Enlightened comes through with a triumphant eight-episode arc that broadens its characters, quickens the pace and finishes strong.

What makes Homeland rise above other post-9/11 dramas is Danes's stellar performance as Carrie--easily this season's strongest female character, who is also hiding some personal secrets of her own. The latter half of the first episode is exhilarating. I'm hooked.

Sherlock is too often a petulant know-it-all, which grows tiresome and makes a viewer painfully aware that each episode is 90 minutes long.... Sherlock's redundancies are improved by a couple of longer story arcs.

Game of Thrones is like no other TV show around right now--brilliant, exasperating, enthralling, and, if you let it become so, hard work.

It joins "Planet Earth" and "Life" to reign as a triumvirate in Best Buy showrooms. Nothing looks better, sounds better.

what else can I do but yap excitedly and try to get you to watch one of the best shows on TV right now? The first four episodes of the new season will not disappoint fans.

The first six episodes (which I've watched, dutifully at times) draw you in but sometimes feel overstuffed, overproduced and weirdly gauzy where the series means to be an exercise in crisp, razor-sharp filmmaking.

This new season starts off strong.

Mad Men is that rare thing that can be as infuriating as it is perfect. I’ve gone back and forth (and hot and cold) on it as much as a critic can; I warmed to it last season but feel a familiar chill this time.

As television, Girls is disturbing, sharply honed and even wickedly funny.

Try as I might, Mad Men fails to resonate, settle in, tell me something. It can no longer get out of its own way so as to allow its multiple story lines to experience actual forward momentum. (Only the calendar does that.)

The results are, of course, compelling but also assiduously sterilized.

It’s mainly an intelligent crime drama, and a real step forward for Sundance, which is bringing more original programming to its slate. As slow as it seems to go at first, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you’re addicted.

It's rare for Burns and Novick to get lost in their own material, but it happens here.

Sing Your Song is broad and complete, but like most biographical documentaries of legendary performers that we've seen of late, it is also hagiographic.

Nashville never strays too far from its real story--the ups and downs of glitzy stardom, with Britton and Panettiere performing their own vocals.

It's often difficult for them to shed the topical baggage they are made to carry and simply be themselves. Still, if you stick with them, you'll see Treme becoming a well-paced work of fiction rather than see Treme spending too much effort speaking truth to an indifferent power.

The first four episodes of this new season have the same raw and gritty-cool feel as the first season's (it takes no time at all for Dunham to bare her now-famously doughy naked body in a sex scene), but the show has become significantly more predictable.

I trust completely the template laid out for The Killing by the original "Forbrydelsen" (which I've not seen) and the artistic instincts evident in the first three episodes.

Downton Abbey lacks surprise and is stretched precariously thin, a house full of fascinating people with not nearly enough to do, all caught in a loop of weak storylines that circle round but never fully propel.

Sons of Anarchy may be wild fantasy and melodrama, but it is tempered by a feeling of verity.

Downton Abbey comes back stronger and more muscular this time, with intriguing and shocking new plots that provide a bit of vital momentum and an uncharacteristically wrenching dose of tragedy.

This is not an angry documentary; it's just such a downer--and necessary medicine for those who've remained personally unaffected by events of the last decade.

Darabont and his cast excel at conjuring up a taut social study, but let the horror scenes fall oddly flat.

The film, which kicks off HBO's long, annual summer of well-curated documentary offerings on Monday nights, is certainly absorbing. For those only vaguely familiar with the competitive chess circuit (or even the game's 1,500-year history), Bobby Fischer Against the World is both an easy introduction and a thorough recounting of Fischer's improbable rise to superstardom some 40 years ago.

Community stands on its own intangible excellence.

Director Nancy Buirski's engaging HBO documentary (a Valentine's Day treat, airing Tuesday night), rescues the Lovings from the perfunctory realm of footnotes and newspaper clippings and brings them into a more emotional light.

Boardwalk Empire is doing what I wish Prohibition had done--it's tempting me to stick around for one more.

The first half of Vito plays almost like a 45-minute "It Gets Better" ad. [Then] Vito exchanges its subtle storytelling technique for a sobering session of gay rights homework, resembling a recent raft of documentaries about the early years of the AIDS crisis.

An engaging yet taciturn new miniseries.

Behind the Candelabra is one long downward spiral, a gratuitous tale of a man who drowns in his own opulent acts of denial.

Circus has no difficulty finding all the usual, romantically enthralling ideals contained within circus life, which unfortunately causes a lot of the series to feel predictable.

The cast is marvelous, the gritty, post-war set pieces are meticulously recreated and, even with all the warm-water enemas and splattered afterbirth, the story always has its eye on uplift and good cheer.

If Rectify was winnowed down to the length of a feature film and shown at a festival, we could better judge whether or not it accomplishes what it set out to do. Delivered this way, as a meandering, weekly TV show (with commercial breaks), it has spread itself too thin.

It's all so real it verges on the mundane, but the show is also strong and necessary medicine for these times.

A fresh and even stirring reminiscence.

The show seems somehow sleeker and better paced. Characters may now be people first and archetypes second. This has the subtle but immediate effect of making The Walking Dead less predictable and more frightening.

All of which is to say that even for the most open minds, Game of Thrones can be a big stein of groggy slog. On the plus side, the first six episodes are impressively free of sorcery and special effects, and instead rely on the stuff of any deeply dark HBO epic: corruption, deceit, illicit sex (incest in this case), unflinchingly gory violence, and a willingness to kill off a prominent character or two in the service of plot.

A fascinating new PBS documentary.

Though deliberately and even artfully paced, Lights Out also feels protracted. It has difficulty establishing momentum in its first few episodes, even with a smattering of intriguing subplots and story lines, and no one character exerts that intangible ability to make us keep watching.

Smash is a case where not bad is plenty good enough.

Becoming Chaz is one thing--and it's occasionally fascinating to watch--but being Chaz gets old pretty fast.

Boss works hard to resist the usual "this is how we do things in Chicago" nonsense and dutifully aims for a somewhat "Wire"-esque believability. Yet it can also feel like a burden to watch.

With the line between documentary and amusement-park ride now crossed, it's easy for a critic to start noticing Vietnam in HD's other narrative and technical shortcuts with filler and stock footage, splicing in wherever needed the images we have seen before, including those familiar payload-perspective views of bombs being dropped over the hills and villages.

As a drama, The Americans struggles to crack a certain code; the concept is tantalizing, but the follow-through lacks the momentum that gets viewers to commit.

Although no expense has been spared, House of Cards appears to suffer from the same ambitious but weighty seriousness that afflicted Starz's "Boss."

The show is point-blank, but somewhat brilliantly so.

Effortlessly smart, easy to like and exciting to follow.

I'm slightly more taken with Fox's sweeter absurdedy, Raising Hope, though I still mourn the original title: "Keep Hope Alive."

I think its jokes are predictable and its '60s-era styling is tired.

Public Speaking often seems to be trying to relaunch the Fran Lebowitz brand, 25 years past its expiration date. It feels like the kind of movie that old friends would make about an old friend. Which is precisely what it is.

It's a beautiful downer of a show that becomes more revealing and absorbing as it moves along.

Luck is suffused with brilliant acting and amazing scenes, but in a few unfortunate ways, it remains impenetrable almost until its last hour.

As lovingly written and organized as it is, the viewer must divide his or her time picking up on different scenarios and moods, caught between rather ho-hum murder cases and this other, more beguiling attempt to craft a show that is about the nature of loss and grief.

Guest has assembled a worthy and adept ensemble of oddballs. But it remains to be seen if the story itself will catch on.

The show seems markedly improved from its earlier efforts and somehow more confident in its writing and sense of nuance. It's also funnier.

For its epic investment, Living in the Material World still feels like only part of the story.

Gosh, that's a lot of derivative teen-movie influences for a half-hour show. Yet the swift pacing and simplicity of Awkward remind us that awkwardness can still be freshly painful and funny material, so long as there are still teenagers and high schools.

It's an adrenalin-doused premise that is handsomely executed, but it feels like we get to Defcon 2 way too fast.

The new episodes push the saga in a few initially intriguing directions, but the cast keeps expanding into an overpopulated mishmash of disparate story threads that no longer weave together as a whole.

While it's not perfect, Bunheads is a happy find, a ray of authenticity on a summer TV schedule filled with so much artificial light.

Most of History of the Eagles is rich in detail and bemused reflection, perhaps because sobriety has worked wonders on some of the band members’ sense of recall. Frey, Walsh and Don Henley are wonderful storytellers.

Tiny flaws come close to undermining the success of Game Change as a mere film.

An intriguing but often clumsy new movie about the making of the TV show.

Snail-paced and difficult to relate to, Parade’s End feels twice as long as its total running time. And yet it’s an exquisite and thoughtful sort of slog, with sound British pedigree and bone structure.

This new, more mild Upstairs Downstairs, which makes its American premiere on PBS on Sunday night, is a three-part epilogue that feels more like an unfinished afterthought.

Elementary exhibits enough stylish wit in its mood and look to quickly distinguish itself from the latest British "Sherlock" series.

Orphan Black has the same plain club soda flavor you get in most cable action dramas now, but I have to say that I’m enjoying some of its fizz.

The show is also refreshingly entertaining, even when it relies on familiar cliches of the singing-competition genre.

There is absolutely nothing new about anything seen here and yet Arrow has nice aim.

There's exactly one hour left for a fall TV show that tells its tale in a deliberate, well-written and subtly acted way. That one hour belongs to Fox's Lone Star.

The meandering approach does manage to excavate some fascinating tales and memories.

What makes Teach: Tony Danza worth watching are the teenagers themselves and the glimpses of other teachers who make the place work. Danza, meanwhile, becomes an irritating, whirling, self-aggrandizing bundle of nerves.

This plot sounds laughably bizarre, but Hit & Miss has a strikingly strong sense of pace and character.

Thanks to Louis-Dreyfus, and the show's remarkable knack for dialogue and timing, Veep is instantly engaging and outrageously fun.

Paradise Lost 3 is perhaps the most interesting and well-made film of the trilogy

Yet another dystopian vision with Steven Spielberg's brand name affixed to it (as executive producer), this time as a cheap-looking but occasionally intriguing sci-fi social study called Falling Skies.

This trope--an actor playing a surlier, fictional version of himself--has been done to death already, and Don't Trust the B---- leans too heavily on the actor's state of celebrity limbo, filling in late-'90s jokes and references where the real laughs ought to be.

Even with the cross-pond cultural differences, young adults who are perennially baffled by their aging boomer parents will feel right at home here.

The acrimony between the two men [Marc Maron and his father] doesn’t register as funny or entertaining. Louis C.K. has shown us, on “Louie,” what sort of deeper meaning can be mined in such deep contempt, but on Maron it just feels ugly and dull.

One girds oneself for some serious hammer time when an opening fight scene of History’s compelling and robust new drama series, Vikings, delivers all the expected gore and blood spatter.

There's perhaps the coppiest cop show of the century so far, the soppy and self-satirizing CBS melodrama Blue Bloods, about an entire family--"the Reagans" yet!--involved in the crime biz.

Louie intelligently harnesses the dark cloud that follows a truly funny man everywhere he goes.

Suburgatory displays a polished sense of humor and a better cast than it deserves, which makes it worth a look.

It's strange how a show meant to generate excitement and promote thriftiness can leave one with a sense of remorse and shame.

There's a tender and no-nonsense tenor to it, which is a welcome switch from most of reality TV's junky tropes.

Without feeling like it's leading us on, Rubicon is a tightly woven and urbanely acted tale for people who like to mull.

Not everyone is going to respond to its purposeful languor and subliminal intent. Winslet is at once wonderful and yet enigmatically blank--very much as written in Haynes's and Jon Raymond's screenplay.

Everything about The Mindy Project is so very Kaling and happily spot-on, starting with the strength of the jokes and dialogue.

For a while you can sense Hannibal’s noble urge to stick to a long story arc--why does there have to be a new case every episode?--but eventually it gives in to a proven formula.

Detailed, but not terribly illuminating.

My own enjoyment of The Killing begins and ends with the gloom so brilliantly conveyed by its pace and performances.

The show misses its mark--but not by much and not in any objectionable way.

A lushly produced but ultimately unthrilling dramatic miniseries version of the story.

A lavish, exciting, well-acted and admirably thorough movie adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 classic.

A sharply-made if slightly off-putting reality series that follows different advertising agencies each week as they compete for new accounts.

A large supporting cast helps Vegas appear to be compelling and classy. And then CBS lapses into its old habit, as Lamb and company squander all this intriguing potential trying to solve their first of many cases.

Ostensibly an objective inquiry into the tragedy, the film is perhaps better interpreted as a study in the infinite and even seemingly inappropriate ways that people experience profound grief.