The promotional push has begun for the third season of Mr. Robot, USA’s techno-drama starring Rami Malek and Christian Slater. After the season-two finale, a disillusioned Elliot (Malek) will nonetheless have to contend with a new alliance, as well as whatever Bobby Cannavale will get up to in his guest-star capacity.…

According to Variety, TBS has renewed the Rashida Jones-starring absurdist police comedy Angie Tribeca for a fourth season, with Bobby Cannavale joining the cast for the new episodes. The story doesn’t say if Cannavale will be a series regular, but it sounds like he’ll at least be around for a while. We also don’t…

Who he is: Officer James “Jim” Paxton

Variety reports that USA has set a return date for its Emmy-winning Mr. Robot, assuring fans that their favorite online psychodrama will be back in October. The network also announced a few new hacks to the show’s cast; B.D. Wong, who plays enigmatic trans hacker Whiterose, has been bumped up to a series regular,…

With more scripted television programs in production than ever before, it follows that there are now a wider range of opportunities for television actors. Looking back at the performances that caught The A.V. Club’s eyes in 2016 confirms that hypothesis: While some of our favorite character actors found new facets of…

Sounds like HBO no longer digs Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger’s groovy tunes—the pay-cable network has just lifted the needle on their fledgling drama Vinyl. HBO issued a statement about the cancellation, which comes just months after the network gave the series a renewal.

First, the good news: It looks like Vinyl’s correcting some of its missteps. Richie’s clean and sober (for now), and the first-season finale stays concerned with transitioning American Century into its new incarnation, Alibi Records. The recently axed Terence Winter, who wrote the episode, also gets to plant the seeds…

When Zak beats the shit out of Richie in an elevator at the end of ”Rock And Roll Queen,” he may as well be a stand-in for the audience. For almost an entire season, we’ve watched Richie lie, cheat, steal, and kill in a way that, in TV Land, hasn’t made him a unique asshole as much as just a plain old asshole. Is…

At the risk of simplifying the series’ strengths, I’m going to call it: Tonight’s episode of Vinyl works because it focuses on making music—the writing of it, the distribution of it, the marketing of it, all of it. Almost every conflict and character motivation stems from the business of creating art, and when Vinyl …

HBO’s Inside The Episode blurbs aren’t always worth watching for review purposes, as so many of them simply rehash what most of the audience already knows. Every now and then, however, a writer, director, or actor will say something that gives unique insight into a series. Take tonight’s episode of Vinyl, for example.…

Am I right in assuming that most of you figured out Ernst was dead (or at least imaginary) from the moment Richie started talking to him? I say that not to flaunt any kind of intellectual superiority—I’m a very gullible viewer—but to point out how tired a device it is: the concept of a mentally unstable character with…

As TV-critic godfather Alan Sepinwall pointed out in his book The Revolution Was Televised, so many great television shows of the late 20th/early 21st century have focused on tortured male protagonists—men whose actions aren’t always loved by the audience, but are at least understood thanks to the deep sense of pathos…

Over the first few episodes, Vinyl has wanted the viewer to know that, for all of its power, rock music in the 1970s was a dirty business, delivered in mass quantities to the world by backstabbing, coke-snorting, payola-peddling, Andrew Dice Clay-murdering scumbags whose thirst for power rivaled that of an organized…

Like Vinyl, Terence Winter’s Boardwalk Empire regularly featured its fictional characters rubbing elbows with historical figures, so much that gangsters Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky were all part of the main cast. And that’s to say nothing of Bugsy Siegel, J. Edgar Hoover, and politicians such as Harry…

When Richie Finestra returns to the American Century offices after the events in the first episode of Vinyl, his rock ‘n’ roll rebirth extends far beyond a renewed cocaine habit. First, he abruptly cancels the buyout with Polygram. When his partners protest, he draws inspiration from the Bruce Lee films he’s spent all…

Defying the judgment of Neon Boys punk rocker Richard Hell (who declared it both “boring” and “trash”), HBO is going back for another hit of Vinyl, Martin Scorsese and Terence Winter’s rock-infused follow-up to Boardwalk Empire. Co-produced by Mick Jagger—and featuring his son James as the lead singer of fake…

One of the most accurate points made by HBO’s Show Me A Hero is that historical figures don’t always recognize how important their actions are in the moment. They just do what they think is best, whether for political, instinctual, or self-involved reasons, and if they’re lucky, they end up on the right side of…

As it stands, The Leftovers is the most spiritual show on HBO’s schedule. But if it holds that God is in the details, Vinyl makes The Leftovers look earthbound by comparison. Vinyl, HBO’s drama set in New York City’s orgiastic 1970s rock scene, is crammed full of granular details and precise nuances that go beyond the…