Birch, Abrahamson and company are using Rooney’s first novel, but everything that seemed so magical and easy in 2020 is more labored this time around.

As Deborah and Ava work to hone their new material, Hacks itself begins to feel sharper. Both the act and Deborah’s off-the-cuff insults feel more plausibly funny, strengthening the illusion of Smart as a comedy legend.

Everyone collectively remembers the making of The Godfather as inspiring a high point in American cinema. Now we can all say it’s also inspired a forgettable, God-awful low point in television.

I’ve asked for Kurtzman and company to just let Star Trek be Star Trek. With Strange New Worlds, they finally have, and the power of possibility is palpable throughout.

This is another terrific show. Just don’t expect to come out of it being able to explain a lot of what happens. Kirby’s story is all that matters, and that plays out as well as you would expect when you pair a great actor with a great director and potent material.

A series with such a precarious high-concept as Barry should have no business being better in its third season than it was in its first. Yet it is.

Because the actors are so good, and because Simon, Pelecanos, Burns, and company have been making Eat Your Vegetables TV for two decades and counting, We Own This City is almost always extremely watchable(*) in a way that eludes so many other sober-minded dramas about tears in the national fabric. (*) That said, the group’s experiment in nonlinear storytelling results in mixed success.

It never feels like Saul is repeating itself, as the characters keep making huge shifts. ... These episodes still feel alive with possibilities. [Apr 2022, p.73]

So, no, it is not the immaculate experience that the first season was. But in reaching further and trying more, Russian Doll Season Two ultimately justifies the series’ existence as more than just a one-shot.

Tokyo Vice definitely has its moments, including a prolonged yakuza action sequence in which swords ultimately prove more useful than guns. But it’s hard to not come away with the feeling that the show could have been so much more.

Everything complements everything else and makes it more interesting, rather than the humor making the plot feel dumb, or the life-and-death stakes making the gags seem in poor taste.

There are many interesting aspects to Moon Knight, but neither the comic books nor this TV show named for him quite know what to do with them all.

FX is going with two episodes for the long-awaited season premiere night, and they somehow have even less in common tonally than “Barbershop” and “Teddy Perkins” did, while being alternately as ridiculous and chilling as the most memorable moments of each of those.

The series offers genuine insight into the subjects Joyce cares about, but wrapped around them is an exceedingly charming workplace comedy. [Mar 2022, p.75]

Pachinko is technically impressive on all levels — it’s visually stunning, with a knockout score by Nico Muhl. The show is also gorgeous to look at in in each era it covers. ... But early and often, Pachinko makes clear that where our people come from, and what they’ve been through, is always a part of who we are in the present. And it delivers that message with precision force throughout. Don’t miss it.

Life & Beth is, like its heroine, imperfect. But if it occasionally trips over its own ambitions, it also demonstrates that whatever Amy Schumer wants to try next — as an actor and/or a creator — she has the varied and impressive skills to make it work.

We’ll see if Season Two turns out any better, but by leaning on some of what Star Trek has always done well, it’s off to a more promising start.

This isn’t a game-changing drama, but it’s an absurdly entertaining one.

It’s a maddening, gripping, and at times startlingly funny recreation of a story that would feel too absurd to be true if we didn’t already know otherwise.

The reality of Bel-Air has its moments, especially whenever it stops trying to draw attention to the story’s sitcom roots. But once you take away the nostalgic link to a beloved series from decades past, the end result is just a decent approximation of a CW drama like All-American, which has a very similar culture-clash premise.

It’s an overly long muddle, never quite sure what it wants to say about its title character, or how to say it.

The whole thing builds in very satisfying ways, up through a season finale that is so tense, I may have forgotten to breathe a few times. That concluding hour is far more pleasurable than anything the innies get to experience as they complete tasks they don’t fully understand, in service of a world and lives they’re never allowed to visit.

The books live and die by Reacher himself as this dirty, ass-kicking genius. If he’s not interesting, none of it is. So far, we’ve gotten one onscreen Jack Reacher who had the charisma but not the size, and another where the reverse is true.

We Need To Talk About Cosby does not attempt to provide a definitive response, but it nonetheless deals sensitively with the whole messy issue. It acknowledges the many ways Cosby’s work positively impacted so many lives, while never taking its eyes off of the lives he irreparably scarred along the way.

Pam & Tommy repeatedly acknowledges the unfair toll the sale of the tape took on Anderson’s life, even as it’s wildly entertaining most of the time. Pamela Anderson never got to have a Jane Fonda-esque second act, and maybe couldn’t have even if Rand Gauthier had never entered her husband’s life. But here, she at least gets her story retold in a far kinder and more endearing way.

The Afterparty could probably stand to lean more into its fundamental weirdness, but it’s an entertaining ride nonetheless. Get your own batch of popcorn ready.

It’s far more ambitious than anything Fellowes tried with Downton, but at times more ungainly, too. The servants barely have anything to do, for instance, and it can be hard to keep track of various relationships and feuds among this huge cast.

As We See It gently and smartly suggests that Jack, Violet, and Harrison’s lives, and their problems, are just as normal and messy as everyone else’s, even as they’re just as unique as any other human being is from one another.