Winter TV Roundup, Week 8

The Winter Olympics are over, which means it gets much more complicated to decide what to watch. That's in part because TV is back and bigger than ever. And I mean that. There were FIVE new series that premiered on Monday night, in addition to the return of "iZombie" on the CW and "UnReal" on Lifetime. So, yeah, there's a lot of TV now, and it's just getting started. In these weekly posts I review the pilot and second episode of new scripted series this winter. Don't see a new show listed below? Check previous weeks.

Monday Nights:
Living Biblically, Mondays at 9:30 p.m. on CBS (Premiered February 26)
About: I can't be objective about this show because I've been waiting for its premier for months. Not because of the upfronts, in fact I vaguely remembered it would be a mid-season replacement sitcom. It's because I was part of a focus group for the show in Las Vegas at TV City in October. During the focus group, we watched an episode a bit into the series, and though I was incredibly skeptical, it turned out to be completely surprising. I enjoyed the cast (particularly David Krumholtz as a Rabbi and Ian Gomez as a Catholic Priest), but more than that I thought it was honest and somewhat compelling in its theology, not something I expected of a sitcom from CBS. The show finally premiered last night, and I finally got to see the pilot. And, well, it's not that incredible. But I'm going to urge patience here because I like the idea and I know for a fact it gets better. The pilot and early episodes for comedies can often be a struggle as they try to find their way forward. And this is a complex set up, featuring sequences in a workplace, at home, and at a bar with his religious guides. I still like the characters played by Krumholtz and Gomez the best, even in the pilot, and there were some rough edges in getting the pilot set up. But I think there is promise here and I'm hoping people give it a chance, especially since there has been a dearth of quality new sitcoms the past few years.
Pilot Grade: C

McMafia, Mondays at 10 p.m. on AMC (Premiered February 26)
About: This latest series for AMC is a co-production with the BBC and centers on Alex Godman (James Norton), a British educated son of a Russian exile who runs a hedge fund and tries to live the straight and narrow. His family, particularly his uncle Boris (David Dencik), are not on the straight and narrow. When his business is in trouble, his uncle convinces him to meet with an old friend, Semiyon Kleiman (David Straithairn), who proposes something illegal. Soon, Alex finds himself drawn in deep, especially after his uncle's shady dealings get him killed and make the family, including Alex's girlfriend Rebecca (Juliet Rylance), a target. The first episode establishes the world, characters and stakes. And it's obvious subsequent episodes will bring the mystery deeper. (Since AMC aired "The Godfather" prior to the premier last night, it wasn't hard to tell where Alex's journey was going.) There's a decent cast here, and I like Norton in the lead role, but the pilot episode was incredibly dry and, at times, confusing. Maybe it gets better, but maybe it stays somewhat similar. AMC is really hoping for another hit, something on the network to connect with an audience that isn't dominated by zombies. I'm just not sure this is it.
Pilot Grade: C

Shoot the Messenger, Mondays at 10 p.m. on WGN (Premiered February 26)
About: WGN, once upon a time, made some quality original programming. But it moved out of the original program origination business and has instead started pairing with foreign co-productions. That worked decently well with "Bellevue," the detective drama starring Anna Paquin that premiered earlier this winter. Its next Canadian import is "Shoot the Messenger," which premiered on Monday. The series, which originally aired in 2016, stars Elyse Levesque as a journalist who sees a source murdered right in front of her, leading to an investigation. The series lasted just eight episodes in its original run, and didn't get a second season. It's being billed as a limited series here, and for obvious reasons. The first episode is uneven and not all that compelling. I wasn't taken with either the mystery or the performances, and I could easily see this one falling flat. But it does provide inexpensive original programming for WGN, so that might fulfill their ultimate goal. This one feels like a miss creatively.
Pilot Grade: C-

Good Girls, Mondays at 10 p.m. on NBC (Premiered February 26)
About: This is the latest drama from NBC, and one that got quite a boost from the nearly endless commercials that played during the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics the last few weeks. And being situated behind "The Voice," it was easy to predict that this show would do decently well in the ratings, at least for its premier. It helps that it boasts a decent cast led by Mae Whitman, Retta and Christina Hendricks, who play a trio of moms with various money problems that decide the solution to all their various difficulties is to rob a grocery store. Beth (Hendricks) needs money to bail out her family after her philandering husband, Dean (Matthew Lillard), has an affair and makes a series of bad financial decisions. Ruby (Retta) has a sick kid and no way to afford the costly medication. While Annie (Whitman) is in a custody battle with her ex (Zach Gilford), who has far more money and means. In the pilot, the ladies hatch a plan to solve their problems but, unexpectedly, the store they chose to hit (the one where Annie is employed) turns out to have a shady backer all its own, which draws them in deeper. The show wants to be a mixture of comedy and drama. The comedy works better here, but the drama comes in some unexpectedly dark forms, and it feels like a jarring juxtaposition. The pilot was OK, and I like the main actresses enough to be curious to see where it goes in episode two, but I wasn't in love with the story, characters, or structure of the pilot. The show got a big push from NBC, and got a prime landing spot on the schedule, but as "The Brave" proved in the fall, you need more than that to be a hit.
Pilot Grade: C

Final Space, Mondays at 10:30 p.m. on TBS (Premiered February 26)
About: Hailing from producer Conan O'Brien, and stars Olan Rogers, who created the animated series about Gary (Rogers), who is in prison in space. His only companions are a robot designed to help keep him from going crazy and the ship's AI. That's about all I gleaned from the pilot, which aired last night right before a new episode of Conan's talk show. For those who love wacky animated series, this might be your jam. I thought the jokes were fairly tame, and the story was fairly dull. It remains to be seen if that improves in subsequent episodes.
Pilot Grade: C-

Streaming Series:
Seven Seconds, Now Streaming on Netflix (Premiered February 23)
About: This latest series from Veena Sud ("The Killing") centers on a New York cop who hits an African-American boy on a bike, and the fellow officers who help cover it up. That launches a mystery, drawing in another detective (Michael Mosley) and a prosecutor (Clare-Hope Ashitey), who don't buy the story being sold to them by the veteran narcotics detective (David Lyons) who is trying to lead the cover up. The other part of the story centers on the victims' parents (Russel Hornsby and Regina King) and their struggle with grief. The pilot is a bit of a dark slog, and while the action picks up a bit in the second episode, this is still a slow burn. As someone who watched "The Killing," I also can't help but wonder if it will have a successful playoff, even if you continue it. Sud drew a lot of fire for some of the creative decisions made in that series, which started stronger but ultimately faded. "Seven Seconds" feels more like the kind of thing that would have worked better as a film (which it was in the original form before this adaptation). There's a good cast here, and a somewhat interesting premise, but the first two episodes left me feeling like a shoulder shrug. Given all the other options, it's hard to see why this would be something worth investing in.
Pilot Grade: C
Second Episode: C

The Frankenstein Chronicles, Now Streaming on Netflix (Premiered February 20)
About: This is a foreign series imported by Netflix. The show, set in the late 1800s, features Sean Bean as detective John Marlott, who is assigned a sensitive and disturbing case that leads him down an interesting road toward someone who may or may not be trying to bring the plot of "Frankenstein" to live by experimenting on corpses. Sounds like a lot of fun, huh? And, of course, there's always waiting to see if Bean's character survives (he has a habit of playing characters that get killed). This slowly paced British series dropped its first two seasons (12 episodes in all) last week. Foreign series have been big draws for Netflix over the last year or so, and they've pulled in a number of them. I thought the casting and idea here seemed interesting, but the first two episodes were a little weird and dull. Still, it's a quick binge watch if you want to burn through the two seasons, each six episodes a piece.
Pilot Grade: C
Second Episode: C