All's Fair is a glossy Hulu legal drama from the prolific Ryan Murphy, the creator behind American Horror Story, Glee, and Feud, built around an all-female divorce law firm in New York City. Co-created by Murphy with Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken, the series is a splashy, soap-operatic ensemble piece and one of the most heavily marketed television launches of the year, anchored by a cast of Hollywood heavyweights.
Kim Kardashian stars as Allura Grant, a powerhouse divorce attorney who breaks away from a male-dominated firm to launch her own practice alongside a team of formidable women. Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts, and Teyana Taylor play her partners, with Sarah Paulson as a fierce rival and Glenn Close among the ensemble, as the firm takes on high-net-worth clients, explosive settlements, and the personal betrayals that blur the line between business and vengeance. The show trades in designer wardrobes, palatial interiors, and the melodramatic power struggles that are Murphy's signature.
The series became a genuine cultural talking point on arrival: it drew scathing reviews from critics, who made it one of the most negatively reviewed shows of the year, even as it pulled enormous viewership numbers for Hulu and quickly earned a second-season renewal. Marking Kim Kardashian's first major scripted leading role, All's Fair is streaming on Hulu.
One of two intense medical dramas NBC introduced in the fall of 2009, "Mercy" had all the advantages its one-named rival "Trauma" did not. First, it had talent behind the scenes. Liz Heldens from "Friday Night Lights" created the show and led the writers, proving once again that the best way to dramatize the real world is to show it realistically"”ugliness and all. Second, it had attitude and guts to stay true to its revolutionary premise, the well-informed notion "that nurses remain [not only] more generous caregivers, but that they are more intuitively apt, smarter, more committed and as technically able as their [physician] superiors, with none of the accompanying arrogance." In a winner-take-all ER smackdown, you always would go all-in with the Mercy Hospital nurses. The main character, nurse Veronica Flanagan Callahan, has just returned from a tour in Iraq, where she clearly learned more in each day than the pompous, presumptuous doctors learned in all five years of medical school. Of course, Veronica gets neither the respect nor the reward she deserves, but "Mercy" dangles the possibility of true love as just recompense for Veronica's skill and compassion. Taylor Schilling plays Veronica with exactly the right balance of toughness and vulnerability, skillfully juxtaposing her consummate skill as a nurse with her intrepid ingenuousness in matters of the heart. If only "Mercy" had survived into a second season, all the tangled threads in the story might have come to their proper denouement. If only.
"Mad Men TV show" delivers its drama in the same slick and glossy packaging the Madison Avenue ad-men serve-up to their clients, making it just as stylized, trendy, and gotta-have-it cool as anything as a two-page spread for Chryslers and Chesterfields in the centerfold Life. Central character Don Draper, a pitch-man with a secret and sordid past, ruthlessly and relentlessly courts clients and seduces women, attempting to feed his insatiable ego. In other words, he personifies the archetype of the ad-man. Draper races full speed to stay one step ahead of changing times, cut-throat competitors, and revelation of his secrets: Born the son of a prostitute who died in childbirth, he stole a Korean war buddy's identity to put on a patina of respectability. Propriety and respectability figure prominently in the drama, which accurately represents steamy seductions and corner-office conniving hiding behind the Norman Rockwell wholesomeness of 1960s family values. Brilliantly written, beautifully photographed, and consummately well acted, "Mad Men TV show" has collected a boatload of awards, including three Golden Globes and back-to-back Emmys.
Call it one of television's most credible attempts at realistic fiction: Ryan Murphy, "Nip/Tuck's" producer, insists the medical conditions and procedures on which the episodes center "are 100% based on fact." Ironically, though, "Nip/Tuck's" representation of the surgeon's private lives may impress ordinary viewers as the program's most faithful representation of real life people and events. "Nip/Tuck" centers on Sean McNamara and Christian Troy, successful plastic surgeons, originally practicing their science and art in Miami, but conveniently relocated to Los Angeles at the end of "Nip/Tuck's" fourth season. Dr. McNamara, "the nice one," struggles to keep his family together as they weather trials and tribulations that come as the complications of success. Dr. Troy, "the naughty one," loves money and sex, and sometimes commits serious scalpel screw-ups. Never shy about taking-on controversial subjects, "Nip/Tuck" won critical acclaim, Golden Globe and Emmy awards for its treatment of domestic violence, promiscuity, recreational drug use, and the risk of addiction to cosmetic surgery. On March 3, 2010, "Nip/Tuck's" one hundredth episode, last in the series, became the most-watched scripted program in the history of the FX network.
America cannot get enough "True Blood." Derived from Charlaine Harris's series of novels, The Southern Vampire Mysteries, and produced by the same characters and company who brought you're the macabre comedy hit "Six Feet Under," this rough, raw, foul-mouthed, sexed-up and blood-sucking series has become America's summertime Sunday night guilty pleasure supreme. Meet the "True Blood" TV show! Set in fictional but aptly named Bon Temps, Louisiana, "True Blood" TV series makes vampire life look a great deal like a serious but not thoroughly detestable drug addiction. Once bitten, new recruits discover all kinds of voracious appetites,of which blood-thirst in fact may be the least. Although a host of undead characters work their insidious plots and attempt world conquest just for fun, the plot centers on Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), not a vampire but showing beguiling signs of being a fairy, who falls in love with Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), definitely a vampire but reluctant about it. To the writers' and producers' credit, the series shows minimal gore and serves-up maximal suspense and irony. "True Blood" has collected an armload of awards, including Golden Globes and Emmys.
Using state-of-the-art technology and amazing skill with make-up and costuming, Chance, the main character, becomes literally a human target. In each episode of "Human Target," Chance assumes the identity and everyday life of a prominent person in danger. Describing himself as an "extreme bodyguard," Chance uses his wits, skills, and wise-cracking bravado to turn serious danger into a trap for the villains. The sinister evil-doers plot kidnapping, blackmail, extortion, and especially death; the "human target" plots capture. Not the kind of thing for which an ordinary guy usually would volunteer. "Human Target" TV show was praised by the critics and audiences for the quality of the acting"”especially the performances by Earl Haley, Jr., which make a somewhat implausible premise absolutely believable and compelling. Because "Human Target," a decidedly out-of-the-box crime drama, is loosely based on the DC comic series of the same name, the creators have no shortage of bad guys, nor do they struggle to find quirky characters for Chance to impersonate. Critics and audiences agree that the actors playing the three main characters go a long way toward redeeming the show's average, sometimes genuinely awkward writing. They wonder, though, will the actors be able to hold the viewers' attention and loyalty long enough for the writing to fulfill the promise in the premise?
"Burn Notice" is the drama-comedy TV show featured on USA channel. The title of "Burn Notice" TV show is derived from the term used in U.S. intelligence that indicates unreliability of a certain agent or source of information. "Burn Notice" has its own unique style: the story told by the first person mixed with the "stream of consciousness" behind the scenes on behalf of the former agent Michael Westen, played by Jeffrey Donovan. Having escaped from the mission in Nigeria, ripped by the sudden "Burn Notice", he finds himself in his hometown of Miami, Florida. Next to him, Michael discovers his ex-girlfriend. He is under constant surveillance by the feds, and his personal bank accounts frozen by the government. The only thing he could learn from his chief liaison to the government - some major "boss" wants to keep him (possibly for life) in Miami. If he tries to leave all the police forces of the country his feet will be raised to take him. Westen begins working as a private detective without a license; as a spy-to-hire for those who can pay his bills to finance his own investigation "“ who and why issued the "Burn Notice" against him.
Admittedly indebted to Jack Kerouac and the cinematic stylings of Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones series, "Supernatural TV show" wobbled as it took its first tentative steps into the paranormal, but it has grown stronger and smarter with age and experience. Fans of "The Gilmore Girls" immediately will recognize Jared Padalecki who plays Sam, a Stanford undergrad who wants nothing more than to escape his family's ghost-busting business and go to law school. Of course, that's not gonna happen. Instead, Sam gets stuck riding shotgun on a road trip with his profligate brother Dean, played well by Jensen Ackless recently of "Smallville fame. As the boys travel from San Francisco to LA, normally a boring ten-hour trip, they encounter ghoulish and ghostly creatures brought to life from American folklore and legends. Describing steady improvement in the show's writing and acting, one critic said it went from being "a pretty good show to being a pretty great show." Just before the show launched its fifth season, Rolling Stone was more effusive in its praise as it numbered "Supernatural" among its "Fifty Best Reasons to Watch TV".
