Darren Franich

Too often the show settles for goofy sentiment, oversimplifying the group's complex friendships. Needs more spice.

This latest Trek marks the fullest embrace of the canon's history ever, really. ... Mount was already delightful as Pike on Discovery, and this show leans into his charm.

Barry has never been scarier, and Hader has never been better. ... There's nothing on TV quite like Barry. The laughter is loud, but that makes the terrified silence more deafening.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard) gracefully blends shocking violence with tense conference-room inquisitions.

Martha's story is a fascinating one — the administration's early effort to keep her quiet led to a brutal imprisonment — and Roberts gamely plays her as an old-fashioned southern matriarch unleashed at the dawn of our age of paranoia. But the show also stretches to tell the way less involving story of White House Counsel John Dean (Dan Stevens) and his romance with liberal flight attendant Mo (Betty Gilpin).

Outer Range has one of the worst momentum problems I've ever seen in a streaming show, squandering an evocative setting and some fun twists on portentous take-forever storytelling that prioritizes hints over character depth.

The new premiere swerves unexpectedly, and delightfully, with a marvelous opening that suggests these final 13 episodes will reveal the answers to questions you didn't know you had.

It's a relief to report that creator Donald Glover and his collaborators have not lost their capacity for vital tone-clashing comedy. There are laugh-out-loud moments right alongside skin-crawling bits of social awkwardness, plus some outright shocks. Everything has changed, but Atlanta minus Atlanta is still Atlanta.

The story variously tilts toward canonical completionists and confounded newbies, with dialogue variously impenetrable and explanatory.

The Dropout often uses comedy as a crutch, aiming way too often for that Pam & Tommy tone of needle-drop hysteria. Everyone seems encouraged to go big. Macy looks and acts like a cartoon. I'm not sure watching Elizabeth Holmes dance by herself to pop music really adds to our understanding of her motivations.

The reboot (debuting after the Super Bowl on Peacock) winds up overly sensitive yet also way too ludicrous, trapped between dueling instincts for soapy animosity and bland aspiration.

There's something outright gutless in the fairy-tale vision of the central relationship. It's a romance of musical serenades and goofy flourishes that barely acknowledges the marriage's harsher realities. Pam's heart is in the right place. I just wish it didn't waste so much time dicking around.

Father overstuffs itself with elaborate backstories, yet it's barely clear why the ensemble wants to hang out together. Contrivances pile up.

Miranda Kwok and showrunner Melissa Carter have adapted an original Argentine series into a drama with decently complex cultural politics. ... Here's a TV series that's pro-immigrant, pro-feminist, pro-stem cell research, anti-racist, and very cheesy. The Cleaning Lady mixes so many different things together, which is how you make a mess. It's also how you make a melting pot.

And Just Like That tries too hard to bring its cultural brand into a new era, but it reclaims a core humanity lacking in the previous franchise extensions.

At best, the new FX on Hulu drama (debuting Sept. 13) takes the Brian K. Vaughan/Pia Guerra source material in intriguing new directions. Too often, though, it's a dutiful adaptation, turning the comic's eccentricity into a familiar genre wallow.

Smiths is much more than an eccentric goof. ... What I'm describing sounds high-concept past the stratosphere: Sin City plus Labyrinth starring Serpico directed by Jacques Demy — but with toys. Yet as with all Conrad's work, the spacey oddities are grounded by low-key humane sweetness and genially tossed-off humor.

The series juggles a demon-embryo mythology with spiritual inquisition. Doing all that, while also bringing artful sensitivity back to the procedural genre? Calling Evil a miracle is too modest. It's a revelation. [Aug 2021, p.59]

In this self-dissection of wealthy Caucasian self-awareness, some subplots are just navel-gazing. ... Still, I got wrapped up in the dreamy dramedy. Looking's Bartlett stuns as a tightly wound perfectionist falling way off the wagon. Rothwell, hysterical on Insecure, goes 180 degrees as a wellness worker bee carrying the weight of moneyed sorrow. Coming off The Handmaid's Tale, Sharp Objects, and Euphoria, Sweeney confirms herself as the generational representative for soulful perversity.

It's a very good season, with enough idiosyncrasy to triumph over some growing pains.

Jenkins excels at a dreamy state of intimacy, but the allegorical setting can turn distancing. ... The better later hours veer into an all-Black community, so utopian it's on a vineyard, where personal dramas turn political. There's suddenly a large supporting cast, which adds a new depth to the dramatic complexity, as different characters struggle against racism and oppression in diametrically opposed ways.

The show generally succeeds with its throw-everything-at-the-wall mentality, and the season finale is a triumph of ridiculousness and pent-up emotion.

Nifty. ... It's a solid season of television, disappointing only in the context of the expansive terror that immediately preceded it.

I don't know whether to credit the series for ambient atmosphere, or criticize it for so obviously hiding final twists in plain sight.

The Nevers stumbles even more awkwardly as it juggles overt social themes with flat-out silly plot developments. ... The Nevers gets better when it embraces its wild side. ... Right now, it's all steam and no punk.

If you're getting the sense this is a rather bleak comedy, it's important to underline just how breezy the tone of Back is. The ensemble faces their regular miseries with humor and hope, the latter even funnier because it seems so unjustified.

This franchise remains invigorating, though, matching no-look-pass thrills with telling little moments.

After the joy-to-horror onslaught of the first three episodes, the latter parts struggle to balance big speeches with one absolutely ridiculous (if quite cheeky) bit of anti-Thatcherite rebellion. ... At its best, though, It's a Sin brings a unique mix of poignant enthusiasm and simmering sorrow to its tale.