar lexicon (with police departments across the nation being popularly referred to as Five-O), there’s nothing old-fashioned about the current

NBC’s The Event has probably been one of the most widely anticipated new series of the current season. The network ran countless promotional spots intended to entice viewers to wonder precisely what the title occurrence might be, and what it

The FOX-TV comedy-drama series The Good Guys continues in reruns tonight at 9 EDT. It’s well worth it to catch an episode or two–and you might find yourself tuning in regularly or even downloading a few episodes (at a very

USA Network has established itself as the master of smartly entertaining TV drama, not just on cable but on all of TV. Starting with Monk at the beginning of the decade and steadily adding a solid lineup of hit shows

I have long argued that contemporary U.S. entertainment offers a much greater variety of ideas and points of view than conservatives usually seem to realize, pointing out that many TV shows, movies, and music releases convey very sound values and

Law and Order: Criminal Intent, the long-running spinoff of the recently canceled TV crime drama mainstay Law and Order, has on fairly regular occasions manifested the overt progressivist and anti-Christian bias of its forebear This week’s episode is one of

Fox’s FX channel has a history of pushing the boundaries of “free cable” programming, with shows such as Nip/Tuck, The Shield, Rescue Me, Dirt, Damages, Sons of Anarchy, The League, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But although “edgy” material

Producers of popular culture tend to evince the belief that the public strongly desires titillation, vulgarity, obscenity, violence, sexual references, and depictions, and other such lurid matter. It is true, of course, that a little spice makes for a tastier

As the recent passing of Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves reminds us, the mid-’60s were surely the heyday of adventure fiction on television. In addition to MI, there were numerous other TV series devoted to action and adventure in the

In addition to its well-publicized, disastrous experiment with moving Jay Leno to primetime, NBC has done some good things this year. Perhaps the best of these is the new sitcom Community. The concept is simple but rich in characters and

Although it’s ambiguous about much, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island makes two things extremely clear: Leonardo DiCaprio is a seriously big movie star, and delivering on genre expectations excuses a multitude of sins as far as audiences are concerned. The Scorsese-directed

If you want to identify the most controversial person in television, forget about Glenn Beck and Keith Olberman. The answer is obvious: Jay Leno. The once and now returning host of NBC’s Tonight Show has incited hostility and outright hatred

The Fox Network’s venerable action-drama series 24, now in its eighth year, has always had to perform a very difficult balancing act: trying to surprise viewers who expect to be surprised, while somehow staying sufficiently connected with reality to sustain

NBC CEO Jeff Zucker In a move that bodes well to strengthen TV programming overall in both primetime and late night, NBC has confirmed that Jay Leno will be moved back to his original 11:30 slot and his 10 p.m.

Press reports and even jokes on last night’s Jay Leno Show point to the likelihood that NBC’s experiment with moving Leno from late night to prime time is over, and that the instigator of the changes, Conan O’Brien, will have

In the classic manner of series television, the USA Network’s latest new dramedy, White Collar (Fridays at 10 EST), smartly combines elements common to numerous other contemporary TV crime dramas, especially other USA Network shows, in a way calculated to

Monk has been one of the best fiction series on U.S. television during the current decade, and tonight’s concluding episode (9 p.m. EST, USA Network) promises to tie up the few remaining vagrant plot strands. The show’s producers have done

Edward Woodward, star of the iconic 1980s U.S. TV series The Equalizer and acclaimed films such as The Wicker Man and Breaker Morant, has died at the age of 79 after a long illness. Woodward was best known for portraying

Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture-animation version of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol had a fairly blah opening weekend at the North American box office, finishing first with an unexpectedly miserly total of $31 million in ticket sales. Industry insiders had

Government broadcaster PBS is running a new, five-part series on a subject naturally interesting in our time: American Experience: The 1930s. Episodes are available for online viewing here. The program is just what one would expect from PBS: earnest, well-researched,

After several years of mostly miserably failed attempts to ride the wave of crime dramas most of the other TV networks were successfully navigating, ABC has turned to the TV and cinematic crime drama maestro Jerry Bruckheimer for help. The

The new ABC sitcom Hank is rather short on big laughs, but it’s well-stocked with good ideas and sound values. The big question is, will ABC give it a chance? Hank is the first of two family-oriented comedies ABC is

The smart new sitcom The Middle presents a positive but realistic view of Middle America’s pursuit of the American Dream. Set in the fictional small town of Orson, Indiana, The Middle (8:30 EDT) follows Hank in ABC’s new Wednesday night