While The Flag ponders the whereabouts of Shirley and Spiro’s flag, it raises other, broader, variously resonant questions too, questions concerning how symbols and icons become significant, as well as how stories are told and myths are disseminated.

The networks have been wondering how to compete with the no-holds barred nature of cable programming. This is it.

The show doesn’t only deliver fast-paced action and fine performances, but also, increasingly, poses questions concerning responsibility.

Nurse Jackie offers both gripping drama and outrageous comedy.

Not only does Show Me a Hero deal with the same type of intricate institutional power struggles of city government--this time in 1987 in Yonkers, NY, where a battle over the desegregation of low-income housing is waged with newly elected mayor Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac) caught in the crossfire--but it does it with the kind of nuanced, ensemble-driven, character-based stories that made The Wire one of the most acclaimed television series of all time.

At the same time [Eros Hoagland is taking pictures], his process is also the subject of a picture--shaped in part by the remarkable work of photographer and cinematographer Jared Moossy, who shoots all four episodes of Witness--a picture that shows both context and effect, the sort of broad view that might emerge from the most specific images.

Perhaps the most disturbing possibility--the subtext that makes Breaking Bad both enthralling and often unbearable to watch--is that Walter is becoming who he always was. He hasn’t changed. He’s been purified.

Herzog listens and interjects his own helpfully perverse insights.

Simon's Treme is an equally astute portrait of "an urban people" still struggling to come back from a brink.

Treme sketches and interweaves stories and desires, hopes and disenchantments.

A fast moving mix of physical comedy and wry dialogue articulate this friendship, revealing its complexity and its depth.

The brilliance is precisely a function of its incongruity.

Again, Breaking Bad promises to be quite a ride.

Densely plotted and epic in scope, full of graphic violence and lots of sex, it's tremendously entertaining.

On Freddie Roach [is] Peter Berg's extraordinary six-part HBO series.

As preposterous as this sounds, Being Human benefits from being reasonably self-aware as well as intelligent in the questions it asks.

Its layered and nuanced analysis of male identity makes Men of a Certain Age worth watching.

So far, the Disney experiment is working, if not always perfectly. Agent Carter‘s tone seems right and its lead seems perfect, helping the live-action wing of the Marvel franchise to evolve as it spreads across time into our current entertainment and its future.

What is abundantly clear by this brutal, swift, and exquisitely yucky scene is True Blood is back, doing what it likes to do best, that is, dumping you into yet another crisis with precious little context or buildup.

In many ways, it was where the series ought to have begun.

Quarles and Limehouse can't replace Mags, but they add new dimensions to Raylan's ongoing dilemma, that is, how to be a lawman when the law seems anachronistic.

It's an exhilarating take on a couple of familiar genres, balancing horror, humor, and heart.

Amid this seeming disorder, Jason Isaacs breathes a wry life into Britten, as a man who slowly feels himself accessing levels of consciousness and perception he never imagined, even as his psychiatrists label them "illness" and his work partners question their relevance.

Even as all of these seeming oppositions are set up, the show insists on the blurring of lines, the bridges as well as the borders.

So far, its mix of spirituality and science, familial and global struggles, is galvanizing.

The jokes fly furiously during the first episode, and the delivery is impeccable all around.

Paul’s sessions this time around are sometimes soapy--as they were last year--but they are always mesmerizing.

The show, adapted from Robert Kirkman's comic book series, quickly moves past its familiar premise. It's about what happens after the apocalypse, in the struggle to remain human after society's collapse.