While there seems to be a lot of story to sort through in Season 2, the reason why XO, Kitty continues to work is because of Cathcart’s exuberant charm.

Fans of the original Yu Yu Hakusho manga will definitely want to check how this energetic live action version realizes its classic characters. But there’s plenty to enjoy for the rest of us, too, with Takumi Kitamura’s detached sense of cool as rookie spirit detective Yusuke, the series’ unpredictable sense of humor, its high-flying fight choreography, and sharp use of VFX.

Julie is full of great performances, peppy pop songs, and a solid storyline we’re excited to dig into.

Ren Faire works not only because it’s dramatic and stylish, but also because it’s a docuseries about some pretty interesting characters in a tension-filled situation.

The commentary by dozens of admirers and career-highlight TV and movie snippets are great of course, nostalgic but purposeful, meaningful in the context of Brooks’ life and influence on showbiz. But Apatow digs just deep enough to show that the guy is a true, honest-to-gosh restless artist at heart.

A fun addition to an already fun series.

It’s not as good as Downton Abbey, but Belgravia still holds a viewer’s interest.

We’re hyped to see how our heroes will confront the latest Vought threat. Confidence in themselves and their powers is growing.

Just like the podcast that spawned it, your enjoyment of a particular episode of Song Exploder depends on how much you like the song being exploded. ... Here’s a sign of how much we liked Song Exploder: We just subscribed to the podcast and the Spotify playlist.

Whether you were a fan or not, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is a fascinating and thorough look at one of the biggest reality franchises ever—warts and all.

Strange Planet has the potential to be one of the most human animated series we’ve seen this year, despite the fact that none of the characters are actually human.

With a few small exceptions, Emily in Paris Season 2 is basically just more of the same, and who could ask for anything more? ... Emily in Paris remains an undeniably watchable delight, short on substance but long on satisfaction.

The Cuphead Show! has created something more than the sum of its parts. It continues Netflix’s trend of superb video game adaptations by creating an animated world so intricate and alive that it will make any animation fan swoon while remaining fun and relatable for any age. Just put on an episode and try not to smile.

Even though Beartown takes its first episode to set things up, it does a lot of showing instead of giving a lot of exposition. That’s a good sign that the series will make for a well-paced drama.

Sometimes it’s nice to just let a show cook, and The Witcher continues to make weird meals with its oodles of diabolical double crosses and inevitable “there’s a spell for that” moments that bang the story off in another new direction. (Seriously, there are portals everywhere.) There’s a bit of uncertainty creeping in, given the backstage drama of Cavill’s departure. But everybody else in this series is fully invested and really, really good.

Part of the show consists of spectacular photography, of course, and as in-depth an exploration of the people and culture where the Woodruffs visit that can be done in a 39-minute show. But the key to this series will be the changing relationship between Bob and his son. ... That bond, and the resetting of their relationship where they each see the other more as peers, will be the key to setting the 6-episode first season apart from similar series.

If you’ve stuck with Emily in Paris for three seasons, you’re getting more of what you love (or love to hate watch) in Season 4, Part 1. And crucially, it will take you back to Paris and help fill the Olympics void in your heart.

Even if you’ve never seen a single episode of Disenchantment, now’s a great time to start.

The Tex Avery-style sight gags on Cat Burglar can get tiring because they’re doled out at hyper speed. But Rowdy’s deaths, and even the vignettes where he succeeds, make up for that.

While Kwabena isn’t in a dead-end job anymore, Dreaming Whilst Black shows how much of a struggle it will be to get his voice heard in the entertainment industry, which may even be more insular than the outside world.

Two engaging leads and a witty script make Cherish The Day a show that immediately draws you in.

Take your average police-involved murder mystery and amplify it with creepy goings-on of both the real and imagined variety, questions of deja vu and busted memory, spooky kids, and some terrific performances from Jessica Raine and Peter Capaldi, and you’ve got The Devil’s Hour.

The Change is a funny show with a simple premise, which works mostly because of Bridget Christie’s winning performance.

The Long Song hinges on the relationship between July and Caroline, and both Lawrence and Atwell’s performances meet this challenge. Atwell is terrific as the benign but awful Caroline, and Lawrence matches her as the whip-smart July.

Because of the shooting style, each promises to have the same intensity as the first episode, and we’re looking forward to seeing just how the case — which at first blush, looks like it’s a pretty strong one against Jamie — tests everyone involved, and their perceptions of just who is capable of horrific acts like Katie’s murder.

In season two, he’s got backup in the form of some also lethal old friends, as well as another personal score to settle. This series understands what it does best, and honors its source material by casting the correct version of its main character.

Unafraid to expose kids to emotions and situations that used to be reserved for grown-up sitcoms in the ’70s and ’80s. Are there lessons to be learned in these episodes? Not really. ...Tig N’ Seek is cute and is smart enough to not drive you crazy when you’re watching it with your kids. That can be said about a lot of Cartoon Network shows, of course, which is why a lot of them are cult hits with adults. This could be one of those.

Save Our Squad with David Beckham is a sports-movie-worthy underdog story, charming and inspiring and a reminder of the childlike joy of sports.

Mulaney’s magic act remains using turns of phrase as his sleight of hand. He’s just now a much creepier magician. ... We get two-thirds of the story from Mulaney, but he’s still holding back on us. Whether he’s doing that for his benefit or for ours, we may never know. But he’s still a gifted and often hilarious storyteller. No matter what story he’s selling us.

Goosebumps: The Vanishing has an interesting, scary mystery at its center, as well as good performances from Schwimmer, McCarthy and Bartels.

There are a lot of elements that make Welcome To Wrexham a fascinating watch, namely how two Hollywood superstars are going to come into a small Welsh town and try to turn around its football team without making like they’re saviors.

Harlem may feel like a show that you’ve seen before, but the four stars are more than charming enough, and the writing is clever enough, to make the show stand on its own.

The show is off to a great start. ... Tudyk’s performance makes Resident Alien work, but there’s a quirky-enough world around Alien Harry that the show should be more than a one-note joke.

The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song is a well-paced, well-researched look into how impactful religion in the Black community has been, stretching back to the earliest days of our country’s history.

ABC’s new sitcom, Shifting Gears, is pretty damn good.

Rap Sh!t suffers a bit from some broad gags and the phone-centric gimmickry we cited earlier, but at its heart is a story of two friends taking on the patriarchal world of hip hop, and that story is one we’re eager to watch.

The Midnight Club continues Mike Flanagan’s ability to creep and scare the pants off viewers while building stories with great characters. The varied tones of the club’s stories should bring an interesting wrinkle to Flanagan’s usual dark and tense style.

STREAM IT but not because you love fashion or competition shows, simply because it works best as a half-hour comedy: funny, full of characters, and a very easy way to wind down after A DAY.

Animal Control‘s first couple of episodes elicited some big laughs and has already established an ensemble with some good chemistry. There’s nowhere to go here but up.

Sunny presents an interesting near-future scenario where a woman questions everything she knew about her marriage and life. The mystery she investigates may end up being mundane, but the performances of Jones and Sotomura — and the relatively brief episode run times — make it a fun ride to go on.

Munno’s schtick may be a bit over the top, but the enthusiasm she brings to Italian food and cooking makes The Pasta Queen a fun show to watch.

Netflix’s rapidly diversifying lineup of reality shows has another binge-worthy entry.

McGregor’s performance is key to the success of A Gentleman In Moscow, a series which has its dark moments, but is a whole lot more hopeful than it seems on the surface.

Cinematic, emotional, and actionably nostalgic, the third season of Star Trek: Picard feels like the truest representation of what returning Patrick Stewart and the TNG era was supposed to be for.

Fraggle Rock: Back To The Rock has all the charm that made the original series so popular, and it’s made in a way that it’s completely easy to make a new generation of fans get into the show immediately.

Rennervations is a touch frantic and a little unhinged, but that just seems to be a reflection of its star’s personality. We love seeing the conversions and the organizations that will get these really fun new vehicles.

Emily in Paris isn’t going to make your Top 10 Best Shows of 2025 list. But it’s still a high-quality comfort watch with good vibes and a charming cast that can give you a much-needed rest from reality.

Citizen Nation is the antidote to every show you’ve seen about teens lately. These teens don’t care about internet fame; they care about restoring dialogue to the discourse in this country, and it’ll be fun to see them all getting ready for and competing in We The People.

Bad Sisters continues to be a fun show to watch because all five actors playing the Garvey sisters have great chemistry with each other and look like they’re having fun with this dark comedy. It also helps that Horgan and company continue to write smart dialogue for them. We just hope the second season story keeps the focus on the sisters and their lives.

Tom Green Country is a fun docuseries that shows what the early ’00s pop culture phenomenon is doing now, and how funny Green is, even when he’s not doing his old absurdist shtick.

Season 2 of Modern Love is better than the first because Carney has decided to concentrate on more intimate stories, and not try to lean on huge names to get people’s attention.

Unlike his treatise on 9/11 and the War On Terror, Knappenberger has done a good job of contextualizing just how the nuclear arms race got started. The first episode of this docuseries is almost 80 minutes long, but it’s riveting because it doesn’t just recite the history you might have learned in class or while watching countless History Channel docuseries on World War II.

The magic of Pegg and Frost is alive and well, and Truth Seekers strikes the perfect balance of heart, horror, and humanity. This one is more than worth your time.

While adding boys into the mix takes away some of the singular magic of the first season, The Wilds remains an extremely entertaining and beautifully performed series.

There is some goofiness to the show, especially Wrecker’s desire to “blow stuff up,” but The Bad Batch feels like a worthy spinoff to the very popular Clone Wars series.

We love hearing American traditions mocked from outsiders. It’s worked wonders for the careers of John Oliver, Trevor Noah and Ronny Chieng in recent years. Jay pulls it off in this hour by spending the first half of it offering her fresh perspective to heteronormative relationships, making it personal through her eyes as a “junior man” kind of lesbian.

The biggest surprise here? How entertaining this dumbass franchise is in 2023.

While Agents of Chaos may not come to any concrete conclusions about Russian interference in the 2016 election, it makes a pretty damning case that the Russians definitely had some influence, and that US intelligence officials were slow on the uptake in fighting it.

McConaughey’s smooth Southern drawl is the perfect fit for Presley, the animation is fluid and attractive, and the laughs come at you quickly. It’s a raucous good time, and deserves a good, old-fashioned try – even by suspicious minds.

The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window is a smart parody of a very parody-ripe genre, but it also works well because Kristen Bell plays the main role with the right degree of seriousness.

Plot lines don’t veer too far into WTF territory without a payoff. Through vulnerability and introspection, Platonic strikes a nice balance between lighthearted and serious storylines.

Lupin continues to be a very satisfying watch because of Omar Sy’s performance and the well-written and executed heist scenes.

Despite the self-indulgent aspects of The Last Movie Stars, Ethan Hawke has created a fascinating docuseries about one of the biggest Hollywood power couples ever, as well as the issues that defined their marriage.

The second season of Percy Jackson And The Olympians starts off with a raucous episode and promises to send its heroes on a new quest immediately, which is exactly what an adventure series where we already know everyone should do.

Gaffigan is a proven comedy commodity who gives just about anyone a good reason to check out Hulu if they’re not already regularly on that platform.

The show has maintained its likeability and goofy comedic tone after four seasons, and it’s impressive just how many levels it manages to operate on.

In Season 4, while Raq’s relationship with Kanan contains both promise and peril, Kanan’s exploration of where he personally fits into his larger family history broadens the scope of what we’re learning about the character.

Where the series shines is in the little details, especially when it discussed the lives of the other six crew members who died along with McAuliffe.

The show is and always has been an incredibly well-acted soap, buoyed by Badgley’s excellent lead performance, and its continued commitment to taking things to crazier places than it ever has makes it more than worth your while.

The Boyfriend is a fascinating watch, but not just because it’s a social experiment in same-sex relationships from a company that doesn’t tend to do shows about them. But it’s also a good example of a dating show that can be genuine about how relationships form and are maintained.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is beautifully-made and sweetly innocent, making it a radically rebellious take on a franchise that sometimes seems lost in its own lore.

While there’s a lot going on in the second season of My Life With The Walter Boys, we’re still on board with the Jackie-Alex-Cole triangle, and are now intrigued by some of the side stories, as well.

While the last few seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm can’t match the consistency of its earlier ones, there are always funny moments when Larry complains about something and/or he gets his comeuppance for his grouchiness. In the first episode of Season 11, there’s both, plus a promising new season-long arc. That’s more than enough for us.

Yellowjackets does a good job at tackling three genres at once. It’s a thriller, a coming of age story and a survival story, and all of it is presented in a way that makes us want to see more.

Run The World proves that a TV formula can be repeated if the characters and actors are appealing and the writing starts to create worlds around them that are start to stand out on their own. After the first episode, the show is on its way to doing just that.

I just can’t stop loving And Just Like That… and I also could not stop binging the first six episodes that were sent to critics recently. It might not be good TV, but I firmly believe it is top tier entertainment.

Call Her Alex is fan service for Call Her Daddy listeners for sure, but there’s no denying that Alex Cooper is a woman who earned success on her own terms, and her story will absolutely appeal even to non-fans.

As soapy as Roadkill is, it has a great cast going for it, led by the always watchable Hugh Laurie. In fact, Laurie is the entire reason to watch this pulpy miniseries, just to see if his character can outrun everyone trying to bring him down.

Everything Now is a charming teen dramedy with some serious emotional issues underpinning the adventures of a teen just wanting to do teen stuff.

Sins Of Our Mother is an intense retelling of an ongoing story, one that has more tragedy and twists and turns than even Shakespeare could come up with. And it’s all told in a very straightforward manner because with a story this intricate, there’s no real need for bells and whistles.

Strong performances and an interesting story drive Dope Girls. The first episode was well-paced and explained the main characters’ situations well enough to make us want to watch the rest of the story.

Sharp writing, charming performances, and the undeniable appeal of an entertaining underdog story combine to make Disney+’s newest series one of the most enjoyable shows of 2021.

We’re hyped for Stevens to be the audience mirror as Pepper tries to manage inside an institution where the walls themselves seem crazy. Devil in Silver is also having a ball bucking standard convention. .... We felt as disoriented as Pepper does, all hopped up on Haloperidol, as we tried to determine what were mind games and what horrible truths are really lurking in New Hyde.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is a visually-stunning animated series that has a fresh take on Peter Parker’s early days as New York’s only webslinging crimefighter.

Our Flag Means Death continues to emphasize story over gags, and manages to be both funny and touching at the same time.

Sparking Joy did just what its title described while we watched it. Kondo’s preternatural calm was fascinating to watch and the way the transformed spaces transformed people’s lives made for emotionally satisfying TV.

Stolen Youth isn’t just an informative look at a shocking case. It’s a well-made docuseries that’s always respectful to these survivors.

The series does a bang-up job of easing you back into the world and organically weaving the info you need to know into the character dialogue and motivations. ... By exploding the plot, the sophomore season does what the best go-for-broke storytelling does: it will leave you craving more.

We run the risk of praising Marty and not how entertaining Mr. Scorsese is, with its murderer’s row of talking heads, reiterations of bits familiar to cinephiles and smart analytical revelations – and inevitably will be in future installments. .... Probably should be 10 hours. At least.

Taylor Swift: The End of an Era is a nice illumination into the singer-songwriter’s hugely-scaled professional operation and her personal, sometimes emotional world.

Despite being part of the MCU, Ironheart stands on its own as the story of a teen genius, tech vs. magic, and how that genius navigates all of it in her hometown of Chicago.

Berry handles this all with the understated, dignified charm longtime viewers of GBBS will find utterly familiar.

Live In Front Of A Studio Audience: The Facts Of Life/Diff’rent Strokes succeeded because it doesn’t even try to come close to the way the original episodes were staged. Everyone had fun with embodying the iconic roles they were given, and it showed.

M.I.A. offers a compelling central character to follow as it descends into the criminal world undergirding the glitz and glamour of Miami.

Part of Emily in Paris’ charm is that the show never takes itself too seriously. That charming tactic is implemented again in Season 3, but the writers make [a] refreshing, effective effort to give characters, storylines, and relationship dynamics some added depth this time around.

He can also host a nature show like nobody’s business, bringing a down-to-earth quality to the genre that we don’t often see from the mostly-detached style we see most of the time. ... Amazing shots and a tension-building score add to Smith’s presence, whether it’s the scenes he’s in or just the ones he’s narrating.

We appreciate the fact that American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez treats its story with respect and not as a tabloidy story ripe for outrageous dramatic scenes. That and the generally good performances make the first season of this new franchise worth watching.

Painting With John does take some getting used to, but once you’re into the show’s rhythms, it feels like a relaxing way to end your day.