SPOILER ALERT: This post reveals developments on last night’s Meerkat Manor–although, if you watch Meerkat Manor, you probably already have a fairly good guess what those developments were. ANIMAL PLANET Last night, lovers of the Animal Planet hit nature show / reality soap opera Meerkat Manor said goodbye to the show’s star, Flower, the matriarch [...]

Photos: Randy Tepper; Claire Folger/Showtime New-fall-season triage has kept me from watching all four episodes of Dexter that Showtime sent. But the first episode finds Michael C. Hall in spellbinding form as the serial-killer-killing-serial-killer, under growing pressure as his secret comes closer to being exposed, and finding that–for some reason–abducting murderers, drugging and ritually killing [...]

According to the new brain trust at NBC, this plus this …equals this: To wit: Variety is reporting that Ben Silverman at NBC has greenlighted a remake of Knight Rider, in the form of a two-hour backdoor pilot to be directed by Doug Liman. But with transformers! Yes, says the trade mag, “The thinking is [...]

I’ll be interviewed on the syndicated Satellite Sisters radio show today at 12:30 p.m. E.T., talking about the new TV season and my top-100 TV list. Where can you listen to it? Um… good question! You can stream the live show online (or download the podcast later) here. (NOTE: Does not actually require a satellite!) [...]

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this, slip some Dr. Scholl’s in your shoes and watch Mad Men. AMC How disgusting is Roger Sterling? And how sad is Roger Sterling? And how scared is Roger Sterling? And how human is Roger Sterling? If, as I said about an earlier episode of Mad Men, the mark of [...]

Cliff Lipson/CBS I wrote a bit the other day about the various trends of the new season–rich peeople, superpowers, nerds, etc.–but there’s an unusual little meta-trend that crosses a few of these genres: Nostalgia for Shows You Didn’t Realize Anyone Was Nostalgic For. A few shows this season are echoes of cult shows from the [...]

NBC Photo: Mitch Haddad With the exception of Big Shots–reviews welcome from those of you who failed to heed my warning–last night was heavier on returning-series debuts: Earl, Betty, The Office, CSI, Grey’s. The floor is open for your postmortems. Also, reports welcome from anyone who can determine if ER is still on the air. [...]

NBC Photo: Trae Patton Have I ever done a post on My Name Is Earl? I don’t think so. And I think I know why. I raved about Earl when it first came out. And I kept watching it, if not every week. It stayed as good as it was in the beginning. Pretty much [...]

I did an interview yesterday with Brian Lehrer, who hosts an excellent daily talk show at public radio station WNYC. Those of you outside The Capital of the Universe, as well as New Yorkers who were for some reason not glued to the radio at 10:40 a.m., can find the streaming audio here. I’m just [...]

Cavemen is evolving (or devolving), out of sight of critics. Gale Adler / ABC We’re introducing a new feature here at Tuned In, High Quality Show Alert!, which seeks to inform you about upcoming TV series that are apparently so awesome, so incredibly good, that the networks are refusing to screen them in advance for [...]

Michael Vartan was on Alias. Joshua Malina was on Sports Night and The West Wing. Dylan McDermott starred in The Practice; and Christopher Titus, in his underrated self-titled Fox sitcom. You could easily see these men leaving those shows and saying, “Well, that’s it. I’ll never do a series this good again.” In ABC’s Big [...]

NBC Photo: Alan Zenuk It’s Thursday morning weigh-in time, with four count them four new network premieres to evaluate. Should Addison have stayed in Seattle? Should Starbuck have stayed in space? Who won the quirk-off between the eccentric rich folks on Dirty Sexy Money and the eccentric detective on Life? Also interested in any second [...]

NBC Photo: Justin Lubin In today’s reviews, we’re taking on the big trends of fall 2007 one by one. Shows about people with superpowers: check. Shows about rich people: check. (Shows about nerds: already did that.) And now we come to NBC’s Life and the last, and most disturbing, trend of the fall: Shows with [...]

My chief complaint about Dirty Sexy Money is that no one took my suggestion and changed that stupid title. However long it stays on the air, I will continue to think of this show as crazysexycool. (Abbreviating it DSM does me no good; my mind translates it as DMSR.) I may just have to get [...]

NBC Photo: Alan Zenuk Judging by the accumulated comments over the summer, Bionic Woman looks like the most anticipated show among the Tuned In community. A Battlestar Galactica producer taking another ’70s staple and putting a darker, modern, BSG-style spin on it? ’70s transistors upgraded to nanobots? How could it not rock? All I can [...]