Image Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon

House of Cards finds Kevin Spacey being waspish, supercilious, and meanly clever — in other words, just the way we like him, and the way he’s been most effective in movies such as Swimming with Sharks, L.A. Confidential, The Usual Suspects, and (in a glorious early-career TV role) as Mel Profitt in Wiseguy. In House of Cards, he’s House Majority Whip Frank Underwood, passed over for Secretary of State and out for payback. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Skip Bolen/TNT

Dallas came back with back-to-back season premiere episodes that confirmed that this reconfiguration of Dallas Classic is potent stuff — especially for as long as the late Larry Hagman remains on-screen as J.R. Ewing. And Hagman is at his best here when he’s paired with his evil spawn, Josh Henderson’s increasingly skillful, Great Gatsby-reading rat-face-boy, John Ross. Together, they’re the king and prince of nighttime-soap dirtiness. A FEW SPOILERS AHEAD. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Michael Lavine/Fox

Because it is the first new series to premiere containing substantial gore since the killings in Newtown, CT, The Following has taken an unfair amount of criticism for depictions of violence on television. As always with pop culture, drawing direct lines to entertainment that “glorifies” or even inspires violence is a vexed proposition. The Following is certainly no more violent than, say, American Horror Story: Asylum, which is wrapping up what’s turned out to be a very artful season this week, or Criminal Minds, which has long been drearily cynical.

Creator-producer-writer Kevin Williamson played horror for giggles in Scream, but the horrors of a mass murderer get a grim, humorless treatment in The Following. It’s a series that makes the most of the gaunt face of star Kevin Bacon. Bacon, whose previous TV acting consisted mostly of pre-stardom soap opera roles, was ripe for a television series: In his early 50s, he’s got the trim, wiry body of someone at least a decade younger. He’s become the Iggy Pop of soulful acting. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Syfy

Continuum is a crisp, crackerjack series that premiered on Monday night on the Syfy channel. It’s a hit in Canada, where the Vancouver-filmed and -set series has already aired its first season, and it deserves a substantial audience in America. READ FULL STORY »