The TV Series:

The second season of Showtime's acclaimed comedy series Episodes has arrived on DVD - packaged with the first season, which came out on disc a scant seven months ago. Although one has good reason to quibble with Showtime's marketing practices (and, pray tell, where's the blu-ray?), this double-disc set serve as a good, concise helping of one of the funnier Hollywood-On-Hollywood sendups currently playing.

Episodes' m.o. comes in exposing Tinsel Town's long history of taking British television programs, tweaking them a little, and then putting them on American television. There was All in the Family, which origi...Read the entire review

House of Lies isa dark-comedy (so to speak) about a management consultant and his teamofexperts who work to "consult" with big businesses and corporations in awaythat is all about revenue and the financial stream and little aboutwhat isright. The expert consultant? Marty Kaan (Don Cheadle). His crew ofcons...Read the entire review

Homeland isthe latest series to become ahome-run success for Showtime television. The series was created and isbeingproduced by some of the writer's responsible for bringing to life Fox'smassivehit series 24 as longtime series writers. With more than fourmillion viewerstuning in every week during its first ...Read the entire review

The Series
You've all heard of "The Seinfeld Curse", the plague that struck all cast members of the iconic series and prohibited them from finding success after the show ended in 1998. With the likes of Veep and Old Christine, the gang has Julia Louis-Dreyfus to thank for breaking the curse (hey, I actually liked Watching Ellie!), but it's Prognosis: Negative for the fellas. Jerry isn't even trying (and really, why should he?), while Jason Alexander has languished in forgettable blink-or-you-missed 'em sitcoms like Bob Patterson and Listen Up! As for Michael Richards...um, yeeeeeah...Read the entire review

As I discuss in my reviews of Nurse Jackie's first and second seasons, the Showtime series starring Edie Falco (The Sopranos) in the Emmy-winning title role* just gets better and better. I didn't care for the show initially; the first few episodes of season one struck me as overly-familiar variations on Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital (and later the NBC series St. Elsewhere), black comedy take on a hopelessly broken health care system, albeit done on a much smaller, more intimate, 30-minute show scale.

And yet while Nurse Jackie sports a similar mélange of deliriously eccentric characters, at its core it is a portrait of a working mother with two little girls just barely holding everything together: her marriage; he...Read the entire review

The Show:

I came into The Borgias knowing very little about the show, other than its star Jeremy Irons (Kingdom of Heaven) had been receiving praise for his work on the show, having been recently nominated for a Golden Globe. And not seeing shows of a similar era like The Tudors, I was not entirely sure what to expect of The Borgias, but with acclaimed director Neil Jordan (The Tudors) helping to drive the show, how bad could it be?

The show is set in 1492, and Irons plays Rodrigo Borgia, a Spaniard who eventually became Pope Alexander VI. The first episode shows Rodrigo's power plays and back room deals that he made to assume the role. O...Read the entire review

Shameless (2011-present), the title of Showtime's fine "dramedy" adapted from a same-named British series, suggests something that it's not. The title implies the poor (it's "not blue collar - it's no collar," says co-creator John Wells), dysfunctional Gallagher family has something to be ashamed about. Further, the box art (look to your right) suggests One Wild Party, also misleading. It's not Rosanne meets Dirty Rotten Scoundrels or anything like that because except for its patriarch the Gallagher brood has nothing at all to feel ashamed about. Perhaps a better title would be No Shame or Unashamed?

I've not seen the long-running (since 2004 and still going strong) British version, created by Paul Abbott, but the Americanized Shameless is very good so far, with strong characters, a unique and admirably explicit and frank approach to sex, and i...Read the entire review

Once upon a time the Showtime series Californication was a burst of dark, sexy, adult brilliance, exploring the disintegrating life of perpetually erect author Hank Moody (David Duchovny). The first couple of seasons tip-toed into uncomfortable marital discord and trampled on societal mores, as Hank boned his way through Los Angeles - sometimes legally, sometimes not - filling some bottomless emotional void, while his annoyingly forgiving wife Karen (Natascha McElhone) and moody post-post-post-post-punk daughter Becca (Madeleine Martin) served as the other two-thirds of the cockeyed Moody household. Seasons one and two were the stuff of genuine cable greatness, augmented by Hank's agent/best friend Charlie Runkle (Evan Handler) and his spitfire wife Marcy (Pamela Adlon), she of the gloriously foul mouth. Season three, on the other hand, was a harbinger of the future and existed simply to give g...Read the entire review

Review:

"The Real L World" is a reality show version of the fictional "Showtime" series, "The L Word". Rather than following a set of fictional lesbians as they work, play and go through highs and lows, "The Real L Word" follows 6 very different lesbians throughout their daily lives in Los Angeles. The series is produced by Magical Elves productions, who are behind "Project Runway" and "Top Chef", and while the first season had the crisp style of the location filming of both of those shows, the second season has much more of an MTV appearance, looking like "The Hills" and using a couple of "Jersey Shore"-ish visual gimmicks - the grainy freeze frames introing the characters. The nearly wall-to-wall (irritatingly so at times) music also sounds almost exactly like what one might hear on any MTV reality show.

I certainly didn't know what to expect when viewing the series, which could ...Read the entire review

There is something wonderful, evocative, and more than a little nostalgic in seeing Albert Maysles train his documentary camera--shooting in 16mm black and white, no less--on one James Paul McCartney. Maysles and his brother David were the lensmen of What's Happening!: The Beatles in the U.S.A. (aka The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit), accompanying the lads from Liverpool on their first whirlwind invasion of New York. The McCartney that Maysles meets here is now an elder statesman of rock, and the occasion is a more solemn one--the assemblage of "The Concert for New York City," the all-star show McCartney helped put together a month after 9/11.

The resulting documentary, The Love We Make (co-directed by Maysles and Bradley Kaplan), ran on Showtime for the...Read the entire review

A sleek late-night comedy/drama from Showtime, "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" has been a success for the network, standing out as a success, both critically and commercially. The series may be racy in its content, but it does certainly at least give a fine try at trying to delve deeper into the spiritual and emotional side of the characters.

The series is based upon the book, "The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl", which was apparently based upon the real-life stories of one "Belle de Jour". The series focuses on Hannah Baxter (Billie Piper), a seemingly average woman in London who spends her nights as a high-end call girl. The show focuses on her attempts to balance an unusual professional life with her personal life, and both the laughs and sadness that results.

The fourth and final season of "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" managed to pull together an entertaining and memorabl...Read the entire review

REVIEW
When Showtime made the announcement not to renew United States of Tara for a fourth season I'll admit I was more than a wee bit disappointed. I really loved this series, and I was even more bothered that the announcement came in May 2011, with a month still left for season three to end its run in June, and the thought of potential cliffhangers and unfulfilled storylines seemed imminent. Thankfully season three - represented here by a two-disc set of all 12 episodes - found a way to tie off as many bows as possible, leaving fans with a woefully premature swan song, but an ultimately satisfying one nonetheless.

The show, created by polarizing firebrand Diablo Cody, follows the fractured life of Tara Gregson (Toni Collette), a woman festooned with a large number of multiple personalities. She's married to a lovingly understanding husband Max (John Corbett) and they have two ...Read the entire review

Dexter opens the bathroom door to find Rita's lifeless body...what's left of his wife is soaking in a bathtub filled to the brim with her watered-down blood, while their infant son looks on, bawling in a pool of crimson

[click on the thumbnail to enlarge]

on t...Read the entire review

REVIEW
As the longest running series on Showtime, this two-disc final season set of the Emmy-winning Penn & Teller: Bullshit! does exactly what we've come to expect. A potentially hot-button subject is highlighted and analyzed during each half-hour episode, and though there is a definite slant to the narrative there is an attempt to show two (or more) sides to the issue, balanced by the distinctive Penn & Teller brand of humor and outrage. As an added plus there is plenty of nudity, certainly there to remind us this was broadcast on pay cable.

Not bad for a couple of magicians, eh? All of this quasi-investigative journalism is really a bully pulpit for Penn Jillette (he's really the mouthpiece here) to deliver some wonderful, expletive-filled rants, whether it be about teen sex, vaccinations or a greasy hamburger.

The format of the series remains intact, with Penn &...Read the entire review

The Show:

In a small town in Kansas, Tara Gregson (Toni Collette, Little Miss Sunshine) lives in bits and pieces. Having a dissociative identity disorder will do that to you. When one of her several alternate personalities aren't in control of her body, she's mother of two: snarky, fast-talking Kate (Brie Larson, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and the sexually undetermined Marshall (Keir Gilchrist, It's Kind of a Funny Story). And although Tara's sister Charmaine (Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married) is not rockin' the multiple personalities, she is, nevertheless, often afflicted with an advanced case of self-centeredness. With how crazy Tara's life i...Read the entire review

Currentfilm.com Review:

"The Real L World" is a reality show version of the fictional "Showtime" series, "The L Word". Rather than following a set of fictional lesbians as they work, play and go through highs and lows, "The Real L Word" follows 6 very different lesbians throughout their daily lives in Los Angeles. The series is produced by Magical Elves productions, who are behind "Project Runway" and "Top Chef", and the series often has the technical feel of the "in-between"/behind-the-scenes segments on both of those shows (I swear, I think some of the generic music from those two shows returns here - if not, it's awfully similar at times.)

I certainly didn't know what to expect when viewing the series, which could certainly have been a train wreck like one of any number of "VH1" reality shows (not that those shows aren't fun on occasion), but the result certainly is different in...Read the entire review

THE SHOW:

Cynical novelist, questionable parent and master of addiction Hank Moody returns in Californication: The Third Season and continues to wreck his life splendidly on the way to rock bottom. While the Showtime series suffered from a weak sophomore season, it gets back on track in season three as Hank is finally faced with the consequences of his actions.

Hank (David Duchovny) has custody of daughter Becca (Madeleine Martin) while her mother and Hank's longtime girlfriend Karen (Natascha McElhone) is in New York. On a break from writing, he takes a job as a college professor and quickly yields to temptation. Among Hank's conquests are his teacher's aide Jill (Diane Farr), student/st...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
If you thought gun nuts were nuts, here's proof

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Documentaries
Likes: Hidden camera series
Dislikes: Josh T. Ryan, hunting for fun
Hates: Guns

The Show
I love a good documentary, and love a good documentary series even more, as the extended time spent with a subject lets you get to know them even more and see them in a larger variety of situations. While it's rare for these series, like Showtime's Family Business or HBO's Cathouse to not offer up a heavily edited few of the subjects, or to be anything resembling reality, they do get you up close and personal with interesting people, far closer than you'd otherwise likely be able to get. These inside l...Read the entire review

The Season: