Newark Star-Ledger

All in all, Salem's Lot is a serious, elegant piece of work that provides plenty of shocks and creep- out moments without lingering over brutality and gore - which makes it feel less like a contemporary horror picture than a lost treasure from the 1940s or '50s, when filmmakers had to find imaginative ways to suggest what they weren't allowed to show. It's a feast of horror you can sink your teeth into. [19 June 2004, p.9]

To find a network drama that bears sustained comparison to ABC's Kingdom Hospital, you'd have to go all the way back to 1990, when the same network premiered David Lynch's "Twin Peaks." Alternately random and brilliant, the 15-hour, limited-run series "Kingdom Hospital" has a similarly indescribable vibe. Set in a huge Maine hospital, it plays like a cross of "M*A*S*H," "Six Feet Under" and "The Shining." King, his talented ensemble cast and his capable director, Craig R. Baxley, have created one of the creepiest locales in TV history. But they don't limit themselves to mere spookiness. They go wherever they please, and their brazen confidence demands that we follow along. [3 March 2004, p.39]

This is the most uncompromising and stylistically innovative approach to TV drama since "NYPD Blue" maybe since "Hill Street Blues" 20 years ago. [30 March 2000, p.57]

Son of the Beach is everything you'd expect from a TV comedy executive produced by Howard Stern - and more. It's unbelievably vulgar - and one of the best bits of dopey humor television has featured since "Police Squad!" [13 March 2000, p.15]

Odd as The Beat may seem on first glance, it's of a piece with the rest of Fontana's work, which aims to shake up TV storytelling by any means necessary. [21 March 2000, p.37]

The biggest rap against Hollywood dramatizations is that they treat history as a series of white-hot personality conflicts when it's really about slowly building waves of collective action. "From the Earth to the Moon" is a rare exception. There are recurring characters and motifs, but none that appear in every episode, and the writers have resisted inventing an audience surrogate to guide us through the maze. [5 Apr 1998]

American Gods is a bit too packed with these intriguing jaunts, and the narrative sometimes feels like it will run out of gas long before reaching its destination. (The first 8-episode season reportedly covers only the first third of the fantasy epic.) But that doesn't mean you won't enjoy the ride.

Atwood's spare narrative is haunting in the horrors it only hints at. The Hulu adaptation is 10 episodes (and judging from the gripping first three, hopefully there will be many more). The narrative is more fully fleshed out, and obviously more visceral, but it still leaves a lot to the imagination.

This is supposed to be a cat-and-mouse game, but it's more like a kitten with a ball of yarn.

The TV series is a rote procedural that dulls the film's premise further by making it an ensemble piece (the monomaniacal nature of Neeson's Mills is the point of "Taken") and has a lead actor, Clive Standen of History's "Vikings," most notable for not being Neeson.