Michael Haigis

The season’s length strains the effectiveness of its throwback sensibilities, passable action choreography, and formulaic characters—attributes which may be better suited for standalone feature films.

The Politician balances well-honed satire and melodramatic frenzy, succeeding in its aim to engender both a critical appraisal of real-world politics and grotesque car-crash voyeurism. Both of the show’s competing sensibilities flow from Platt’s captivating performance, and one’s enjoyment of the series will largely depend on one’s take on Payton.

Simon and Pelecanos, in their attempts to venerate this era of New York, occasionally misstep in assuming that their characters remain interesting by virtue of their inspirations having merely existed in an iconic city at an interesting time.

While dark humor and palace intrigue are the cornerstones of Succession, season two develops a sense of lingering melancholy that, while not aimed at making its main characters more sympathetic, imparts a poignancy to the never-ending conflicts within the Roy family.

These episodes offer a boggle of slightly underdeveloped narrative arcs. Although they comprise a varying and empathetic portrait of millennial anxiety, season three falls short of the show’s benchmark for narrative tension.

While the initial episodes suffer some narrative foundering, season three retains the show’s campy flourishes, including an upbeat, anachronistic score and intentionally stagey performances.

In its attempt to provide both character study and pure, unhinged abstraction, Legion has fashioned yet another visually distinct and uniquely bizarre season around a man’s unknowable mind.

In offering dystopian visions that hew closer to reality than they have in past seasons, these episodes exceed the show’s promise of nightmarish hypotheticals. ... While none of these episodes are as nihilistic as the show’s grimmest installments to date, they remain imbued with snarky, topical satire and dogged cynicism.

Unspeakable’s subject matter is self-evidently grave, but the series is filmed in a procedural style that lacks distinctiveness. The lighting is creamy and omnidirectional, and episodes are edited with a utilitarian devotion to plot. The quick pace does result in a sense of urgency, if only because the series never fully resolves one narrative tangle before it introduces another.

While the new episodes maintain the show’s satiric view of self-interested Hollywood types, a poignant theme emerges which represents an evolution for the series. As an introspective Barry takes inventory of his past misdeeds, the show’s storylines cohere around the reflexive lies people tell themselves, and the myriad factors which comprise the masks they present to the world.

The season’s conclusion asks as many questions as it answers, appearing to exist only so that Hanna may sustain itself, offering more henchman bones for Hanna to snap without wondering whether the character should, or even wants to, keep snapping them.

Gervais’s sharply honed comedic timing and delivery are undeniable, even when he’s working with such tiresome or obvious material as this. ... Still, the cumulative effect of these interactions and the countless others in which Tony berates or belittles the people in his life is ultimately numbing.

While the resolution of her predicament is somewhat vague, it remains sweetly fulfilling, because, while the series deals in opaque supernaturalism, its protagonist is easy to root for as she fumbles toward happiness.

Phelps struggles to thematically relate the fascism that envelopes the show’s setting to the story’s events as they unfold, or even to Poirot’s modus operandi as a detective. The detective remains a cipher, humorlessly bearing the weight of a tragic origin story and a nation’s decay on his shoulders. In the end, The ABC Murders suffocates the enthralling, exciting qualities of a detective mystery beneath a layer of self-regarding grimness.

[In] fleeting moments, the series reveals qualities in Brooke and Cary which amount to more than mere generational punchlines. Mostly, though, The Other Two is determined to define the siblings by their age bracket, and amounts to yet another portrait of underachieving, navel-gazing ‘80s babies.

The truth of Kate’s childhood isn’t as shocking as Black Earth Rising’s writers seem to believe it is. The series effectively defines both the real villains of its story and who Kate is, so much so that what she is, by the end, feels poignantly immaterial.

Black Monday mines humor from its Wall Street cesspool and Maurice’s extravagance, but those two components eventually undermine whatever goodwill the character might inspire.

While the humor in The Kominsky Method is antiquated, its greatest transgression is simply being unimaginative and boring, which is indicative of the show’s lack of a clear perspective.

In the tight span of 10 easily digestibly half-hour episodes, Homecoming manages to both thrill and propose a grim hypothetical: that the earnest practice of soldier rehabilitation and the economic rigors of the war business may not be able to coexist.

It’s not clear how much has changed--only that they’re less desirable than they imagine, and that their situation is less complicated than they think. After so much drama, the series arrives at the underwhelming conclusion that the grass only seems greener on the other side.

Created and co-written by Lena Dunham, Camping is replete with characters who are more layered than they initially appear.

Amazon’s The Romanoffs, an anthology series co-written and directed by Matthew Weiner, is ambitious but disappointingly inconsistent.

The conclusion of Maniac is only slightly ambiguous, and testifies clearly to the simplified truth that embracing human connectivity opens a person up to the power of healing. This saccharine conclusion fits the series, which, while impressive for its detailed and certainly imaginative world building, rarely dares to truly confound its audience--or challenge us with an assessment of mental health that doesn’t amount to hallmark sentimentality.

A formulaic exercise that aspires to emotional resonance. While it occasionally succeeds, specifically with regard to Grace’s characterization, the series mostly gets bogged down in arbitrary plotting and leads to a climax that manages to shock only because it’s so unbelievable.

American Vandal is filled with thoroughly sketched, instantly recognizable high-school types, but Kevin is a logjam of too many idiosyncrasies, and the series offers only the most cursory explanations for his quirks.

Overall, The Deuce formulates an intoxicating anthropology, characterized in equal measure by both possibility and sentimentality.

Despite paying cursory service to humanizing its principal characters, Jack Ryan is mostly interested in a battle between broad notions of good and evil. It thrives on the tension of Jack's chess match with bin Suleiman, reducing an entire nation's efforts to combat terror to a personal beef between two archetypes.

Ozark is conspicuously going about correcting past wrongs. As a result, it feels newly and brazenly confident, steamrolling through story at a pace that seems to reflect an active decision on the part of the show's writers to find that perfect sweet spot between the arty and smart, unpretentious pulp.