Sophie Gilbert

When characters aren’t laboring through expository dialogue about how the bees are almost all gone and why a Miami synagogue is falling into the ocean, they’re asserting again and again that humans are too flawed not to fail at saving the planet, and themselves. This conclusion isn’t necessarily wrong, but it neutralizes any momentum the show might have had.

The show clearly wants to underscore that women, given too much power, would be as bad as men. But in focusing so dogmatically on its central argument, it forgets to inscribe any of its characters with a motivating force.

In some episodes, I got impatient for Lyonne to arrive. In others, the introductions were as thrilling as one-act plays. Johnson’s stamp as the director of the first two episodes is hard to overstate: He makes ugly landscapes seem beautiful, blocks interior scenes with an artist’s eye. ... On Poker Face, it’s easy to forgive the fact that Charlie often accidentally nudges people toward their imminent fate, or that the show’s vision seems rather cynical, with the do-gooders invariably getting bludgeoned by the devious schemers.

It isn’t until the end that the show’s full vision is discernible. ... The show’s various pieces manage to be pretty intriguing. ... Whatever you think of Corden, his performance as Jamie is superb: largely sympathetic, with grace notes of weaseliness and spite.

The show, because it has to hew strictly to an eight-episode format and the conventions of TV, sometimes feels like it’s indulging old patterns more than upending them. But its cast is so compelling, and its truths so sharp when they stick you, that it doesn’t really matter. There’s enough packed into it that you’re bound to find something that resonates.

The Bear is horrifically stressful; it’s also thrilling, ambitious, funny, devastating. ... The show ends with a revelation that feels almost uncannily like magic. I didn’t begrudge it, because it seems to set up abundant questions and opportunities for a second season, and series that are this thoughtful—this sly and tender and artful—are rare enough to be relished.

It’s wacky, unsettling, and remarkably assured.

Despite some of its more predictable twists, The Girl Before is riveting, even counterintuitive. Brühlmann, the director, takes material stuffed with clichés and gives it a subtler texture.

Critiquing Pam & Tommy as a single, unified work is hard because it’s such an awkward hybrid of genres and ideas. ... I enjoyed this show. It made me think about Anderson differently—as someone who’s survived extraordinary victimization and typecasting and who’s managed to redefine how she’s perceived. But the series, which so often feels like it’s trying to atone for our old mistakes, seems intent on pointing out ethical transgressions while looking right past the notable void at its own core.

The whole thing feels much too rote and timid for HBO—even if the costumes deliberately evoke modern sensibilities and wouldn’t be out of place on the ladies of And Just Like That, who are trying as resolutely to assert their relevance in a changing world as Agnes is. The mood is too saturnine, the occasional nods to social criticism too stilted.

A ponderous, melancholic muddle whose primary motivation seems to be making amends for sins of the past. I watched it all without stopping, occasionally hiding my head in my hands.

He still effuses charisma out of his pores, still reels viewers in with the lone hook of a skeptical eyebrow. He’s still brutally sarcastic. ... But the tone has changed. A panel discussion in the first episode, among veterans who say their lives and lungs have been scarred by burn pits, is urgent in a way that feels more suited to the nightly news than to comedy TV. ... The second episode, “Freedom,” is more emblematic of what the series could be. It’s a withering take on the American right’s response to the coronavirus pandemic that counters shouty talking points with acute logic.

It’s a scattered, frivolous confrontation with history that neglects the more crucial parts of the Clinton impeachment. ... Even when the series does allude to larger elements within American politics, it does so with such an emphatic tone that the point itself is hard to take.

About four episodes into the new season of Apple TV+’s The Morning Show, I stopped expecting it to have the qualities of a prestige television series—narrative complexity, emotional resonance, logic—and began simply appreciating it for what it is: one of the most batshit-expensive soap operas ever made. ... If you can meet The Morning Show on those terms, its second season is quite a ride. ... The Morning Show is camp: earnest, schlocky, nonsensical drama that’s not ruined by its excess and ridiculousness, but redeemed by it.

Within its tight frame, the series packs in more than shows three times its length. It’s particularly rewarding in its portrayal of Ji-Yoon’s personal life. ... What truly sells The Chair, though, is how fast and funny it is while throwing around a legion of informed ideas about a well-trodden subject.

The series, as it cycles through satire, horror, and prestige psychodrama, can’t quite decide whether the wellness industry is a virulent scam or a desperately needed curative for broken souls. ... Nine Perfect Strangers connects only occasionally with its characters as human beings.

The White Lotus seems to fit within a spate of recent HBO shows about rich people rotting in their own toxic privilege—Succession, The Undoing, Big Little Lies—but it’s baggier than those shows while also being, in fleeting moments, more insightful.

Apart from the setup, which implicates viewers more than anyone—the obsessive investment of a bunch of so-called grown-ups in the lives of beautiful young adults feels creepy at best—the new show is a carbon copy of the old one, only less white and less straight. ... The reboot rarely connects with its characters; instead, it seems to feel faintly sorry for these icons of doomed youth, as constrained by their self-presentation as they are.

The genius of Hacks is how deftly it critiques decades of TV comedy, reminding viewers of what’s missing now (stars of Deborah’s wattage and grace) as much as what’s changed for the better.

An ensemble series of monologues on the theme of loneliness that, rather than resonating in this particular time, feel stiff and flat.

Mare of Easttown is just a subtle, textured portrait of a place where some people are suffering, and a woman is doing her imperfect and insufficient best to help them.

AMC’s newest British crime drama is replete with violence, slathering on the carnage like so much frosting on a cake, but its excess is intentional and its pacing exquisite. ... I love it. I cannot get enough of this show. ... Gangs of London isn’t for the squeamish, but its baroquely complex universe can be a thrilling one to visit.

The overall style is part Adam McKay (who, incidentally, produced the series), part winking Daily Show segment, part Crazy Frog music video. ... Hoback asserts that QAnon is a role-playing game that’s somehow managed to bleed into reality, with all the awestruck marvel of a man who hasn’t personally suffered its consequences. After watching the series, you might conclude that it would be more meaningful, and more productive, to hear from someone who has.

Men in Kilts has a visceral appeal that’s distinct from its hosts, as delightfully squabbly and equipped with double entendres as they are. It offers, quite simply, an escape from others, without an escape from companionship.

Verbosity isn’t his forte (“Mmm, it’s very good” is his standard response to culinary excellence) so much as exquisite presentation and an understanding that he’s in on the joke.

Kay, an English writer who worked on the BBC America series Killing Eve, brings to Lupin some of his previous show’s impudent spirit, as well as a willingness to tweak its audience’s expectations.

It tells instead of shows, maybe because its visuals are consumed with the stylistic tics of network procedurals: a saturated color palette, recurring images slowed down to a nightmarish crawl, exterior shots so gloomy, they’re almost Stygian. This is storytelling that feels the need to constantly regain its audience’s attention after each commercial break. More troubling, though, is the show’s tenuous conception of its central character.

Dylan’s motives are impossible to fault: She tells the filmmakers that she wants to share her experiences again so that others who have endured what she has feel less alone. She deserves to get to do that, and if more exposure brings catharsis, then so be it. But the paradox is that in portraying events so selectively, Allen v. Farrow leaves too much room for yet another public wrangling.