The New York Times' Scores

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For 2,543 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 40% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average TV Show review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Mrs. America: Season 1
Lowest review score: 0 Notes from the Underbelly: Season 1
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,262 out of 1262
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1262
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1262
1262 tv reviews
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  1. American Born Chinese: Season 1
    Easy to watch but just as easy not to watch, “American Born Chinese” strives to charm you in ways that may work or may make you wince from their familiarity.
  2. Happy Valley: Season 3
    In order to set up a satisfyingly visceral conclusion, Wainwright forces the action and pushes at plausibility a little harder than those viewers will be used to. The story’s focus also is diluted by her indulgence of characters from the first two seasons who are brought back but not given much to do. Those offenses are minor, though. And the mechanics of the plot fade in the face of the prodigious performances by Lancashire and Norton.
  3. A Small Light: Season 1
    A serious attempt is being made at a complicated mix of tones, the kind of thing an accomplished director working in a shorter time frame would be more likely to pull off; here, executed by committee, it’s done proficiently but without the kind of subtlety or imagination that would do full justice to the story. But there are moments in “A Small Light,” particularly in the first two episodes and again at the end, when it fulfills its promise, and can move you to sudden, unexpected tears.
  4. Fatal Attraction (2023): Season 1
    It is competently made and nice to look at, it has a knockoff version of a languorous Southern California vibe, and Caplan and Jackson are both engaging. ... What’s missing is the metabolism, the transgressive energy and — at least in the context of its time — the glossy sexiness that the director Adrian Lyne brought to the film. The thing you wonder as you watch the series isn’t why they made the changes they did, but why they bothered making the show at all.
  5. John Mulaney: Baby J
    One is tempted to say this is his most personal work, but that isn’t quite right. That first shot tips us off to a theme: You can be invisible in front of a crowd. Mulaney’s comedy, however, has become spikier, pricklier, sometimes slower while remaining as funny as ever, like he’s a pitcher who learned to mix up speeds.
  6. The Diplomat (2023): Season 1
    A political thriller laced with romance and written, with some success, in an Aaron Sorkinesque high-comic, high-velocity style. ... Russell is not as funny as the show needs her to be. ... Luckily for “The Diplomat,” Sewell has no trouble getting in touch with his inner Barrymore, and he walks away with the show.
  7. Mrs. Davis: Season 1
    “Mrs. Davis” the series, on the other hand, cartwheels from the sublime to the goofy. I wish it took itself more seriously (which probably also would have made it funnier). But it has moments of astonishment.
  8. Tiny Beautiful Things: Season 1
    It describes emotions rather than developing them, and elevates platitude to a dramatic principle. Hahn, a skilled comic actress, is especially poorly served by the show’s jumbling of tones.
  9. The Last Thing He Told Me: Season 1
    The series stumbles around for a few episodes while it establishes the Hitchcockian ambience (circa “Vertigo” and “The Birds”) and puts in place the clues to Owen’s past that will pay off in later revelations. (The seven episodes run from just 37 to 45 minutes, and the pace is generally brisk.) But it quickly gels into a better-than-average whodunit and a superior family drama, one whose denouement hits you with surprising force.
  10. Beef: Season 1
    What makes this one of the most invigorating, surprising and insightful debuts of the past year is how personally and culturally specific its study of anger is. Every unhappy person in it is unhappy in a different and fascinating way.
  11. Mae Martin: SAP
    A better show would find more connective tissue and a funnier one would tighten up some stories, cut one or two and add a few punch lines. But doing that might also make Martin seem more like everyone else. It’s already an amusing, effortless vibe here, one whose pleasures derive in part from being comfortable to be what it is.
  12. Marc Maron: From Bleak To Dark
    The emotional centerpiece of his new special is the 2020 death of his partner, the director Lynn Shelton. Here is where he really shows his evolution, because he handles this passage with a light touch, humbly and without the melodramatic negativity of his title.
  13. Rabbit Hole: Season 1
    It’s more polished and more complicated than the typical entry, and crucially, it’s funnier, with a sense of humor that ranges from reasonably subtle verbal and visual jokes to outright slapstick. Weir is solidly inside Kiefer Sutherland’s somewhat limited wheelhouse.
  14. The Night Agent: Season 1
    Subversion of the action-thriller norm is a good feature, though it comes with a downside: When the tension between the equally matched pair inevitably turns romantic, some of the air goes out of the show, as detection and action make room for bland soul searching and weak rom-com repartee.
  15. Swarm: Season 1
    It feels as if no one really knew where they wanted to take things. In the balance of the season, the viscous, seductive ambience and dream-logic storytelling mostly fade out, replaced by high-concept, tonally garish episodes that hold your attention but stand alone like neon billboards, adding little to our understanding of Dre beyond the facts of her back story.
  16. Lucky Hank: Season 1
    “Lucky Hank” is disarmingly funny, though it feels like a draft that doesn’t yet know if it needs to be a short story or a novel. Unlike Hank with his students, however, I’m willing to hope that this show might reach its potential if it applies itself.
  17. The Academy Awards
    There was a crisis team in place to handle the fallout from any unexpected catastrophes like Will Smith’s attack on Chris Rock at last year’s show, but there was nothing it could do about the ordinariness and sameness of the ABC broadcast.
  18. Chris Rock: Selective Outrage
    It was certainly not as startling as Will Smith hitting him at the Oscars, but his long-awaited response, in his new Netflix stand-up special “Selective Outrage” on Saturday night, had moments that felt as emotional, messy and fierce. It was the least rehearsed, most riveting material in an uneven hour.
  19. History of the World, Part II: Season 1
    In an era of dutiful brand extensions and pointless revivals, it turns out to be history that’s surprisingly worth repeating.
  20. Daisy Jones & The Six
    It’s disappointing that “Daisy Jones” mostly falls back on rock ‘n’ roll clichés and shameless melodrama.
  21. The Consultant: Season 1
    Basgallop’s cross of “Silicon Valley” and “The Devil’s Advocate” doesn’t come together because he hasn’t invested sufficiently in the dramatic infrastructure. We’re left waiting for Regus’s mask to come off and wondering if there will be anything there when it does.
  22. Party Down: Season 3
    Don’t get me wrong, “Party Down” is still shriekingly funny. It even does the impossible and pulls off a successful “the gang gets high on mushrooms” episode. But the pathos is closer to the surface now.
  23. Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence: Season 1
    Across its more than three hours — its final episode clocks in at 74 minutes — it has some of the weight and a fair degree of the artfulness of the shows that kicked off the true-crime boom.
  24. Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal: Season 1
    If you don’t already know its stranger-than-fiction twists, “Murdaugh Murders” is worth watching simply for its coherent, if slightly and predictably sensationalized, account of the events.
  25. Murder In Big Horn: Season 1
    It’s an atmospheric, moody production, relying heavily on images of the bleak, windblown environment of the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations. ... At the same time that it exposes the flimsiness of those verdicts, though, the show allows that some responsibility may lie with a native community that doesn’t value itself enough to keep its daughters safe.
  26. Killing County: Season 1
    If that all sounds talky, it is. “Killing County” is a convincing but boilerplate retelling of the problems in Bakersfield.
  27. Hello Tomorrow!: Season 1
    In general, “Hello Tomorrow!” breezes past the world-building, hoping, not unlike Jack, that you’ll get too caught up in the pretty pictures to worry about the details. And damned if it doesn’t work, some of the time. ... But the series is so stylized, not just in the design but also in the performances and the “Guys and Dolls” dialogue, that the characters often feel cartoony and unconvincing. What is thoroughly, achingly real is the pervasive theme of lies and why people tell them.
  28. Lockwood & Co.: Season 1
    It’s very satisfying in its own straight-ahead manner — touching and quick on its feet, with an excellent performance by Ruby Stokes (the sixth sibling in “Bridgerton”) as Lucy, the female point in the typical two-guys-and-a-girl teenage-melodrama triangle.
  29. C.B. Strike: Season 3
    The characters could be stereotypes, but as imagined by Rowling, adapted and directed by Tom Edge and Sue Tully, and definitively portrayed by Burke and Grainger, they’re fully dimensional.
  30. Cunk on Earth: Season 1
    I found most of “Cunk,” while frightfully clever and well made, and masterfully performed by Morgan, not quite funny enough.
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