[A Very English Scandal] never settles on a tone. One moment, it’s delivering sly, savage moments worthy of Ricky Gervais’ “The Office.” Then it becomes earthquake serious as one heterosexual politician reveals why he wants to decriminalize homosexuality.

The important thing to know about this season: Issa is pushing forward. Insecure shows life never stops being a work in progress.

This is no CBS crime procedural, and viewers deserve the chance to delve into this smart mystery for themselves.

It's wonderful HBO is willing to subsidize so many artists, but Treme feels more like a tax write-off than an actual series.

The most endearing, functional dysfunctional family in all of TV gets off to multiple good starts in the new season of Showtime's The United States of Tara.

There hasn't been a show since "The Sopranos" so concerned with bodily functions, and it makes its oft-compared predecessor "Sex and the City" look like a TeenNick production. But it's also fresh, bracing and original.

Party Down, about a group of aspiring Hollywood types working as caterers, returns for a second season of stale jokes.

Like recent true-crime exposes NPR’s “Serial” and HBO’s “The Jinx,” Murderer is an absorbing look at a bizarre case that seems to shift with almost every new talking head. It’s an addictive, scary indictment of small-town policing and a warning to those poor or marginalized by their neighbors.

Leaving Neverland is not balanced, not by any standard. It is, however, a devastating testament to how childhood sexual abuse rages like a ferocious cancer through survivors and their families.

This part of Dylan's story is, of course, well known. In understated style Scorsese makes it fresh, unearthing a wealth of rare performance footage of the impossibly young and magnetic singer and mixing it with incisive talking head interviews. [26 Sep 2005, p.41]

The production budget is almost up to the challenge. Some of the costumes--especially of the French court--look cheap. But there’s such a delight in seeing such a gifted ensemble deliver lines that still resonate.

Boardwalk shows no signs of losing its identity. All signs point to a bloody proper finish.

Plotting is not Fellowes' strength, but Downton's appeal is visual.

Web Therapy is far more entertaining [than Episodes], but, alas, wildly uneven, probably in part due to the need to weave new material around the Internet series of the same name that spawned it.

The script is deliciously witty, but it never lets you forget some nice people are coming to perfectly horrible ends.

Penny Dreadful’s set work is unparalleled, and this season the bright oranges and yellows of the Old West make for a welcome contrast to the washed-out blues and grays of Old London. Oh, there is action here.

'24'... has matured beyond sheer novelty while retaining its relentless excitement. [28 Oct 2002]

The original “Roots” exposed and drew on the power of truth for millions of Americans. This Roots is an echo of that. It stands small in the great shadow of the original.

It’s not the end of an era. It’s the end of a good, occasionally great show that overstayed its welcome.

Arnold's Beyond Scared Straight hews to the premise of the original and proves to be just as gripping.

Esmail is one of the few directors who takes full advantage of the medium, imbuing ordinary objects with menace--a trio of vending machines, fruit being harvested--and distorts sound to pluck your paranoia. There are tracking shots in the first four episodes that play like homages to Alfred Hitchcock. As for Roberts, I’m not about to sit down for a film marathon--but I am down for the rest of Homecoming.

Of the cast, Winger seems to be the weakest link, brittle and uncertain, but it's too soon in her arc to write her off. The series is like a mystery novel, but the crimes of the heart here are ones the patients unwittingly inflict upon themselves and the lengths they'll go to hide from the truth. Watching Byrne's sullen shrink match wits with Ryan's cool therapist is the best reason to book an appointment with In Treatment.

The fifth and final season of BBC America’s Orphan Black finds Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany turning in some of her most subtle, authentic work. ... The mythology of the show, like many of these genre shows (“Lost,” “Alias”), can be more convoluted than the tax code.

If the script can at times seem slight, Douglas and Damon are 
superb.

For its own good, Legion needs to get out of its head.

On Veterans Day, Wartorn is a somber reminder of the price that many pay when they serve their country and a wake-up call to the rest of us about the debt we owe them.

A superb, bracing look at the terrorist attack on Boston and its aftermath.

Squeezed into a blue spandex suit with plastic chiseled muscles, the towering Warburton has done the nearly impossible. He has created a character who is ridiculously outlandish yet more than a mere caricature. [8 Nov 2001, p.50]