Runway Still Chic on Lifetime

Project Runway is back after an interminable absence on a new network in a new city, but critics agree the fashion design reality show has kept all its charm intact.

• PR has "hopped channels from Bravo to Lifetime with none of its appeal damaged in transit," Troy Patterson writes on Slate. And the move from NYC to LA has the show "cultivating an US Weekly populism and making its take on the grammar of chic more approachable."

• "Project Runway chez Lifetime is the same show we've been obsessed with since 2004," Missy Schwartz writes in Entertainment Weekly. "Though yes, the commercial breaks were packed with a greater number of birth control and tampon commercials than we ever saw on Bravo, no? Gotta know your audience!"
• The premiere "was, frankly, fairly forgettable," James Poniewozik writes in Time, but amid all the shuffle, thank God, Tim Gunn is still there. " With him, the show is sweet where it could be melodramatic, sly where it could be broad, witty where it could be too-clever-by-half."

(More Project Runway stories.)