Richard Zoglin

Crime Story is the most realistic TV cop show in years, yet the emotions reach almost baroque heights.

Twin Peaks ... is like nothing you've seen in prime time -- or on God's earth. It may be the most hauntingly original work ever done for American TV.

Newhart is running with the easy, confident stride of a TV series at the peak of its form.

Breaking television's "fourth wall" to talk to the camera is hardly a new idea; it dates back at least to Burns and Allen in the early '50s. But no TV show has ever provided such piquant Pirandellian commentary on the medium itself.

The season's best new series. ... One can smirk at the show's blatant appeal to the yuppie audience and at some of the cliched relationshipspeak ("It's too hurtful"). But Creators Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz invest what is potentially banal with conviction and wit.

Not since Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily? has anyone had so much fun with bad movies.

Stiller is capable of turning out a dead-on TV or movie parody, like his takeoff on Cape Fear, with a grownup Eddie Munster as the De Niro-esque psycho. But he rarely settles for the frisson of a good impersonation; his sketches usually give the satiric knife an extra twist or two.

A few minutes into this futuristic fantasy, and viewers numbed by TV's docudrama deluge will realize they've stumbled onto something special. A few more minutes, and a lot of them might be zapping off to Married . . . with Children. But those who fall for Wild Palms could fall hard: what we have here may be TV's next cult hit. Or at the very least, the most spellbinding mini-series to come along since Twin Peaks.

A crackling good TV show, probably Bochco's best since Hill Street Blues. Better than Hill Street in some ways: sleeker, more focused, less distracted by those often annoying comic interludes.

It's probably the most realistic fictional treatment of the medical profession TV has ever presented. The pace is furious, the narrative jagged and unsettling.