The Survivors is an Australian Netflix limited series adapted by Tony Ayres from Jane Harper's 2020 novel, a moody mystery from the author of The Dry. Set in the fictional Tasmanian coastal town of Evelyn Bay, the six-part drama moves between past and present to unpack how a single catastrophic day continues to shape a small community fifteen years later.
Charlie Vickers stars as Kieran Elliott, who returns home with his young family carrying guilt over a long-ago storm that killed three people, including his brother. When the body of a young woman is discovered on the beach soon after his arrival, old suspicions and buried secrets come roaring back, and the town's fragile peace begins to fracture. Yerin Ha plays Kieran's partner Mia, with Robyn Malcolm and Damien Garvey among the ensemble.
Premiering in June 2025, The Survivors became a major hit for Netflix, reaching the number-two spot on the platform's global chart in its first week and earning a perfect critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes. Atmospheric and grief-soaked, it confirmed Jane Harper's crime fiction as fertile ground for prestige television. It streams on Netflix.
Since its debut night back on September 21, 2010, Tuesday night viewing hasn't been quite the same. Detroit 187 brings a gritty realism to television that shows the heroic and positive side of the city that cars built. The program is a crime drama and with its ensemble cast of great actors, explores various 187's (police code for homicides) that occur with frequent regularity in the writer's minds in the Motor City. We, the viewing audience, ride along and explore the people and reasons why murders happen and why they are part of the culture of every big city. Detective Louis Fitch, played by Michael Imperioli, is rather rough around the edges yet as a ten year veteran of the DPD was first a cop with the NYPD, bringing that tough mentality to the Motor City and almost fitting in. Sergeant Jesse Longford (James McDaniel) is a lifelong resident of Detroit whose father was also a police officer. He's tough yet understanding and about to retire. Aisha Hinds is yet another alumni of NYPD Blue and represents a tough as nails black woman who heads up the DPD homicide unit. The entire cast is superb and with good writing Detroit 187 should be around for a good long while.
Dr. Cal Lightman (Tim Roth) is head of the Lightman Group, a team of deception experts who study faces and body movements to determine who is lying and who isn't when a crime occurs. The show is inspired by a real life psychologist who's discoveries include reading faces, voices, and body "language" and forming conclusions from what is given away by the human psyche. This form of investigation is helpful in finding out the truth when criminal activity involves good liars. Dr. Cal Lightman is played by actor Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction) who is both star and executive producer. His way of finding out the truth is both blunt and to the point; he loves to get in a suspects face and be antagonistic. Side stories involving his personal side and relationship with his young daughter are interesting and often humorous, especially when he applies his work day knowledge toward family relationships. Lie To Me is a top rated show on the Fox Network each Monday evening.
Scheduled as a mid-season replacement for "The Defenders" on CBS, "Chaos" is scheduled to premier on April 1, 2011"”just in time for spring sweepstakes. The producers describe "Chaos" with the oxymoron "comedic drama," which can translate to brilliant satire and much wry laughter, or which can degenerate into serious genre-confusion and disaster. A veteran small-screen cast and an eight o'clock time-slot give hope to producers and CBS programming execs. In "Chaos," a group of CIA renegades combat serious threats to national security under the auspices of "Clandestine Administration and Oversight Services," a hint the writers coined the acronym before filling-in the words. The group includes a young, ingenuous-looking super-sleuth, a psychologist turned spy with a gift for tactics and motivation from severe paranoia. "CAOS" also includes a disgruntled former employee of the British Secret Service, and a seasoned CIA veteran with the capacity to morph into a human weapon. The collection sounds like a sure-fire formula for chaos, and the "Chaos" ensemble has potential to wring big laughs from total incompetence, but they remain vulnerable to looking like the farm team for TNT's "Leverage."
Because "No Ordinary Family" has far more in common with "Swiss Family Robinson" than NBC's Chuck or its flash-in-the-pan "Heroes," it comes as little surprise that this family drama with superpowers comes to life on Disney-property ABC. Culled, of course, from the world of graphic novels, "No Ordinary Family" introduces us to Dad, Mom, and two teenagers beset with the normal collection of post-modern developmental and relational complaints, the youngest boasting the added difficulty of a learning disability. After surviving a light-plane crash in the Amazon, the family returns home to discover their ordeal has invested them with super-powers which seem to compensate precisely for their previous inadequacies. Still in its infancy, "No Ordinary Family" faces an unusual challenge: Can it continue developing the lives and times of a typical Southern California family even as it sets the fearsome foursome in hot pursuit of villains culled from the most frightening pages of graphic novels? If it succeeds, "No Ordinary Family" will have added a twenty-first century dimension to Walt Disney's concept of "the plausible impossible."
The writers at imdb.com go right to the point: When you tune in to "Spartacus: Blood and Sand," you "Watch the story of history's greatest gladiator unfold with graphic violence and explicit sex." What's not to like? Hunky heart-throb John Hannah plays Gannicus, "original champion of the House of Battiatus," who champions his own lusts and appetites at least as proficiently as he swings his sword. Astute observers might characterize Gannicus as the Brett Favre of the Roman Colliseum. If only texting on stone tablets weren't so clumsy, the messages would be the same. And, for legions of feminist fans who have missed Lucy Lawless's distinctive brand of butt-kicking girl power, her return to the small screen as Lucretia represents living proof there is justice in the world. This time, however, Lawless's character derives her slightly larger-than-life sexiness and skill from exquisite powers of observation and well-timed tugs on "the levers of power." If "The Good Wife" had a Roman prototype, Lucretia was she. According to the "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" web site, "Together, they will stop at nothing to deceive the masses, seize power, and bleed Capua dry."
Four twenty-something New York singles search for love and joy in the big city. Kate and Larry meet and fall in love"”much to the chagrin of their friends Connie and Larry, who hate the relationship and one another. Let the "Mad Love" laughs begin. Viewers and analysts should note the double entendre in the title: the "mad" in "Mad Love" signifies both insanity and anger, both of which are catalysts to the show's humor. On paper and in pictures, "Mad Love" appears to have the right talent and chemistry for great sexual tension and sweet romance. Sarah Chalke, Canadian actress who immortalized Dr. Elliot Reid on "Scrubs," brings her bright-blonde brilliance to her role as Kate Swanson. Starring as Ben Parr, Jason Biggs will attempt to prove that he can have a life and career after achieving infamy in the American Pie movie series. Judy Greer contributes her extensive sit-com experience and her fluency in romantic comedy to development of Connie Grabowski's character, and unknown Tyler Labine will do his best to emerge from small-screen obscurity with his portrayal of Larry Munsch.
Television currently suffers a serious adolescent crush on New Jersey, happily showcasing its housewives, manicurists, unemployed party animals, and now its history of slick, sophisticated organized crime. "Boardwalk Empire," adapted from the bestseller with the same name, shows Atlantic City's colorful jazz age history, paying fierce attention to realistic details and historical accuracy. "Boardwalk Empire" takes the Sunday night timeslot usually reserved for "True Blood" while the vampires go on hiatus, and with skilled assistance from Martin Scorsese, it so completely rivets its audience that they cannot remember what they used to watch after "60 Minutes." Like a complicated, sophisticated Victorian novel, "Boardwalk Empire" takes two episodes to set the stage and establish its historical context; but once the bootleggers, gangsters, and corrupt politicians get their machinery greased-up and going, eager audiences stay tuned. The New York Times effectively summarizes, "'Boardwalk Empire' is a well conceived, beautifully made series that has every reason to be great. Who doesn't want to watch rum runners and gangsters on HBO?" Mtv and E! will break-up with Jersey, and they will not "still be just friends" when new seasons roll around; but viewers can look forward to HBO's going steady with "Boardwalk Empire" until the vampires come home.
You could think of "Pretty Little Liars" TV show as "Gossip Girl" goes to the suburbs, except that the vapid world of Park Avenue apartments is, frankly, really boring compared to Rosewood, Pennsylvania. Based on a series of young adult novels by the same name, "Pretty Little Liars" shows the genuinely dramatic, morally-challenged lives of four teen-age girls, a cliquish little group"”Hannah, Aria, Emily, and Spencer. They could be renegades from the American Girls doll collection, except that they are frighteningly rich and more-than-tragically flawed. Hannah, for example, shoplifts, inviting her mother to complain, "I buy you everything you need to be popular," and leaving everyone to assume that's the last word on the subject. Conscience lives somewhere well beyond the city limits, exacting big penalties from those who transgress. As the show opens, Ali, leader and style-setter of the group, disappears a la "Blair Witch." The real action begins, though, three years after Ali's mysterious disappearance, when the "Pretty Little Liars" begin receiving text messages that very strongly suggest someone is watching them"”especially in their most compromising moments. Adding piquancy and spice to the digital displays, the sender signs them cryptically "A."
Sean Walker plans to propose to his girlfriend Leila while they luxuriate on a Caribbean cruise. Instead, Sean suffers severe cruise interruption when Leila mysteriously disappears, and his desperate search for her leads him into a tangled web of inter-terrestrial intrigue. Equally desperate, disoriented, and terrified, Leila is trapped in an undisclosed location. "The Event" TV show fills-in the back-story as the current drama unfolds: As World War II drew to a close, an alien craft crashed in Alaska; government scientists determined the passengers were 99% identical to humans, but that radical 1% difference has the capacity to wreak havoc on the American population, among whom several of the survivors have been hiding and thriving. The CIA, naturally, has kept this information super-top-secret until technology beyond current human capacity foils an assassination attempt on President Elias Martinez. Which of these historic developments officially qualifies as "The Event" TV series remain approximately as uncertain as the reasons why Sean and Leila must forego serious tanning for all of this intrigue.
In 2010, if you are not filming a reality show in New Jersey, then you really are just experimenting in the reality gene. Obviously, New Jersey has special purchase on "real" America: New Jersey housewives owned Bravo, and New Jersey skanks owned Mtv, so E! naturally followed suit with "Jerseylicious" TV show, a marginally real depiction of life in "Gatsby," a strip-mall hair salon. Of course, all of the characters on "Jerseylicious" bear a frightening resemblance to Snooki, but, as the promos are quick to emphasize, "the tans are darker and the teases are higher." On "Jerseylicious", the stylists battle one another for clients and boyfriends"”not in any organized competition, of course, but in that snarky and insidious way that apparently happens as a result of breathing too much Aqua-Net and nail lacquer. The New York Times insightfully notes, "The best-looking person among the workers or the customers is Anthony, the only male member of the staff. There are trumped-up rivalries and domestic tensions galore, none very convincing."
