Virginia Heffernan

This Salem's Lot is a significant improvement on the undistinguished 1979 mini-series starring David Soul, and it ought to please the many fans of Mr. King's 1975 novel.

The series is an excellent reminder that what makes Mr. King’s visions so fascinating is not their uniqueness or their artistry, but exactly how much they’re like ordinary nightmares. Which are plenty scary. And good for him for writing them down.

It may seem ludicrous to say that a movie running more than six hours is well edited, but The Staircase, by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, is. And not only is the editing prize-worthy, but the whole film is also so brilliantly conceived, reported, filmed and paced that you may come to wish it were twice as long.

In fact, whether racism is a fact of life or the ne plus ultra of social transgression, how did television writers forget how little comic potential it offered in the first place?

If, while keeping its dialogue suggestive and surprising, Karen Sisco dramatizes the eccentricity, and the drinking problem, of its central character, rather than merely her sexiness or her skills, this show could thrive. But is Ms. Gugino up for it? With such a small cast -- only three characters are fixed at this point -- much will depend on Ms. Gugino's performance, on her drunken mistakes and on her cellular soliloquies.

[An] enjoyable and not insincere reworking of the much-reworked legend by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Tonight's two-hour season opener is tedious. The interiors -- an Antarctica set and the Atlantis set -- are heavy on Art Deco game-show décor, and the shadowless tableaus make even the live-action sequences look computer-generated.

It's unlikely that Rescue Me, which continues to cast a serious spell, will turn into a womany show. When "we're Irish" fails to serve as a pretext for bad or capricious behavior on this show, the second-best explanation is still "we're men."

This show, so far, cannot match 'Dancing With the Stars'; it's dour, lead-footed, mean, downbeat. [22 Jul 2005]

A very likable and melancholy drama about high school basketball and patrimony.