John Anderson

The people we meet during the four parts of the series are uniformly lovely. ... But the insights they provide are largely about themselves, not the massive problems they are intended to represent and personify. ... In the end, "What We Do All Day" is a lot of work.

She may sound unbearable. She can certainly cause a cringe or two. But because she's played with such brazen, blowzy, oxygen-bogarting abandon by Patricia Arquette, Peggy is a real original.

The personal lives of the characters can grow emotionally moribund. But the action sequences, and the confrontations between Mr. Henry's Tayo and the homegrown terrorists he's trying to stop, are grippingly violent and intelligently so. Whether "Class of '09" is operating at peak efficiency depends on who is on screen.

The somewhat tired post-apocalyptic tropes upon which “Silo” is structured are made more palatable by the acting. ... There’s a conclusion to the series after 10 episodes that have mixed adrenaline with ennui.

The fate of Charlotte and George, as most know, has its poignant qualities, but if the protracted scenes of eating, dressing, staring at the moon and rutting in the bedrooms had been rendered a bit more concisely, "Queen Charlotte" would not seem quite as overlong as its six episodes do.

We root for Ms. Caplan's Alex, which may seem strange, but it makes the entire production something much more intriguing, meaningful and memorable.

A far more gentle-bordering-on-bloodless treatment of the 1749 Henry Fielding novel. ... Ms. Wilde and Mr. McLeod are an attractive pair, ever sympathetic and beset by the characters around them, who are all very busy thwarting their romance—and providing what juice there is in this "Tom Jones." ... Hannah Waddingham, who as the physically epic and epically randy Lady Bellaston steals the entire series.

It often is [bewildering, but] it is delightfully so. The first episode—a riot of plot threads and false starts that is also the best kickoff among recent TV series—will, necessarily, give way to chapters that are less frantic and more enlightening.

What we’re going to learn about everyone is parceled out in fragments of flashback that don’t do much for the pacing of a series that is ostensibly a thriller but spends much more time musing about relationships and the troubled histories of its principals. ... The performances lean toward the excessively earnest and breathless.

While the ethnic variety of "Beef" may be potent, the more critical element in its cascading series of errors, embarrassments and calamities is precisely the shared feeling of cosmic displacement—and unfairness—that bonds our two heroes, such as they are; their very particular personalities give the series its energy.

Somewhere en route from the "Dear Sugar" phenomenon to a collection of essays to a stage play and then a TV series, someone lost the plot. Or failed to formulate one. That someone, evidently, was creator and showrunner Liz Tigelaar, who has reduced the advice-columnist hook to a virtual afterthought and produced a wearying storyline that never quite arcs. ... The "payoff," such as it is, comes nowhere close to justifying the anguish of all eight episodes.

The second season is even better. ... One should certainly watch season 2 of "Schmigadoon!"—and maybe watch it twice. ... The second time around, you can catch the jokes you missed the first time, while further savoring the performances, and performers.

There's a world of reality TV out there, but little of it is more real than "Emergency NYC."

It's not a program that veers very far stylistically from a typical network series (one on CBS, say), but it is certainly more adult, as well as more unsettling.

In expanding the story the way he has, and giving far more room to characters who were perfectly Dickensian in their economy, Mr. Knight has lost much of the subtle psychology—especially regarding Havisham. ... Dickens was pretty adept at providing just as much about a character as was needed to make his point. Mr. Knight gives us more, and the point becomes elusive.

There’s a bit more narration than explanation in this three-part documentary series, though a deep dive into the personal enriches the storytelling. ... "Waco" suffers from a few missing details. ... At the same time, it features people very close to the subject being very open about what happened, even if, when all is said and done, they don't understand it now any better than they did in 1993.

The dialogue is rife with anachronisms. ... Never mind a torrent of vulgarities that seem far more 21st century than 18th. ... For all the dithering—something for which Louis XVI remains famous—"Marie Antoinette" has some very solid performances, notably by Mr. Purefoy, who makes Louis XV kindly, fierce, fatherly and sexually predatory. Ms. Schüle pivots from making Marie a believable child to portraying her as a convincing court politician and schemer.

We watch, we cringe, we can't relate, and in the end it is not just meaningless but a bloody bore. Dominique Fishback, brilliant but ultimately wasted. ... The attempt by the show's creators to find some unexplored middle ground between wry comedy and outright horror is seldom successful, nor is their haphazard navigation between reality and dreams.

It is embarking on a 12-episode run and four installments do not make a season, but the indications are that the third year will be another charm.

"Spy" is a classic case of "stick with it"; the payoffs, when they arrive, are made all the richer for the nuance of the storytelling.

"School Spirits," which recalls "The Lovely Bones," albeit with a far less dreadful tone, is entertaining and Ms. List ("Cobra Kai") is magnetic. But her advantage is having only one role to play. ... Those around Ms. List are walking actorly tightropes. ... You'd like to know the filmmakers' philosophy about immortality, because there seems a very fine line between the physical world and that of the deceased, who are actually a lot more fun.

After each thoroughly convincing argument comes an equally cogent demolishing of it and the construction of another hypothesis. ... It is images such as these—a ghost ship flying into the night, its passengers either dead or terrified—that make "MH370" more than just a gripping investigation or a nonfiction thriller. There is an element of horror in a case in which nothing is settled, and no one gets to rest in peace.

As prepared as a viewer might be to laugh out loud, he or she will still laugh out loud.

"Daisy" will find an audience, though its lazy reliance on '70s counter-cultural clichés and apocryphal stories grows tiresome.

Mr. Howey is rather colorless, but his lack of palette serves his co-star well: Ms. Gonzaga ("She-Hulk: Attorney at Law") is the spark that lights up "True Lies," which is a pretty funny show when not trying to dazzle us with car chases, gunfights and displays of computer graphics that are probably gibberish.

[Craig and Elaine's] chemistry is sound and they are the characters in whom we're invested. But even as the Patoff malignancy grows and the casualties mount, the stakes for our heroes remain low, making it unlikely that the audience will commit to the entire enterprise.

A rather delicious thriller. ... In the intricacy of its storytelling "Liaison" does require our undivided attention, which is not an obstacle as regards Ms. Green and Mr. Cassel: They are hardly lusty teenagers, but they generate considerable heat.

"The 12th Victim" is a beautiful thing to watch, in its black-and-white interviews and dreamy aesthetic, but it will leave a viewer in a troubled state of reflection long after it is over.