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Episode 2 of The Madison is a little weaker than the pilot, if you ask me. Not by a big stretch, granted, but there has to be a trade-off to less Kurt Russell, even though he keeps showing up in flashbacks, and here it’s a little forward momentum.

It’s very hard to consider The Madison as a spin-off of Yellowstone, which is sort of what it has been advertised as. Part of a tie-in triple-threat also comprising Marshals and The Dutton Ranch, Taylor Sheridan’s deeply contemplative neo-Western Montanaverse is certainly expanding, but if Episode 1 of this show is anything to go by, it’s also diversifying.

Okay, we’re definitely doing the Mickey and Boone thing. Sheriff Country has been beating about the bush in that regard for weeks, but now that...

There’s always a bit of an eerie quality to real-life parades and celebrations being targeted, so Boston Blue is treading quite a thin line in...

Much ado has been made about Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, a reception that I’ve discussed briefly before. More so than ever, the finale solidifies my...

It’s probably best to think of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 9 as the first half of a two-part finale, since “300th Night” certainly has that feel about it. School’s out. The Academy freshmen are due to graduate, and they plan to travel to Betazed with the rest of the fleet to see in the official designation of the planet as the Federation’s new capital. What could possibly go wrong?

So, what exactly is going on here? I’m used to Watson being rubbish, and I assumed that Season 2’s mid-season premiere being above-average was a...

There’s no point in a Yellowstone spin-off that doesn’t feel pretty intimately connected to Yellowstone, and if the premiere of Marshals had a downside, it...

I always feel bad comparing Sheriff Country to Boston Blue directly, since it doesn’t seem like a fair comparison, but they’re both procedurals airing on the same channel on the same day, and one is significantly better than the other in a way that is strikingly obvious whenever they try to adopt a similar cadence.

It didn’t take a genius to work out that Boston Blue wrapping up its most compelling overarching subplot was going to leave it a little adrift. Episode 11, “Family Secrets,” falls into a procedural holding pattern reminiscent of some of the early-season outings that felt too aimless to take much notice of.

I’ve long held a personal theory that DMV is much better when it isn’t focusing on Colette, and Episode 11, “Power Shift”, makes me feel...

Watson has always had a fairly detectable medical-mystery pattern, so it was perfectly fair to imagine that Season 2’s mid-season premiere would really embrace that...

John Dutton died, and then Yellowstone itself died shortly after him, but that doesn’t mean that Taylor Sheridan was ever going to leave the neo-Western...

Sheriff Country is making a big claim for itself in Episode 10. The midseason premiere, “Crucible, Part 2”, picks up five minutes after the midseason finale, and manages to not only immediately resituate us in that tense siege situation but also keep the suspense up unrelentingly for the entire episode.

And we’re back. After a several-month hiatus, Boston Blue returns in Episode 10 not just to conclude the cliffhanger left by the midseason finale, but also to tie up one of Season 1’s big overarching plots – the murder of Judge Ben Silver.

Evidently not finished with cameos from the broader franchise, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy provides another one in Episode 8, “The Life of the Stars”. But...

I’m always surprised when the latest episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy turns out to be an hour long. I’m not sure why, since they’re...

DMV has been off the air for a long while, and Episode 10 feels less like a triumphant return than a reminder that this show...