What Do Critics Want?: notes on American Rust, The Offer and The Time Traveler’s Wife

HBO canceled The Time Traveler’s Wife last week. There goes another show I quite enjoyed. But hell, I’m used to it; at 63, I practically expect networks to discard the series I’m most fond of. What I don’t expect is that those same series will be so thoroughly trashed by critics.

The 10 Best "Everybody Loves Raymond" Episodes

Picking your favorite Raymond episodes ultimately comes down to “which Everybody Loves Raymond do you like best?” Don’t get me wrong: unlike a lot of long-running series, Everybody Loves Raymond has no dramatic shifts in focus or approach. No new showrunner comes in at the halfway mark hellbent on “righting the ship”; there are no late-stage casting shake-ups designed to goose the ratings. The core characters in the pilot — sportswriter Ray Barone and his wife Debra, plus his parents Frank and Marie and brother Robert, who live across the street (thaaat’s right) — are the core characters in the finale. (Monica Horan, a recurring presence for seven seasons, is elevated to series principal near the end, but that stems from story-line, as her character marries into the family.) Showrunner Phil Rosenthal and writers Tucker Cawley, Steve Skrovan and Lew Schneider are there at the start and there at the end. Kathy Ann Stumpe pens her first script early in Season 1 and sticks around for five years; Aaron Shure and Tom Caltabiano come aboard a few seasons in and never leave. Stability in every department — nine years of it — is paramount to Raymond’s success.

And yet…

Men in the Middle: notes on The Tourist, This Is Going to Hurt, The Responder and Around the World in 80 Days

Four dramas that got 2022 off to a strong start: dramas that owe their success not merely to the talents of their leading men, but to the onscreen personas that they’ve cultivated.

A Perfect Little Death: The Best of 2021 (part 2)

The countdown continues: my top two dozen shows of 2021, a very good year for television. For #24-#11, click here. Here are my top 10.

But first, my annual disclaimer.

A Little Priest: The Best of 2021

My write-up of 2021, following 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Given the challenges of filming during a pandemic, it’s amazing how much good TV aired in 2021. Last year, as COVID battered the industry, it was easy to limit my “best of” list to 10, with a handful of runners up. In 2021, I counted two dozen series I wanted to praise — even the “flawed but fascinating” ones. So get ready: counting down my top 24 shows of 2021, starting here with #24-#11, and saving the top 10 for next week.

Grantchester series 6

That I adored the first three series of Grantchester should come as a surprise to no one; my affection for the “James Norton years” is plastered all over this site. Shortly after the first series aired in late 2014, I hailed it as the year’s top show, labeling it “an original: part murder mystery, part character drama — but in proportions I've never seen before, equally (and exquisitely) balanced. Each episode a mere 45 minutes, each one offering up a new case as it pushes the ongoing story-lines forward — but the continuing plots never feel slight, and the detective work never feels slighted.” And although I found the supporting cast uniformly strong, I reserved my highest praise for top-billed James Norton, an actor at that time unknown to me: “He's [Sidney Chambers,] a vicar in 1953 England, still mired in memories of the war: tortured and self-loathing, looking to others to deliver him from the darkness. Yet he's also the ideal father confessor: open-faced, reassuring, nonjudgmental — except when it comes to himself, and then he's unforgiving. ‘I'm supposed to be setting an example,’ he bemoans in one episode, when his fondness for whiskey and weakness for woman have led him to another indiscretion — and yet his empathy for others, and his sincere belief in the lessons he preaches, make him refreshingly human, and genuinely heroic.”

Rough Edges: notes on Back to Life and The Other Two

After 18 years in prison, Miranda “Miri” Matteson has moved back in with her parents in Hythe, Kent. She was sent away for the accidental death of her friend Lara, and she’s done her time, but she’s been branded a murderer, and although she keeps insisting “it wasn’t like that” — and indeed, it wasn’t like that — that’s the term that stuck. That’s why she awakens to find “psycho bitch” painted on her parents’ fence. That’s why a box of feces is delivered to her home, and a brick sails through the window of her first place of employment.

Doctor Who series 8

Is there any Doctor Who season as polarizing as Series 8? Is there another that not only divides fans, but wittingly pits them against each other? You rarely hear a moderate opinion about Series 8 — folks either love it or hate it. And for many who love it — as I myself do — it’s one of the greatest seasons, and it’s distressing that others can’t see it. And so you feel a need to defend it against its detractors. Very little about Doctor Who inspires that level of protectiveness; until the Chibnall era brought out the crazies, Doctor Who fandom — recognizing that divergent opinions were inevitable with a show that’s been running for some 40+ years — had pretty much adopted a “live and let live” attitude. I can’t stand most of Series 3, but if someone tells me it’s their favorite season, I’m fine with that. And conversely, I think Series 5 is sublime, but if someone tells me they don’t care for it, it rolls off my back. But come after Series 8 and, well, it’s war.

The 10 Best "WKRP in Cincinnati" Episodes

WKRP in Cincinnati is both an enormously engaging and an undeniably frustrating series. Even during its initial run, it was an easy show to love, but a challenging one to stay friends with. Something always seemed to get in the way of it being as consistently funny as it should’ve been. The characters were fresh; the actors were splendid. And the writing had so much potential — potential that too often was squandered. From the start, there were tensions between creator Hugh Wilson, who wanted to do a sophisticated ensemble comedy, and the network, CBS, who wanted more kid-friendly programming. There was an influx of new writers in Season 2, a few of whom were more suited to sketch comedy than the sitcom format. And Wilson himself suffered burnout in Season 3 that led to a string of strangely downbeat “special episodes,” because — in his exhausted state — he found it easier to write drama than comedy. It wasn’t really until the show's fourth and final season that the quality managed to stabilize, and because Wilson was more hands off that season — turning over headwriting chores to PJ Torokvei, who, from the evidence, was not as skilled at polishing scripts — those episodes often felt scrappier than the best ones that preceded them.

And yet.

Doctor Who: "The Savages"

The last of three lost Doctor Who serials that don’t get nearly enough praise or attention. To check out the first, “The Abominable Snowmen,” click here; to check out "The Smugglers," click here.

Let’s not just make the case for “The Savages” as a supremely satisfying, highly underrated, sadly overlooked “lost” Doctor Who story. Given that this series of blog entries is about making the case for lost serials, that would be dull and predictable — and besides, does anyone really need another of those essays? Instead, let’s make the case for “The Savages” as the best First Doctor story that’s not a historical.