Day: January 10, 2021

Best-bets for Jan. 12: Top dramas (one surprising, one not)

1) “This Is Us,” 9 p.m., NBC. TV’s best drama series is in top form when using flashbacks to tell a story. Now it has a big one: Randall (Sterling K. Brown, shown here) grew up without knowing his birth parents. He later found his dad (now deceased), who believed that the mom had died shortly after giving birth. Last week brought news that she lived a full life before dying in Louisiana; now he goes there. That’s surrounded by the amiable “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” at 8 p.m. and an OK episode of “Nurses” at 10. Read more…

A once-ordinary medical show healed itself

For TV critics, this can be an annoyance: Shows change.
Good ones go bad. Mork gets goofy, “Miami Vice” gets glitzy, Fonzie jumps the shark.
And occasionally, a bad (or ordinary) one becomes very good. The latest surprise is “The Resident” (shown here in its early days); after steady improvement, its fourth season starts beautifully, at 8 p.m. Tuesday (Jan. 12) on Fox. Read more…