Hank Stuever

This adaptation, which starts off succinctly, starts to strain as soon as it has to shoulder the biblical proportions. “The Stand” works better as a study in survivalist pluck than as a theological thunderdome.

Quietly compelling.

[The cast] all struggle with a premise and a script that gives them little guidance on how far to go with “Your Honor’s” resolute dourness.

Reconciling these two stories is a real trick; the four episodes made available for this review (out of eight) certainly achieve the story’s nonstop anxiety level, but one gets the feeling that the whole thing would come apart without Cuoco’s impressive grip on the character: a woman who is out of control, expertly played by an actress who demonstrates such precision.

Too long to be a movie and too short to satisfy as a miniseries, this “Black Narcissus” dabbles in being all of the above, and, alas, doesn’t fully succeed at any of them. But it doesn't deserve a thumbs-down review, either. Thanks to some excellent and at times gripping performances — especially from its lead, Gemma Arterton — “Black Narcissus” remains intriguing while never quite getting to the point of riveting.

All of it combines to bring Coates’s words up off the page with startlingly precise intent. Old news footage transitions to recent outrages; dreams are shattered and reassembled to reflect unflinching truths. There’s as much to look at as there is to hear; the words and images meld almost seamlessly.

Superb and sprawling. ... Where most shows would try to cram everything in, “The Crown” is all about smart choices. We don’t get the full blow-by-blow of Diana’s strange engagement to a difficult and even cruelly neglectful Charles, played terrifically by Josh O’Connor. ... These Charles/Di go-rounds may indeed butter “The Crown’s” bread, but the real news this time is Gillian Anderson’s devastatingly precise portrayal of Margaret Thatcher.

An engaging but thematically thin drama. .. The show’s entanglements and provocations are what manage to pull a viewer in.

With a cheerful dose of dutifulness, the show all but insists that life must go on for all of us. Even the mundane must endure. ... Positive or negative, we’ll just leave it be.

Laurie (“House, M.D.”; “Veep”) is just about the only reason to get into “Roadkill,” writer David Hare’s quick-moving but often ridiculously convoluted drama.

On the surface it may look similar to “Big Little Lies,” but in the ways that count, it is darker, slower and not as captivating. ... By the fifth episode (HBO provided all but the sixth and final episode for this review), the story feels fully spent and too thinly stretched. Beauty and mood can take things only so far.

So many words, words upon words, the effluence of the dialogue being the show’s draw, as well as one of its drawbacks. What sounded so glidingly lyrical back then verges on the ridiculous and grating now, unless, of course, you have too much invested in “The West Wing’s” idealized Washington. ... The best parts are the interstitial breaks, taking up an additional 20 minutes, which feature Sorkinesque banter between cast members in the form of get-out-the-vote messages.

The actors do their best to overcome the flat writing, and the show does find its stride by the fifth episode (which is all that Disney Plus made available for this review). What the new “Right Stuff” is missing are the qualities it can probably never have: currency and context.

There are strong performances from an array of prestige TV’s familiar faces — Malin Akerman and David Costabile of “Billions,” Charlie Heaton of “Stranger Things” and Betsy Brandt of “Breaking Bad,” among them — but the show lapses into the predictable pace of similar anthology series, where the ideas are many but the results are not always captivating. Still, “Soulmates” is a nifty enough show for AMC to serve from its pandemic cupboard.

Hawley and company are in no hurry to help us sort through [the characters and conflicts], but there is a strong design and structure being formed here, and patience is rewarded. ... The road is long, but worth traveling.

“Ratched” is garish and gorgeous all at the same time; horrific and occasionally poetic; glamorous to an almost laughable degree; thrilling for a while and then puzzingly dull for stretches, only to become interesting all over again. The show is a fine and flawed example of who Murphy is and what he makes. You can’t help but be lured in by it.

If one has to choose only one millennial-made TV series that ventures into adolescent angst in the AOL era, please make it this one. “PEN15,” which returns Sept. 18 with seven endearing new episodes (another seven will follow when production can safely resume), could be almost considered an act of communal therapy. ... “PEN15” is both an exquisite wallow in hormonal chaos and a belated act of forgiveness.

“The Comey Rule”is an occasionally artful and eventually absorbing dramatic reenactment of former FBI director James B. Comey’s unfortunate and, by his account, unavoidable role in two permanently upsetting events before and after the 2016 election of President Trump.

A welcome dose of high-quality science fiction. ... Even when “Raised by Wolves” gets bogged down by its frenetic plots and a frigidly brutal vision of what lies ahead, the show seems exactly right about one thing: A whole new world should totally feel like a whole new world — from the untouched grit beneath one’s boots to a complete reordering of right and wrong. That’s the point of breaking free.

It’s too bad the series lays everything on so thick, resulting in a work of television that feels far too routine.

The show gets a little too busy, too soon. In the first five episodes made available for this review, “Lovecraft Country” feels like two competing shows. ... Still, there is plenty to recommend here, especially for those seeking something unique as this summer’s schedule breathes its last. “Lovecraft Country” is visually striking and inventively imagined, even when it gets corny.

Daniel DiMauro and Morgan Pehme’s intriguing documentary, “The Swamp” (premiering Tuesday on HBO), makes a good-natured and often compelling attempt to explain some of the endemic, deep-seeded dysfunctions of Congress (a.k.a. “Washington”), while also doing its best to not seem so naive as to present old outrages as fresh news.

The woo-woo nature of the therapeutics isn’t mocked, but there are enough sideways glances and awkward pauses for “Lost Resort” to fail as a means for promoting New Age beliefs and practices. The vicarious experience of watching the show can be somewhat entertaining, but it quickly becomes obvious that TV cameras are the last thing you want in a vulnerability circle that aims for catharsis.

“30 Rock’s” sardonic skills in the meta department couldn’t overcome the corporate stink of it all.

Lochte has married and fathered two children since Rio, which factors considerably in the footage for this one-hour documentary, making a fairly convincing case that every party boy eventually becomes a man. It seems there might have been hope to make a full docuseries here, following Lochte to the U.S. competitions and, perhaps, to Tokyo.

The cast of workers (including Mohammed) manages some LOLs, but Schwimmer struggles to balance a character who is just a little too mean (and too dumb) to be funny.

As it unfolds, “Brave New World” fits only the most nebulous sense of the word “interesting,” with its most relevant commentary left behind in the Savage Lands. Where Peacock could use a big bang, the series mostly just manages to look like plain old cable TV.

“P-Valley” achieves that rarest of balancing acts: It is a thoughtful immersion into an overlooked culture and community — in this case, the economically strapped, predominantly black “Dirty South” of broken dreams, gospel truths and palpable prejudices. The show excels at both tawdry entertainment and meaningful moments of character study.