Steve Greene

There’s an element in this season of “Frayed” getting all its pieces in place. The closing moments of the finale feel like both the logical culmination of episodes’ worth of careful buildup and a gateway to an exciting chapter if the story continues. If it follows the steady path it’s already plotted out, “Frayed” has all the makings of something really special.

“Last Chance U” finds success in taking its cues from the people in frame. Rather than try to graft on a predetermined narrative, directors Whiteley and Daniel McDonald, along with DP Terry Zumalt, try to take in a season that’s not sensational and that can move at the players’ pace.

The anxiety that marks the show is here channeled toward embracing the way weirdness and stupidity seem to blanket the realities of corporate life. In finding new ways to torque these office mainstays, “Corporate” has given the rest of the Hampton DeVille team plenty of ways to transform some of that simmering rage of previous seasons into a kind of office-centered goofiness. Lance Reddick remains an episode-to-episode comedic powderkeg.

“Hanna” finds space in Season 2 for a flurry of fantastic performances that fill out the murky, grey area surrounding Hanna herself. Where the show used to feel like two blunt objects rammed together in different cities around Europe, this season is a more artful balancing act.

Even with all that uncertainty, “Dark” has maintained that highwire act for three of the most thrilling sci-fi TV seasons ever made. To see it make it across the chasm with its ambitions and technique intact is certainly something worth remembering.

Though this special still has more jokes per minute than just about any other show on TV, one tradeoff of this doubled runtime is that there aren’t quite as many blink-and-you-miss-it gags as in the regular episodes. But the core idea of having jokes in as many forms as possible still holds. Salahuddin is still a pro at delivering a punchline under his breath. ... If this “Black History Month Spectacular” proves anything, it’s that this is a show with both a timelessness and specificity to thrive in any era.

With so much of the tonal groundwork taken care of by that first episode, each new attempt to go back to that well gets less and less shocking. ... Yet, even when those people around Patrick seem thin, it’s the voice work on the show that becomes another saving grace.

The show isn’t as comprehensive in its scope as it might be intending at points, but there’s still plenty of fertile storytelling ground where it does focus its attention.

It takes all the messiness of affection and heartache and loss and instead of affording it to a central couple dealing with someone on the outside, it treats these three characters as partners each worthy of attention in their own way. Like any good relationship, it’s hard work. But there’s enough communication between characters (and between the storyteller and audience) to build something special.

Where most historical fiction seems like it’s arcing toward some grand thesis statement of a fixed point in time, “Barkskins” is just as much about foreshadowing the problems of the resulting generations as it is capturing a bygone moment. It might not always lead to the tidiest, easy-to-wrangle storytelling, but it ends up reflecting its time and our current one in a way these kinds of shows are not always able.

This is a show that rarely takes its time. Watching things escalate from tiny misunderstandings to disasters threatening to destroy a city or reconstitute the fabric of timespace is this show’s sweet spot.

“Upload” feels like a spiritual tug-of-war between a handful of thinly sketched starting points that never coalesce into anything significant.

The first four episodes of this opening season definitely have their charms — Jason’s meet-up with an ex to try to heal some open emotional wounds has some unexpected push-pull moments — the back half is really where “Trying” settles into a groove.

Most comedy specials arrive fully formed. “Middleditch & Schwartz” gives you the joy of working things out together.

“The Last Dance” isn’t necessarily an evidence-gathering operation, but as the series goes on, the input from teammates, coaches, and members of the Jordan inner circle all seem to ask whether the outcome of June 1998 was worth all the turmoil. For many viewers lifted by the way “The Last Dance” captures the sweep of history, the likely answer will be “yes.”

Even when the plot machinations later in the season grow exponentially more designed for maximum stakes, there’s still enough goodwill built up in the show’s opening chapters to see how the crew sees their way past a mounting list of obstacles.

The result is a straightforward, few-frills retelling of the web of conversations that ensnared Dawkins and led to the charging of a number of his regular collaborators from inside college teams and apparel companies alike.

Season 4 finds the ideal line between evoking both the debauchery of his past and squaring one man’s outsized legend with his more understanding current form.

“Dirty Money” episodes tend to function as cleanly produced explainers, recounting chapters from the recent past while nodding to their ramifications in the present. Whenever the show has an opportunity to roust itself from the more clinical on-camera interviews and chart firsthand some of these aftereffects, there’s a sharper final product.

The most valuable part of “Cosmos: Possible Worlds” is its merging of boundless optimism and the necessity of urgency.

Fluffy and safe, it’s not the strongest endorsement of what the rest of the series might bring. (At the time of this writing, no additional episodes were made available to press.)

The main issue is that so much of what the show presents of them are their surface-level emotions, not the characters themselves. By Episodes 4 and 5, the selectively hidden parts of not just Paul and Ally’s relationship but their past individual histories do float to the surface. The question is if audiences will stick around long enough for those breadcrumbs to guide their way out of the cold.

As the show’s emotional swings match Syd’s various states, Lillis provides the necessary bridge between them. ... In the rare moments when Syd, Dina, and Stan get the chance to operate as a group, there’s a glimmer of what the show could be if it moves beyond these first seven chapters. Even when they’re split apart, “I Am Not Okay With This” exists in a comfortable cross-section of pace and scope that gives Syd’s story the breathing room it needs.

“Babies” is akin to watching a documentary about falling in love that spotlights couples but also leans primarily on the testimony of dating app experts. There’s a story to tell there, but the priorities seem skewed.

The show’s best energy and ability to subvert expectations of a show set in this time and place is evident right from the pilot. Even still, there’s a sense that this series’ best moments could still be ahead of it. ... What’s on offer right now from “Year of the Rabbit” is a chance to see some very gifted performers add a goofy curveball to the London of centuries past.

Viewers expecting a tight, compact album might be pleasantly surprised to see this season take on a more open-ended Spotify playlist feel, designed to keep playing and be enjoyed knowing that the end is still far in the future. At times, it’s an eclectic mix of ideas and execution, but there’s a great amount of satisfaction in just letting it all wash over you.

These new episodes show how both the construction of the character and Pullman’s performance are a foundation worth building on again and again.

Aside from a few orienting establishing shots here and there, many of these episodes commit so fully to this alien approach that it’s a legitimate surprise to be snapped back to reality when more traditional looks at various creatures start to sneak through. ... It scratches the human need to be reminded that there is more left to discover, that there are still some quasi-mystical elements of nature that science has barely had a chance to observe, much less explain.