David Fear

You can appreciate the attention to getting it even better than the real thing and if not, you’ll likely crack up at a batshit German actor shrieking at popping-and-locking dancer before a live studio audience of shepherds. The rest of the season’s episodes stick to this notion of spot-on parody plus one incongruous element or unlikely environment. ... [“Trouver Frisson”] is their love letter to fellow movie lovers. It knows that there are a handful of us laughing through tears.

e’re glad they rolled the dice. Giacchino is better known for his musical work — that moody, creepy score for The Batman is his — but as a director, he’s got a great sense of how to sustain a mood without losing momentum. ... We could use more creative distractions from mondo world-building like this. Just drop them more than once every full moon, please.

It’s a picture-perfect look at a highly imperfect show-biz-royalty relationship. ... Because of his [Ethan Hawke's] willingness to look at all of it, the good and the bad and as much of the truth of it all he can track down, Hawke’s efforts pay off in a spectacular fashion.

What this sometimes playful, sometimes moody Irma Vep gives us is less a tabloid fan-fic guessing game, however, than its creator’s own neurosis and fears about where he’s been, where the art form he’s obsessed over is going and what happens to cinephiles if cinema reaches its last-gasp phase.

Everyone collectively remembers the making of The Godfather as inspiring a high point in American cinema. Now we can all say it’s also inspired a forgettable, God-awful low point in television.

Viewers may find a more polished take on this place, and on the famous and everyday folks who live here. They will not find one more insightful, exhilarating, or lovelier.

Even with its end-of-the-world urgency, this Utopia still feels sluggish, muddled, unfinished. It’s as if someone went to great pains to restore a classic car, added their own custom interior, and then forgot to fill up the tank with gas.

Betty gives you the privilege on skating a mile in these womens’ shoes and letting you into their experience, the good and the bad and the sexist and the unfair and the ugly of it all. It’s ambling, whateversville pacing and structure isn’t for everyone, but everyone’s still invited to join in.

Defending Jacob is not bad so much as the result of what happens when you try to reverse-engineer a bestseller into a conversation-starter, and prestige-TV it to death.

The New Pope retains the formalist beauty and sumptuousness of its predecessor while failing to measure up storytelling-wise.

You can feel that director Philip Martin and screenwriter Nigel Williams are relying on the mighty Dame Helen to do most of the dramatic heavy lifting here. You can also sense when, despite her best efforts, that particular plan of action still falls short.

Primal restores a genuine sense of awe regarding how you can use the format for something besides shits and giggles. It’s storytelling at its most basic, sound and images moving faster than a speeding velociraptor and brimming with soulfulness.

Country Music endeavors to go full Baskin-Robbins and give viewers as many flavors as possible. ... Yet the overall effect of watching how an outsider art became a major part of our everyday sonic landscape, and the way it let a thousand different flowers bloom from the rocky soil of its origins, is overwhelming.

There’s a lot happening around The Boys‘ core concept, from a human-supe romance and a plan to sell superheroes to the U.S. military via Trumpian fear-stoking. There’s some serious Freudian baggage around Homelander and his handler and a number of gleefully absurd side vignettes. But none of it adds up to much, and there’s a constant sense that the show is treading over too-familiar ground when it’s not simply treading water.

How Neville, Malmberg and their team manage to make all of this cohere together over four free-form episodes is slightly unbelievable. Somehow, the drifting from recording sessions to vigorous Rubin head-nodding to old film clips to community-college theater department recreations of Krush Groove to pro-wrestling footage — Rick is a huge fan — to existential musings makes you feel like you’re inside the producer’s head.

If the idea is to glean lessons and drama from Ailes’ story, The Loudest Voice is a bust. If the idea is to eventually win Crowe an Emmy, however, consider this a fair and balanced success.

[A] limping, baggy megillah, which fails to justify its marathon-length running time as anything more than a self-satisfying, hardboiled-by-numbers folly.

There’s precious little humor, pitch-black or otherwise. Some will call this a bit of a slog. They won’t be wrong. But this five-part autopsy has more on its mind then just recreating a snapshot of IRL horror in the name of attracting subscribers and awards-season kudos. Yes, you may raise your eyebrows regarding the pedigree of those telling this story. Yet both they and the cast innately understand how this accident was able to metastasize into something that almost decimated a continent.

Had this only succeeded in bringing an ignored perspective into a mainstream streaming-service show, Ramy would be still be one hell of an accomplishment. It’s a lot more than a mere triumph of representation, however; you’re so in awe of how Youssef has given the world the Great Muslim-American TV Show that you might miss the fact that it’s a great TV show, full stop.

For all of its various attempts to balance Eastern European espionage, half-hearted explorations of parenting and femininity, a youth drama, a father-daughter story, a pulse-pounding conspiracy thriller, a character study (though kudos to Mireille Enos for what she does with her Marissa) and the kind of pulp pleasure where a young girl can gun down an army without blinking, it never really finds a groove to settle into.

While many of the entries here fall into an inter-zone of “meh, OK then” mediocrity, there are a handful of highlights as well.

This “event” gives us an admittedly unique experience but little to hold onto after the fact. It doesn’t even measure up to the bar the show itself has set.