Spencer Kornhaber

A wacky premise and judging panel (will.i.am, Alanis Morissette, Nick Lachey, and the “musician, innovator” Grimes) just disguise the same schmaltz and strained belting that have been common on network TV ever since American Idol premiered in 2002.

A a mournful mishmash of a ceremony that only emphasized its dark context. ... It was a celebration suited to an Olympics that many aren’t sure should exist at all. ... The moments that drew viewers into rapture were outnumbered by jolts back into distressing reality. More egregiously, the four-hour ceremony devoted multiple minutes to John Lennon’s “Imagine” as arranged by Hans Zimmer and sung by performers around the world, including the overexposed celebrities John Legend and Keith Urban.

Charming. ... Hulu’s High Fidelity does, refreshingly, correct the exclusionary spirit that went with the original’s lack of diversity. Yet crucially, the series retains the assurance that music preferences reflect something individual, ineffable, soul-deep, and in need of sharing.

Extremely uneven but often-lovable 10-episode comedy series.

Like its predecessor, the documentary is a piece of workmanlike TV that relies on restless editing, conspicuous background music, and repetition, with talking heads providing both sharp insight and familiar platitudes. ... There’s no denying the force of the material here nor of the ambitious, decades-spanning, multi-angle tale that the series tells.

Irresistible, even as the rap competition recycles American Idol’s clichés. ... Cardi is the show’s most reliable entertainment. Her flamboyant outfits and voices—she’s lately loved affecting a mafia-don mumble—liven up the first two episodes. But she’s also Rhythm + Flow’s voice of reason, verging on cynicism. ... The other judges also come off as constructed characters who embody specific reads on what’s good and bad hip-hop.

Transparent has always been about surviving cataclysms and leaning into change. “Musicale Finale” makes a bighearted attempt along those lines, if not an entirely successful one. Songs written by Soloway’s sister Faith pleasantly sing-rather-than-show a series of final transformations for the characters. The lyrics get so hyperbolic as to seem trolling, but there’s just not much drama. Fine actors who once expressed complex emotions in charmingly messy cross talk now spend too much time shouting out slogans as if they were Elsa of Arendelle. The ideas powering the show remain interesting, though.

Queer Eye’s formula—manipulative and effective, awkward and transcendent—remains the same as before, but the emphasis on the Fab Five as individuals does change the series’ value proposition somewhat. ... With the intensifying spotlight, though, the guys—and all they represent—have thankfully come to seem more three-dimensional.

The Homecoming movie’s combo of well-edited stage spectacle and behind-the-scenes segments—intimate, hard-fought, occasionally tense, politically explicit, personally specific segments—make it a career-defining document.

The HBO comedy’s exceptionally devilish final season. ... More than ever, the show’s quest for laughs overlaps with a quest for offense; it sometimes seems like the show’s ticking through a list of sensitive topics to riff on.

Rather than contend in a cheesy quiz show or an overproduced melodrama, singles chase dopamine as they would in addictive video games. This is what Netflix’s refreshing and distressing new show Dating Around nails--both in what it portrays, and in the viewing experience.

[The season premiere] is one of the more quiet and soulful High Maintenance episodes to date. But once the Guy is back in New York City for Episode 2, the show’s mischievous comic energy returns with two stories that dovetail alarmingly well with recent controversies about the potential mental harm of marijuana use.

The performances are excellent, maybe better than ever before. But Cards has always been a show whose plot contortions could confuse and whose incremental intrigue could bore, and those problems are worse now that everyone seems to be whispering. There are interesting ideas at play, though. ... Unfortunately, it isn’t until more than halfway through the eight-episode season that Claire’s big plan becomes clear.

The Apocalypse premiere can barely muster even the baseline bonkers, though: Forgoing the directive to terrify, it relies on first-draft camp comedy.

Old dynamics flip, long-gestating character studies pay off, and feelings geyser up in surprising places.

Queer Eye is queer on a level deeper than its sanctifying of homosexuals as domestic superheroes. It’d be queer--though not as fun--even without the yaaasing of groomer Jonathan Van Ness and the tight Little Life tees of foodie Antoni Porowski. ... “You’re telling me what I already know, but I need to be told,” one subject says. This empowering approach is especially effective with Season 2’s two curveball clients: a cisgender woman and a trans man.

It is great, great TV. Much credit goes to the group of highly watchable experts, whose breakout stars include Karamo, a satin-swathed bro whisperer; Jonathan, a whirligig of sass and kilts and moisturizing wisdom; and Antoni, the self-consciously pretty boy and supposed food whiz. Their targets are nicely varied and likable, too.

We’re told what we’re watching is worthy of acclaim, even if our eyes and ears tell us otherwise. All of which not only keeps the characters from feeling like actual, three-dimensional people

The show is clearly hoping that audiences will share that stereotypically Italian trait as it channels Federico Fellini and The Godfather. Murphy is more of a workman than a high artist, though, and his meanderings here muddle an intrinsically strange, socially resonant story.

Transparent is as beautiful television as ever. ... The characters’ shaggy-dog awkwardness, it must be said, is sometimes shared by the show itself to its detriment. ... But even such missteps are admirable signs of the show insisting on the full humanity of marginalized people, regardless of which side of any given border they’re on.

The Broad City duo does not suddenly discover responsibility and sobriety. What instead happens is that the world inflicts some pain upon them, and the show guffaws at their gonzo squirming.

As the season progresses, writers/actors Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney deftly show the couple mending trust even as one party maintains a secret that, one expects, will eventually become a “little corpse.” ... B-plots involving the couple’s friends and family members prove mostly uproarious, as well.

Although Fring’s first arrival is, unshockingly, a muted one, the sight of Giancarlo Esposito as a fast-food manager may nevertheless dislodge a few tense memories in the Breaking Bad fan’s brain. Remember the careful way he assembled his fish stew? Remember the precise manner he used to cut an underling’s throat? What a fitting addition to the Saul story: a devil who works in details.

Its deft and satisfying first few episodes should please both the voyeurs and the feminists, and more importantly highlight how the two groups can overlap.

Promising a web of Jungian symbolism, Lynchian surrealism, and Abrams-y subterfuge, but nearly no compelling characters, little narrative cohesion, and blah cinematographic vision, it represents the preposterous pinnacle for the if-you-confuse-them-they-will-come trend.

NBC’s new show about cops and criminals who zap between the present and the past itself zips along with the merciless efficiency of, well, an expertly made network procedural. Which gives rise to plenty of eye-roll-worthy moments--but also allows the show to successfully deliver the philosophical sugar rush that has made time travel one of the most persistent fiction narratives in history.

The show creator Jill Soloway’s deeply empathetic filmmaking style and her writers’ penchant for fine, funny details give the series soul and prevent the characters from tipping over into full monstrousness. The performances are more precise than ever, naturalistically portraying people who are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Most impressive is how Soloway’s team keeps finding fresh angles on the same characters navigating the same big existential questions.

None of it innovated on horror tradition--echoes of The Blair Witch Project, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Amityville Horror abounded--but the creep-outs were executed with careful timing and visual flair. The documentary aspect and the limited cast size thus far has also offered convincing, grounded characterization of the leads--and more importantly, characterization of their relationships.