Malcolm Venable

P-Valley blends the profane, the sacred, and the politics of the almighty dollar to tell sharp, wildly engrossing stories about Black women on the margins who use their bodies to keep families and whole communities afloat. It's also one of the year's best new shows.

Hollywood is a retro fairy tale — a progressive, partly preposterous semi-lucid dream in which the underdogs actually win. It's unbelievable but sumptuous, just like all fairy tales should be.

For fashion junkies, and for people who find Naomi Campbell's shade as life-giving as chlorophyll, Making the Cut is catnip. Just don't look for anything revolutionary. It sticks to a formula, and that's fine. The formula works for a reason.

As a piece of scholastic infotainment, the series has tons of merit. But as a piece of prestige television, it falls short.

Godfather of Harlem has a way of sucking viewers into its seductive sphere, where silly asides live comfortably with explosive, gory violence as well as informed dreams of what Harlem might've been like at a pivotal point in history.

While The Politician's loopy turns can sometimes make it feel like the marriage of a live-action cartoon and a Wes Anderson movie, it's never dull and always comes back to the same question: What do you have to be made of to be president today?

The rhapsodic and dreamy timbre of Moonlight, the film that won the Best Picture Oscar in 2017, comes to life again in David Makes Man, a gorgeous, attention-grabbing new series on the OWN Network.

Up 'til now, it's been a serious show that happened to be funny. In Season 3, the formula flips: Dear White People is a very funny show with serious stories to tell, and it's more enjoyable than ever.

As it progresses, Grand Hotel seems confident to check a whole bunch of boxes — thriller, family drama, crime story, and workplace dramedy — yet eventually, the hodgepodge of styles gets distracting and the story overly melodramatic.

For all its clutch-the-pearls content and narrative twists, Euphoria tracks its characters' coming-of-age with honesty.

At times, some of the dialogue affirming Blanca's choices to live and dream and hope feels like she's giving speeches pointed directly at the audience. Anywhere else, this might seem strained, but for Pose it's vital.

Bringing this work to TV was a risky move, but the finished product is exceedingly well done and, at a time when government gobbledygook has trumped all previous notions of unbelievability, perhaps more urgent than anyone could have predicted.

Obviously, some will see the gender of the leads a momentous occasion worth trumpeting, and it is, but the show is packaged so nicely and the partners are so complementary that their sex becomes moot.

Ignore its distractions and Fosse/Verdon is a savory, decadent treat, but ignoring Michelle Williams means depriving yourself of a show-stopping performance.

Veep, in its last season, comes full circle, a final trip that's as predictable as it is nonetheless enjoyable.

The Act never seizes an opportunity to make us understand why Dee Dee manufactured this system of toxic codependency missing out on an "Aha!" moment that might've made The Act magical. But for plain old Mommy horror fun, The Act does its job nicely

Ups and downs aside, Black Monday's meta, madcap silliness works as a parody of the genre and a fresh take on an old story. It's a good investment.

It's a defining true crime story for the Internet age.

It may not provide much in terms of tips or motivation (watching Netflix kinda implies that the viewer is chillin', by definition) but it does spark a glimmer of inspiration and yes, some joy, much like its happy and gay counterpart Queer Eye.

Julia Davis impressively keeps believable the more outrageous she gets. All this is imbued with the muted, knowing style of humor the Brits love so much and do so well, and fans of that style will enjoy this to bits.

House of Cards never quite maintains momentum, again; the first five episodes sent to critics are sometimes promising, sometimes plodding.

Yes, you've seen All American before, but despite its cliches, the first three episodes The CW sent to us in advance deem All American an engrossing, timely and relevant high school drama with loads of potential.

In the pilot episode at least, The Cool Kids panders to stereotypes, cliches and tropes and boy, it's a good time.

Though the first episode wobbles in trying to balance the sweet and sentimental stuff with its saltier, funnier edge, Single Parents could become a gem in ABC's family comedy lineup once it sharpens its edges.

The Good Cop is a cop procedural that follows its own sort of formula, one that injects some warmth, some innocence and breezy, goofy delight into this typically testosterone-filled space. Where's the crime in that?

The Purge works, but it works only if you take its warped commentary at face value.