An odd failure. It has a halting structure and a maudlin view of history that make the show feel dated.

“Severance” is political in spite of itself—the employees’ dawning realization of their mutual oppression makes them accidental proletariat. And yet it is almost impossible to watch the show and not think of real-life parallels to the situation at Lumon.

Jerrod Carmichael’s new HBO comedy special, “Rothaniel,” is a vulnerable offering wrapped inside a virtuoso performance. ... Deft visuals mesh with Carmichael’s opening lines, which situate his audience as confidants, or even something more.

Bad Entrepreneur TV isn’t thrilling; it’s comfort food. ... As the show made its way toward its final episodes, it seemed to me that it, too, was beginning to go through the motions. More money, more pressure, more problems, more ambitions, more New Age drivel. I wanted to go back to the start, to looser jokes and mesh muscle tanks.

“Bel-Air” is correctly circling around the ugliness in Black politics, but it’s too fearful of being misunderstood, or misrepresented, by its viewers. ... The show understands drama as ominous scores, leaden dialogue, and unnecessary cliffhangers.

Rogen’s Gauthier is sketched out more confidently than any other character. The alluring, trashy chic aesthetic of “Pam & Tommy” is a smoke screen for a series that is reluctant to give its protagonists—the lovers it would purport to raise to a classical perch—any real depth.

Bell’s series falls short of questioning the systems of paternalism that endowed a serial rapist with so much institutional control. Sometimes its Black American audience is rendered as an impressionable bloc, pinging between the conspiracies of white supremacy and that of Black respectability politics. ... “We Need to Talk About Cosby” is most compelling as an honest self-reflection of Bell himself, both as an artist and as a Black man invested in the betterment of his people.

Despite their endlessly harrowing moments, the first four episodes of the second season were the first time that “Euphoria” actually felt fun to me. Rue is once again a full-blown addict, and everything is horrible and scary, but also exciting and sexy and stylish.

“Gemstones” is brave, and I want it to explore rather than shy away from all that subtext—which is that straight white men are straight white men because the rest of us are not.

Naturally, everyone mentions “Lost” as the “Yellowjackets” antecedent, but “The Leftovers,” Damon Lindelof’s superior, baroque creation, is a better comparison.

In "Landscapers," Sharpe and his fellow-creator, Ed Sinclair, who wrote the script, fully integrate the breaking of the fourth wall into their haunting study of marriage, victimhood, and role-play.

My initial distrust turned to begrudging appreciation, and ultimately, admiration.

The series attempts to rescue the novels from their atomic-age limitations but largely squanders its material on a clone of every other blockbuster fantasy quest. ... The larger problem is that Goyer’s “Foundation” seems bored with its source material.

The media critic of yore emerges intermittently, though Stewart seems content to have ceded the satirist stage to his former colleagues Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, and John Oliver. ... The opportunity to nail an equivocating government agent both invigorates the host and gives the show a fleeting sense of rhetorical purpose. The second episode, “Freedom,” has a hazier topical focus but higher entertainment value.

“Reservation Dogs” is a near-perfect study of dispossession. ... “Reservation Dogs” is a mood piece, and a sweet one, a collection of intertwined and poetic portraiture that focusses not solely on the central cast.

This ten-episode charmer, streaming on Hulu, is a fine sendup of media culture, in particular the true-crime genre. ... No deep feelings are stirred, yet the laughs come steadily, especially because of Short, a master at embodying the helpless narcissism of Broadway’s show-biz denizens.

A third season, produced in response to the passionate reception of the first two, has just been released, and it is as funny, moving, and humane as they were. ... Instead of the glossy blur of nostalgia, he and his partner, Ori Elon, give us pointillistic specificity; ith its richly worked texture and deft, patient rhythm, the show delivers pleasures similar to those of an expansive nineteenth-century novel, and has similar stakes.

“The D’Amelio Show” doesn’t scratch the same itch that “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” did, largely because it is much more sanitary and restrained, and therefore less gripping. ... What the show does manage, perhaps surprisingly, is to serve as a pretty good P.S.A. for the toll that social media’s panopticon-like effects take on its participants.

What makes “The Chair” worth watching is Oh.

Scott is a joy to watch; he is consistently, convincingly vivacious—the embodiment of Mitford charm. ... This is a period drama that makes fun of its period’s stuffiness, playing on its stilted conventions. ... The adaptation is also funny, and not shy, on certain unflattering truths regarding motherhood.

The eight episodes I’ve seen of the new season (there are twelve in total) can feel underbaked and free-floating, the writing formulaic, the plots even slighter than they were in Season 1. The inconsistency of quality has the effect of intensifying the successes. ... As the presence of Dr. Sharon reveals the sharper edges of Ted’s ego, you can feel the show pulling away from the coach’s centripetal force.

Welcome to “Upstairs, Downstairs,” Aloha State edition. The series, called “The White Lotus,” named for the fictional resort where the action takes place, is a near-note-perfect tragicomedy. ... The actors are excellent across the board, but Bartlett, whose practiced amiability turns progressively feral throughout the series, is a revelation.

It is disappointing to report that the first three episodes of Season 2, which premièred in June, denature much of what made Season 1 a non-normative surprise. I’m not bothered by the “This Is Us” time jump, to a couple of decades into the future—it’s the general decline in quality. The dialogue, which had been so poetic and fascinatingly oblique, now seems insecure and utilitarian.

Ends up amounting to a creeping self-portrait of its namesake, rendered through flashy critiques of race and the media. ... “Ziwe” is trapped in an interminable dance with whiteness, its muse. ... I found myself most interested in “Ziwe” when the host was in the presence of other Black women—in other words, when the Ziwe persona was put to the test.

Beneath the surface charms of this clever, entertaining series, Martin wants to show us how difficult it is to be a moral person, and how beautiful it is to try.

It’s a bizarro centaur with a horse’s head and a man’s hairy ass: the concept is there, but the assembly is all wrong. ... Murphy seems lost. This is supposed to be Allison’s show. Why does it feel like the joke is on her?

“Girls5eva” is spawned from the Fey model: accessibly absurdist, riddled with clever zingers, thick with critique. The cast makes this a fun binge.

“Hacks” is not a joke machine; the later episodes are downright melancholic. ... It’s not convincing that this person would force an awakening in someone like Deborah. But Einbinder works hard to match Smart, and, at moments, seeing them get into grooves of compassion, I felt myself flush. The rest of the cast, by the way, also kills.