Mark A. Perigard

Kevin Smith's animated "Clerks" is pure looniness with a crunchy layer of sweetness at its heart. The stars of the original 1994 indie film are all here, including Smith as Silent Bob. The animation is crisp and the facial expressions alone can be hysterical. [31 May 2000]

This eight-episode installment available Thursday just might be my favorite of the series. It has more heart and far more willingness to address the messiness that comes with adolescence. It also features several genuinely creepy moments that have everything to do with something not of this world.

The number of betrayals and reversals in the next two episodes are enough to twist any sane viewer into a pretzel.

It all seems so ridiculous until you remember we lived through it. At times, “Loudest Voice” plays like a white collar version of “The Sopranos,” as when Ailes orders his PR guy and fixer Brian Smith (Seth MacFarlane, “The Orville”) to take care of a leaker. Crowe, covered in mostly great prosthetics and looking as if he is wearing a fat suit that ate another fat suit, wheezes with every waddle and authentically underplays a human volcano.

The six-part “Years and Years,” an often funny, often bleak, deeply unsettling look at our near future, follows the fortunes of the Lyons, a Manchester, England, family as they are rocked by the political and technological changes shaping the world. Imagine “This Is Us” crossed with “Black Mirror,” only with a slightly lower body count than the NBC sobfest.

ABC’s “Reef Break” is everything that CBS’ “Hawaii Five-0” should be — breezy, bright, a wee bit sassy, a whole lot silly, the ideal summer show to catch as a nightcap before bed.

Your appreciation will rise and fall on your enjoyment of seeing Boston and its people portrayed as profoundly racist and corrupt.

As with every good soap, there’s a bit of cathartic pleasure in seeing rich, gorgeous people suffer like the rest of us mere mortals. Whatever word you choose to describe “Big Little Lies,” the new season looks to be just as addictive as the first.

Unfortunately, it’s the law of diminishing returns.

Whatever pacing issues the miniseries has fade away in the final, 90-minute installment as DuVernay proves to be a canny storyteller, saving the most harrowing, horrific, heartbreaking chapter for last.

Newcomers can enjoy the film on its own — it features a few flashbacks to catch viewers up to speed — but it’s best savored after a series-binge. This film can stand as a series finale and, just as strongly, as a springboard for more episodes.

Turturro, who is credited not only as an executive producer but one of the miniseries’ four writers, gives one of the most restrained performances of his career. His cleric is soft-spoken, always watchful of every detail in a room. His efforts seem to give other performers license to overact.

The pilot shot extensively in Italy and takes great advantage of the gorgeous, historic locations, including the Roman Forum and Appian Way. The dialogue, however, is often distracting and grating.

When “Catch-22” takes to the skies, it soars. The aerial sequences are some of the best visuals seen in any TV production, beautiful and terrifying.

To the credit of creator Christopher Keyser (“Party of Five”), the series plays with expectations. Relationships bloom and wither in surprising combinations. Unfortunately, the show lacks a pulse.

In this true-life horror tale of a government refusing to acknowledge scientific fact and its ruthless demand for obedience, “Chernobyl” feels especially timely.

I’m pretty sure there was a Lifetime version of this story and the best part was it was over in two hours. Cardellini does the best she can, but the writing for her character and her motivations make no sense.

The drama ultimately arrives at the destination you knew it would right from the opening moments. By trying to tell everyone’s story, “The Red Line” forgets to tell one good one.

While much of the teen supporting cast, including Kyanna Simone Simpson as best pal Yvonne and Sarah Mezzanotte as mean girl Marnie, are just right, Rose is flat through most of her scenes. The scares, at least in the opening episodes, rise from jump cuts or dreams. Ten episodes just seems too long for any heart to suffer this story.

Williams is magnificent. ... It’s a small miracle that “Fosse/Verdon” never loses sight of its goal — capturing the love and frustrations of two talented people who could never let each other go. “Fosse/Verdon” is “Scenes from a Marriage” — with none of that jazz.

The dramedy digs deeper, tightening the connections between these seemingly random residents.

Despite the often tense, even grisly moments, the show remains furiously funny — as when Oh as Eve reacts to a robocall from a roofing company or craves a hamburger during a visit to a makeshift morgue. As the object of a growing manhunt, Comer manages to constantly keep viewers off-balance with a performance that is perpetually off-kilter.

Mattfeld delivers a nuanced performance as a woman who has chosen to meet the world with hostility as a calculated defense. No matter how middling the story, she’s always worth watching.

In its best moments, this reimagined “Zone” features some of today’s most intriguing actors and swerves from fun to disturbing and back and is just as provocative as the original.

The #MeToo movement would seem impossible to riff on, yet Veep’s gloriously inappropriate writers have found a way.

Tacoma FD needs more than a spark to get going. It needs a tanker full of gasoline and a convenient bolt of lightning.

The Fix looks like something you’ve seen before.

In true Bluth fashion, what you think you know about the Bluths you don’t know at all.