The quality of the early stories arose from an addictive combination of astute character-drawing and brisk, episodic construction; yet Michael Tolliver Lives was an uncharacteristically drab experiment in confessional, first-person narrative that managed to turn one of the most beloved characters in gay fiction into a self-pitying bore.
In 2008, South Park was named the 12th-greatest TV show of the past 25 years by Entertainment Weekly, while AOL declared it as having the "most astute" characters of any show in history when naming it the 16th-best television comedy series of all time.
Unlike Holmes, however, he was not an astute judge of character.
Another mezzo-soprano might have feared comparison with Joyce DiDonato, who sang the role in 2011, but Ms. Deshayes fully filled her tall leather riding boots, bringing heartfelt urgency to the opera's most honest, astute and sympathetic character.
Its tale of a larger-than-life music impresario, his young Russian mistress and his philandering son impressed the jury with its refusal of formulas, boldly idiosyncratic pacing and astute explorations of character.
Romm is also astute about the characters who don't avert their eyes.
Mostly, though, her assessments are astute and her characters well embedded in their intellectual and social realms.
When Miller went back to Eloui, she and Penrose exchanged fervid letters, hers astute about her own character.
In appearance he was small, thin, and pale; in character, impetuous, astute, obstinate, and autocratic, though simple and approachable.
It's a psychologically astute show in which characters evolve in ways that can be surprising but are always internally consistent.
