Chris Cabin

As a vision of adolescence facing a life-and-death crisis, it’s far too tidied, controlled, and sober to come off as relatable. There’s no sense of how seductive and overwhelming the unknown can be for an adult, never mind a kid or teenager. And as a vision of adulthood in both personal and elemental disaster, it’s simplistic, safe, and dominated by work.

There’s a vaguely pleasant handsomeness to the series but there’s no imagination and no sense whatsoever why it was important for Boyle or Beaufoy to lend their irrefutable talents to this thorny material.

The performers offer flashes of persona in quiet moments, gesticulations, and a handful of exchanges but for the most part, the characters come off as little more than figures meant to convey information from Wright’s book.

What might have been a furious reflection on the worth of style and aesthetic as compared to the humanity encased within such frames and settings is boiled down to an extensive Wikipedia page, more interested in the facts of the case than why the case was so important and shocking to the zeitgeist in the first place.

Meloni holds things together admirably but even his rousing comedic inventiveness gets drowned out by the empty edginess that Taylor & Co. have evinced here.

Dark feels strangely one-note, elevated purely by the increasing eccentricity of the plot, which eventually tip-toes into the science-fiction realm when time travel becomes a major element of the story. The less said about that the better.

The only major issue with Godless as a thoughtful and engaging entertainment is that you’re constantly aware that it could have been so much more than that.

She’s Gotta Have It melds Lee’s studied vision of Brooklyn in the age of sexting with the intimate yet ubiquitous inner thoughts and feelings of a generation of young, black artists and professionals without overtly praising or diminishing either.

It’s a testament to the ambition of The Punisher that the show’s creator, Steve Lightfoot, does not shy away from the isolationism and inner torment that veterans live with on a daily basis. ... When the series moves away from this stuff, however, the show ranges from fascinating to bland to ridiculous.

One of the greatest seasons of television that 2017 has produced thus far.

There is an attempt here to tap into what makes shows like Scorpion and Person of Interest lack, but neither the acting nor the writing delivers the minor narrative pleasures that those series serves up intermittently. Instead, Wisdom of the Crowd acts as an egregious, even embarrassing gesture toward understanding the age of social media, a husk of modern tropes made with minimal passion and even less care.

Adlon’s insistence on focusing on the nuances of work, dating, parenting, and socializing gives the show a unique level of intimacy.

Some of this symbolism can come off as rigid or obvious, to the point that Campion and Lee miss the unscripted messiness of human behavior, but it never dilutes the power of her style or the story itself.

BoJack Horseman never feels as if its grasping for relevancy or looking for a quick, cynical laugh to show its edge. They give vibrant, convincing life to the world that surrounds BoJack, even as he continues to struggle to look beyond his own snout.

By playing it safe and showing a truly breathtaking lack of creativity, The Orville can’t even claim to be better than the myriad of Star Trek fan films that can currently be found on YouTube.

Disjointed doesn’t quite offend as much as its unyielding and unfunny flippancy renders each episode null and void as an experience.

In trying to make autism fit into the sitcom formula, rather than the other way around, Rashid and her creative team have essentially just made another mediocre sitcom, which even at its worst isn’t worth getting too riled about.

By refusing to either challenge their own perspective or get into the weeds of why the big studios are in such dire straits and mostly release market-tested dreck, Get Shorty pigeonholes itself into mediocrity, something that neither Chili Palmer nor Miles Daly can abide by.

What’s left is an amiable and largely engaging murder mystery, gorgeously lensed and smartly paced but more notable for its control of mood and atmosphere than substance or character.

The series brandishes a consistent lack of imagination when it comes to exploring the troubled woman who falls in with a religious cult or the lonely, lost Mormon boys who feel at a distance from their strict faith. By putting focus on the circumstances they find themselves in over the people they are, the series produces little more than cheap thrills.

Insecure is alive and engaged in the time after Tinder was new and fun, when you realize that bad luck in love and dreaded dry spells are often caused from within and politics are unbearably personal. It also happens to be a show that most fans of Living Single or Laverne & Shirley would probably love.

Friends from College boasts a confidence that what looks like immorality is often just a vaguely more respectable form of immaturity.

This is all to say that Snowfall is a better written show than it is a visual show, a grand, tragic story that is admirably inclusive but struggles to reach a personal level.

The increasing lack of control that Jean feels and her impulsive seeking of satisfaction of any kind never comes through in Taylor-Johnson’s compositions or in Rubin’s dialogue. ... That being said, with the exception of the oddly innocuous inaugural episode, Gypsy continuously demands attention in its vision of life as performance.

What comes across most potently is Lynch’s liberated artistry and style, allowed free reign and immediately making even the most bold of other TV series, from American Gods to The Americans, look timid and compromised in comparison to Lynch’s latest moondrunk flourish.

Even if Master of None‘s second season isn’t as immediately thrilling as the series’ inaugural season at first, there is a personal element to everything that happens to Dev and his social circle, a clear knowledge that other people can indeed be hell but they also often offer levity, comfort, and understanding that is neither amplified nor diminished with the introduction of a good data plan.

For all its evident ambition, and its veneer of inclusion, Sense8 is no more interested in the messy details of progress than The Avengers.

American Gods is great television but it’s also a tremendous work of self-reflexive art, one that remains outrageously entertaining without giving away the complex, violent mysteries at its roiling core.