Saturday at 10:00 p.m. on ABC, the four-part series Masters of Science Fiction debuts with "A Clean Escape." The Twilight Zone–esque anthology sounds promising: The first part features Judy Davis as a psychiatrist investigating Sam Waterston's short-term memory loss, and later installments bring us Anne Heche and Elisabeth Rohm in other far-fetched tales.

But the promise may not have a payoff — so far, the reviews aren't stellar. It's not to be confused with Showtime's successful, innovative Masters of Horror series; sadly, there's no "Sick Girl" or other lesbionic Angela Bettis chapter here. And the time slot doesn't exactly guarantee viewers. But I'll tune in for almost anything Judy Davis does. She's crazy-brilliant.

Speaking of that, I first noticed her in My Brilliant Career. Then there were A Passage to India, Where Angels Fear to Tread and the nightmare-inducing Naked Lunch. Oh, and a little something called Serving in Silence. She gets better and better: Did you see the way she channeled Nancy Reagan and Judy Garland in The Reagans and Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows? It's hard to find a misstep in her career, especially if you overlook Gaudi Afternoon.

So whether Masters of Science Fiction will be worth it after the first episode remains to be seen. I do know that nearly everything Davis does is a master class in acting, and that's enough for me.

Next Thursday on USA, the miniseries The Starter Wife premieres. Based on the Gigi Levangie Grazer novel of the same name, it stars Debra Messing as a woman named Molly whose Hollywood husband dumps her for someone younger. Ordinarily, I wouldn't be drawn to this at all, but in NYC, it has been difficult to ignore the giant ads on the sides of buses. They look like this, only with a white background:

Here's my question about those ads: Since when can you just declare something "a major television event"? Isn't that reserved for epic dramas like Roots or The Thorn Birds? (An aside: The first time I typed that, it came out The Thunderbirds. Sigh.) Can you just create an event with an ad campaign? … continue reading