Daniel D'Addario

Kelley’s belief in the inherent intrigue of the legal process helps him along; one can sense enthusiasm undergirding, say, an episode built around the jury-selection process. But others of the creator’s tricks fail him, like a tendency to lean hard on the quirkiness of bit players studded through the story, seemingly intended as a sort of comic relief that doesn’t consistently land.

James’ performance leans into Henry’s weariness, seeming at times petulant at what he’s being made to endure. Leslie, a warm and appealing presence on “Game of Thrones,” fares well by contrast, and excels particularly at carrying across some of the more florid lines of dialogue that remind viewers of this project’s literary origins. But the story fails to convince that the couple shares much more than an understanding of the obstacles keeping them apart. So much time is spent on establishing the rules of this show’s game that there’s little room to play.

A slow burn of well-controlled indignation, “Meltdown” makes Parks’ case methodically and well.

This series is more concerned with asking questions than with making statements. It follows the evidence where it leads: What’s refreshing is that that evidence is less about guilt or innocence in a case on which the court has ruled, but about the strangeness and unknowability of the human heart.

This program insists that movies are important, and does so by pulping perhaps the most celebrated film of the second half of the twentieth century and using it as fuel for a diverting but hardly cinematic streaming series.

For “I Love That for You” to succeed, we must first believe in Joanna’s story and then root for her within it. Nothing about this show feels real on its own terms, because it’s never clear what those terms even are.

“Gaslit” makes some clever choices — among them to not depict the president at all, at least in its first seven episodes. ... It takes nothing away from Roberts’ fine work to say that her scenes with Penn are not the show’s strongest. ... The show’s best scenes depict a couple on the other side of marital collapse: John Dean, the White House Counsel, and his wife Mo. ... John and Mo are, perhaps, the only characters we see who don’t know they’re on a TV show about Watergate.

A richer and deeper character study than “Barry” has previously been. ... “Barry,” then, is as juicily tense as it’s ever been. And it sets a new high for itself. ... The question the first six episodes of this fantastic season of television ask is put plainly, but might take the rest of the show to answer.

["Anatomy of a Scandal"] takes big swings, few of which connect. Despite able performers and potent themes, the show is so addicted to chaos that it squanders its chance to say anything substantive.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that this go around the time and space continuum is quite as focused as the first, nor that its ending is quite as viscerally rewarding — but that, it seems, is more deliberate than not.

The series takes on topics in which kids won’t be interested in a style adults will find off-puttingly juvenile.

As a series about the contemporary lives of Kim Kardashian and family, this is about as well-made and incisive as one could expect; take that however it means to you. But as an argument for the continued dominance of the Kardashians in our culture, it finds itself with little novel to say.

There’s here’s little new on offer here. ... But of all the things this show could say about power — how it works, how it shifts over time, how the attempt to obtain it transforms us — simply saying that it’s dangerous isn’t good enough.

“Tokyo Vice” assert[s] itself as a significant new entry in the crime-drama canon. ... A beautifully shot and elegantly acted series that can seem at times to power past its writing. The pilot so effectively conjures the disorientation and novelty of a new place that the fish-out-of-water storyline feels somewhat new.

The good news for viewers who are interested in the storyline about Jimmy McGill’s slippage into the amoral Saul Goodman, and his dragging of Kim Wexler with him, is that that half of the series is as strong as ever. ... The more mixed result is that this series feels more bound up than ever in trying to draw out connections to “Breaking Bad.” The result is that even as the show moves toward its endgame, it can feel as if it’s looking over its shoulder.

Nothing stands out as especially grievous, because nothing about it is daring at all. To call it a gutter ball would suggest that the writers had tried something big and missed: What “How We Roll” brings to mind, instead, is risk-free bumper bowling.

Exploring other facets of the universe while trusting audience members not to wonder how it all connects has enabled Marvel to make a series that is finding its way towards a genuinely compelling portrait of dissociation, anchored by two terrific performances. The fact that it can be watched on its own terms is icing on the cake.

While she [showrunner Soo Hugh] conjures moments of immense power, and of connection, throughout, “Pachinko” does not, finally, cohere. One yearns for the show that let its key moments sing without the at-times forced collisions between eras, ones that can keep viewers feeling both on the hook and in the dark.

The premiere episode’s powerful assuredness, as well as the deep concern with looking uncomfortably hard and finding the grim comedy and the outlandish sorrow within American life, is precisely that which that makes this show, once again, great.

The elusiveness of answers about “why” — and the inability, then, to make “Bad Vegan” about bigger questions about truth or even about the specifics of Melngailis’ world — make the docuseries grow, eventually, frustrating; four hours is a long time to spend running through a specific set of facts with a hard limit as to how far we can explore.

“DMZ” can feel overstuffed, and as if it’s fighting to wrench depth out of its source material. ... “DMZ” devolves fairly rapidly into a Dawson-Bratt acting duet over shared backstory, which, though well-performed, makes only sputteringly occasional comment on their world.

The first five episodes of the pleasantly low-key “Minx” don’t reach the heights the Jean Smart-led comedy did last year, but its animating idea of a newcomer to the media industry pushing, and being pushed by, a veteran with a set idea of what is possible is familiar. It works. So, too, does the world “Minx” builds.

In all, “The Girl From Plainville” ends up a strikingly effective treatment of the very modern question of persona in the digital age.

“The Andy Warhol Diaries,” executive produced by Ryan Murphy, builds, over six well-structured episodes, a sense of its subject as intelligent, but alienated from his feelings and even from his own talent.

Zellweger is, too often, drowned out, whether by the loudness of the production’s reshaping her body or by literal narration. ... The end result is an ebbing-away of Pam’s story in favor of a media metanarrative that’s far less compelling; the show is, in moments, more about the customs and rhythms of “Dateline” than it is about a crime story.

What’s revealed to us is usually either banal (the idea that the act of love is like a sport because both have rhythm) or a data-dump that would be better revealed in another way. The soupcon of prurience poured over the top feels — in a way HBO programming rarely does these days — like an attention-getting stand-in for good ideas.

The show’s best scenes have always been rooted in the feelings of ambiguity that parenthood and work evoke, and yet at times Season 5 of “Better Things” seemed to be actively withholding catharsis or key insights. ... In the main, I respected this show significantly more than I liked it for the first time.

“Super Pumped” can’t figure out what it’s about — an occupational hazard, perhaps, of taking as a subject a company whose offenses are so multifarious, and one that was founded and led by a person whose whole thing is relentless ambition without mitigating nuance. The show finally finds something of a groove in telling the story of Susan Fowler (Eva Victor), the engineer who helped to expose a culture of sexual harassment within Uber.