Jen Chaney

Hacks is at its best in moments like that, when it highlights life at its most simultaneously hilarious and wrenching. It just takes a little while for it to reach those scenes this time around. ... Season two is much looser and, like a stand-up tour, jumps from place to place without clearly addressing its broader ideas.

It’s hard to imagine gleaning something new from a subject that’s already been explored via multiple hours of television. But The Staircase, which casts Colin Firth in the role of Michael and Toni Collette as Kathleen, defies expectations, adding new perspective and dimension to a well-known story while creating an experience that differs from the docuseries.

There are moments when the show seems more interested in making a case than telling a full-fledged story, and the timeline-jumping can get confusing despite the text from incident reports used as transitions and designed to to keep us grounded in the chronology of events. Nevertheless, it’s a vivid, richly detailed series, shot with gritty intimacy by director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard) and worth watching for a host of reasons. A big one is Bernthal’s performance.

Exceptional. ... It’s so good this season that I not only want to recommend it to Vulture readers, I want to hand out flyers to random people on the street, imploring them to watch.

One of the flaws in this well-acted but overly drawn-out limited series is that we never get sufficient insight into Michelle’s behavior.

Despite its positives, Bridgerton is ultimately not as fully, effectively transportive this go-round. Even though both seasons rely heavily on the tropes of romantic storytelling, this one makes it easier to spot those tropes and become distracted by their presence. ... But the real scandal — Lady Whistledown herself would certainly confirm this — is that there’s less excitement.

As it stands, this HBO series tells a messy, pulsating, occasionally problematic, but mostly entertaining version of the molding of a legendary basketball team. It’s not necessarily enlightening, but it is certainly a show.

The final gift this treasure of a series offers to us is a sequence that makes us feel like we’ve been part of Sam’s family the whole time.

Super Pumped makes the case that figures like Kalanick pride themselves on pushing boundaries so much that they decide boundaries don’t need to exist. And that’s interesting to explore, up to a point. But exploring that flawed, morally unmoored worldview also results in regurgitating messages that TV shows and movies about the business world have been telegraphing for decades.

It’s a multi-episode conversation that’s thoughtfully and sensitively handled, and rightly places emphasis on how Cosby’s downfall has affected the Black community. It is also transparent about how conflicted Bell and others remain when it comes to how to define this comedian, a feeling that ultimately interferes with the series reaching the strong conclusion it seems to be setting up.

Overall, The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window is short enough to not be a complete time suck yet long enough for the central gag to overstay its welcome, but honestly, if you’re on Netflix looking for a series that is funny, involves murder and wine, and is also suspenseful, you would probably be better off watching or rewatching Dead to Me.

This is a sitcom, sure. But the world it builds rings with authenticity. There are occasionally some extremely local Philadelphia jokes, and those too hit with the pinpointed accuracy of a laser beam.

This season of Euphoria is doing the most, and sometimes it’s so much that key figures fall somewhat by the wayside. This is a television series that doesn’t just depict the darker impulses of adolescence — horniness, jealousy, resentment, a flippant attitude toward one’s mortality. It wears them like a bodycon dress, a fresh gel manicure, and carefully applied eye glitter. And more often than not, this version of “too much” is a hell of a drug.

Station Eleven is a beautifully wrought piece of storytelling. ... Our world isn’t ending even though COVID is still a presence in it. But when you watch Station Eleven and become immersed in it, it really does become the whole wide world. What a gift.

There are occasional flashes of the insight and humor that helped make Sex and the City such a phenomenon in its day. ... But And Just Like That … comes across as desperate to seem cool and relevant in a very different TV landscape. Watching it made me feel old, and not because I, like these ladies, have aged since the original series. Nothing about the show feels organic; so much about it is painfully forced.

Based on the first two episodes shared with critics, Hawkeye is a reasonably entertaining series with a holiday vibe that makes it fun to watch at this time of year. ... Yet it is still challenging to watch without feeling distanced from what’s transpiring. Like Falcon and Loki, Hawkeye is emotionally impenetrable, even though the gifted actors try their best to make you feel something.

What’s more illuminating, however, is the way this documentary connects the dots from so-called Nipplegate all the way back to the beginning of Jackson’s career. ... Like everything in The New York Times Presents series, the evidence of the uproar is presented straightforwardly, letting its ridiculousness speak for itself.

Despite the rarefied air it occupied — “How posh is this?” Adele asked early in the special, to which the answer obviously was very — it also reminded her fans why they missed her. Her voice is like a memory and an active emotional trigger, a robust glass of Zinfandel that heats your insides and makes you wistful.

The plot is pretty meaty (sorry), but Yellowjackets is adept at juggling it all, hopping between narratives and tones in a way that doesn’t register as jarring jumps, but moves in a purposefully choreographed dance.

Despite some contrivances and overly familiar beats, there’s also enough suspense and substance to this follow-up, led by showrunner Clyde Phillips, who served as Dexter’s showrunner during its first four seasons, to make it worth your attention, at least for a few episodes.

While it’s entertaining and a mostly breezy watch, it’s also committed to showing the realities of being one-half of a couple. Love requires work, introspection, and pushing oneself to be bigger and better for the sake of another. Love Life does not shy away from showing that. ... In a series structured so much around one character’s experience, it’s imperative that we connect with and enjoy that person. Harper makes that easy.

While it bites off more than it can reasonably chew and can be a little heavy-handed at times, when the series breaks your heart, it really shatters it.

The writing drips with more poison, and the cast seems to relish more than ever the opportunity to disseminate its toxins.

[Alex and Paula] are each other’s worst enemies and greatest advocates, and watching them dance through their complicated love for one another is one of the most enriching experiences of the fall TV season. Like so much in Maid, you don’t just observe what’s happening to them. You feel like you’re in it right along with them.

Information is presented in a cogent, journalistic fashion that is more interested in uncovering what Britney Spears has been facing away from the shiny filters of her Instagram feed rather than exploiting her.

Without Linklater, Midnight Mass would be a pretty good series. With him, it achieves moments of greatness.

Real tension is only felt in two episodes, though: the aforementioned “Butt Plug” and “Moment of Silence,” both of which are buoyed by strong performances from their leads and a greater sense of storytelling focus. ... That’s what The Premise really is: a series of episodes that each have their own gimmick. “Moment of Silence,” at least, is smart enough to not try to be funny. The other episodes try too hard and, too often, fail.

This is basically a two-hander. Fortunately, and not surprisingly, the two stars make this thing live. They are each completely dialed-in and totally believable as a couple with a vast, un-erasable history whose weight can be felt in the spaces between them.