Babylon - Season 1

I still consider it my duty to inform you when there is a new show you absolutely HAVE to watch. And Babylon ... is one of those shows. Sorry, everybody. Add it to your queue. It's like The Wire meets In the Loop meets The IT Crowd.

This is a series worth tracking down and watching. If you laugh, that's a bonus.

The slow transition of Babylon from comedy to drama makes the series itself something of a public-relations problem. Fortunately, we don't need to spin or label it, other than to say that it's good.

By attempting to straddle two very different genres at once, it undermines the effectiveness of both forms of entertainment. It isn't necessarily a fatal problem, but it's one that will hopefully be ameliorated in the rest of the show's short season.

Babylon delivers a mixed bag in which it's deceptively simple to applaud the effort to handle the bizarre intersection of publicity and policing, and yet that attempt doesn't make it entertaining or insightful on its own.

A layered analysis of a failing system, and - true to its satirical inception - no one is let off the hook.

It was an enjoyable, if somewhat flawed offering that brimmed with poignancy and darkness.

The show moves at a clipped pace so we never dwell for too long -- and it's certainly ballsy in facing uncomfortable police issues head-on with such biting wit.

There's more rapid-fire walk-and-talks than Aaron Sorkin ever crammed into The Newsroom.

Despite the show's energy and good cast, there's a slightly anticlimactic feel to the whole enterprise.

If you're looking for a solid cop show from across the pond, you will definitely find it here.

The biggest problem was that none of the characters was engaging enough to make you care about them -- from the chief all the way down to the dimwit new recruit.