Genius: Aretha seems content to tell Franklin’s story through signal events in her life. Those broad strokes leave significant narrative gaps, but magnetic singing and acting from Cynthia Erivo goes a long way to keeping it on point.

Unconditional tries to be more than it is, which is a pretty conventional thriller. But the “message-y” parts of the show don’t get in the way all that much, and the story builds tension very well.

The performances are on-point across the board.

Alter Ego is silly, sure, but on a network that airs The Masked Singer, it feels downright dignified. And the contestants’ stories are worth watching.

World On Fire is certainly a character-driven drama, but those characters, and the fine performances that shape them, are more than enough to work through the disjointed first episode and see where their lives go as World War II grows in scope and danger.

We suspect that the remaining four episodes of the limited series will pick up, as the ship actually fulfills its doomed mission as an insurance claim. But if you want to get a good idea about the main two characters, the first episode does a fine job setting things up.

This new version of The Stand is off to an intriguing start, whether you’re a fan of the book or not.

As rough as the first episode may be for some viewers, just imagine if NBC hadn’t given Seinfeld a second chance after that sitcom’s initial struggles in both plot and ratings. Let’s see how Bust Down unfolds.

I’m amused – and compelled to see if Command Z can maintain this level of reasonably biting comedy through all 90 minutes.

When Cobra Kai really clicks is when the nostalgia factor is balanced by the interactions of the current group of kids. That balance is certainly out of whack in the first two episodes, but it’s something we hope gets restored later in the season.

While we didn’t laugh much during the first episode of Moonbase 8, we still saw the beginnings of three interesting characters and a great chemistry among them.

While Burning Body has its flaws, the performance of Úrsula Corberó helps viewers get past them and get into this very complex story.

Despite all our reservations, we’re recommending Gangs Of London because it feels like the story is going to be relatively straightforward, despite all the characters that will need to be addressed. At least that’s what we hope will happen.

Where Is Wendy Williams? is really hard to watch, but if you are at all interested in what’s been going on in her life in the last few years, or have been following the confusing drama around her care, this is a must watch.

Professor T doesn’t tread new ground. But the writing is solid and Miller and the rest of the cast do a good job of making the obsessive detective trope entertaining to watch.

Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test does its best to really show that the celebrities who are going through this extraordinarily difficult training aren’t getting any special treatment, from either the staff or the producers. We give credit for the celebs for participating, and many giving honest reasons why, and it’ll be interesting to see who makes it until the end of the ten-day training stretch.

The new version of Supermarket Sweep doesn’t try to dress up what’s essentially a pretty straightforward game show. Jones is an enthusiastic host, as you’d expect.

Kimmel makes an awesome Millionaire host, and the celebs are entertaining enough.

The movie is about two percent positive, 98 percent terrifying.

While Yellowjackets has its storytelling issues, it does seem that, with everyone settled into the story, that the stakes will be ramped up in Season 2. That should help keep our minds off the show’s glaring flaws.

Killing It gets off to a rough but promising start, thanks to a fun performance from Robinson, with an assist from O’Doherty. We hope that as the story gets more personal, the characters will outshine the gags.

If you’ve been hankering for another heaping helping of slow-moving, romantic drama a la Virgin River, then Sullivan’s Crossing should help satisfy that craving.

The first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are visually gorgeous, densely lived-in, and awe-inspiring at times. ... There is a big problem, though. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power might have a strong start, but its plot is laden with so many moving parts and far-flung heroes, it’s easy to see the story cratering. ... Without watching beyond the two episodes provided for review, we can only be cautiously optimistic — and skeptical of what’s next.

Girl Taken builds its tension in a straightforward manner, not through trickery or withheld information, and that is a rare commodity on streaming TV these days.

The premiere episode of this new American version of The Chase didn’t deliver as much tension as we expected, and did drag in parts. But we do see the potential of the format, especially with the three Jeopardy! champions in place as Chasers.

You might not learn much that’s new while watching Getting Curious With Jonathan Van Ness, but you’ll spend an entertaining half hour watching the ever-funny JVN get his questions answered.

Despite the cumbersome cast and retrograde gags, The Garcias has the same warmth as The Brothers Garcia series, and should be a fun nostalgic watch for fans of the original show.

If you liked EMHE the first time around, you’ll like it now. And you’ll also like watching Ferguson fumble his way through these jobs and bringing his comedic touch to a show that can get repetitive after awhile.

Precisely because Wolf chose to split up her new material into multiple episodes, you’re much more likely to want to watch the first 20 minutes so you can decide for yourself whether you want more where that came from.

The episodes we watched did fine during the funny parts, not as fine during the serious ones. ... But what we appreciated was the sophisticated nature of the humor we saw in each 16-22-minute episode. ... It’s also refreshing to not hear those [“remember when we did this?”] lines, and just have stories about how the humans relate to each other has so utterly changed because of COVID. Let’s hope the rest of the episodes follow suit.

Jammed with enough eerie and compelling cinematography to keep us watching.

City Of God: The Fight Rages On is a touch confusing to those who didn’t watch the original 2002 film, but has potential to be a tense thriller of a series after the first episode, which introduces us to characters both old and new.

While Laurie’s presence Anglicises Tehran a bit, we’re still intrigued by the subtleties of Tamar’s and Faraz’s stories, especially now that their stories have started to come together.

Despite the Goop-ish feeling we get seeing a man of privilege getting to go on psychedelic trips while counting Netflix’s money, there is still information that he imparts in How To Change Your Mind that will, well, change your mind about psychedelics.

Outlander Season 7 isn’t what I would call good TV, but it is a good season of Outlander.

The Wedding Coach is a light and fluffy show that will get people who have been through the wedding planning gauntlet nodding in recognition. Jamie Lee and her comedian guests treat the occasion with the right sense of humor, even if that sense of humor approaches raunchy levels at times.

Walker: Independence is a pretty straightforward western that is helped by a well-considered world that’s been built around its main character.

Yes, it’s an infomercial and yes, the NBCU ads during the “commercial breaks” are pure puffery. But there are more than enough funny moments to keep you watching. Just keep your finger poised over that one-minute skip button; you’ll need it.

Scamanda gets to the point of its story quickly, which is always appreciated during true crime docuseries.

There’s a lot about Panic that makes us roll our eyes. But we’ll give it a recommendation because we were actually rooting for its main character by the end of the first episode, and we were surprised that we were doing so. That’s a good sign for the rest of the season.

The Orville: New Horizons is back for a third season with a new home, some light, effective tweaking, and more seasoning for its core cast.

The cast of Rebel is the biggest reason to tune in (and we do mean tune in, because it’s on ABC). With Vernoff at the helm, the show should even out its rapid-fire pace and become an entertainingly rollicking and sprawling network drama.

Rotten Legacy is a sometimes-funny, mostly dramatic story about a mogul who acknowledges he might have been a rotten dad, but that his kids are a whole lot more rotten than he is, and he’s going to extremes to let them know about that.

Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy is a bit more detached than some of CNNs other documentary series, but it’s still an interesting look at a country that is much more than its tourist hot spots.

We’re not fans of the case Tony and Ziva have to figure out on NCIS: Tony & Ziva, but we like the fact that Weatherly and de Pablo are back in their fan-favorite roles, and their chemistry is as good as ever.

John Simm is the main reason why Grace is such a watchable show. The mysteries are sufficiently engaging to keep the show from dragging, but Simm is the real attraction here.

We knew exactly what was going to happen, given we saw the French pilot. But we were so entertained with Olson as Morgan that the mystery really didn’t matter.

Russian Doll Season 2 is good, but it’s not quite as great as Russian Doll Season 1. This new season gets messy with its wild narrative swings and lazy with its logic.

While being a bit one-sided, Bad Influence: The Dark Side Of Kidfluencing is still an interesting look at the dodgy world of kidfluencers, and how adults take advantage of kids who are doing the videos for fun, even though the channel is raking in millions of viewers and dollars.

Home Before Dark is a solid show that features a character inspired by a real-life kid investigative reporter.

Secrets Of Playboy does go into aspects of Hugh Hefner and his empire that people may not have heard before if they’re not following people like Madison closely. We just wonder if the revelations will start becoming repetitive or less shocking as the series examines each part of Hefner’s life and the brand he started.

While the first episode of Legends could have fleshed out some of the main characters a little better, it does just enough — with enough restraint — to keep us watching.

Carême is compelling enough to recommend, especially given the show’s lavish look and Voisin’s charismatic performance. But the storytelling needs to become a bit more robust after the first episode in order to keep viewers’ attention.

Our Kind Of People is a frothy show with a more serious underlying message about wealth, racism and women supporting each other. If you miss Empire, it should fill that hole in your schedule quite nicely.

If you’ve watched America’s Most Wanted over the past 33 years, you’ll know what to expect from its reboot. It’s odd to call a show about murderous fugitives comfort food, but it certainly is, both then and now.

With Reedus doing his usual stellar job as the brooding but caring Daryl, TWD: Daryl Dixon is on pretty solid dramatic ground.

Thus far, it skews a bit younger – teens and tweens – and toward the middle of the road, and even if it doesn’t inspire too many superlatives, it’s squarely watchable, maybe watchable-plus. The promise of higher-drama action and star-crossed romance seem likely to keep us on the hook to see how the story plays out.

While Flunked isn’t as funny as other recent school-based shows, the first episode introduces some potentially funny supporting characters, and the undercover aspect adds a lot of potential funny situations to explore.

DTF St. Louis is definitely a little weird at the start, but viewers’ patience will be rewarded with a quirky but interesting mystery starting in Episode 2.

Despite some convoluted challenges, watching these fan favorites push themselves is pretty entertaining.

We are hoping against hope that most of The Morning Show‘s third season will be more like the first episode’s first 45 minutes and less like the last 15. But given the evidence we’ve seen to this point, we don’t have a lot of faith that it will be that way.

While the information in UFO may or may not convince you that the US government knows more than it’s telling us about UFOs and extraterrestrial life, it’s presented in a fast-paced and entertaining manner that will at least pique your curiosity on the subject.

Dopesick will certainly be a slow burn in spots. But it deals with a subject whose depth most people aren’t aware of, and the performances are so good that it should keep viewers interested.

Lynely will succeed if it mines the differences between Lynley and Havers and leans on the chemistry between Suter and Barclay.

Run Away is another solid Coben thriller with good performances, a little bit of humor and lots of twists. Will it be memorable five seconds after you finish watching it? Probably not. But it’s something good to binge over a weekend.

The Hunting Wives is a show you know is going to be ridiculous going in, and it doesn’t try to hide its sexy, at times campy personality under the sheen of a prestige drama. Such brazenness is pretty refreshing these days.

We hope is that Wainwright manages to balance the whimsical parts of Renegade Nell with the more dramatic parts. It feels like the whimsical dropped off quickly by the end of the first episode, and it needs to be there for the series to be watchable. But it’s off to a good start.

Pleasant enough and will only get better once it starts building out its own world.

If you’re not already a fan of Carmichael’s, STREAM IT this first episode to decide for yourself whether you’re ready for what’s to come. There’s certainly nothing here, though, that would surprise fans who have watched him become more and more self-reflective and performative, from the most sanitized broadcast network sitcom version of Carmichael he first presented on NBC, to his 2019 HBO home movies, to Rothaniel, to now this.

Bupkis has some flaws, and Davidson at times suffers from the generosity he and his co-creators have given to the rest of the cast and guest stars. But it’s still a funny show that takes some surprising early emotional turns that still feel earned.

Dinosaur isn’t gut-busting funny, but its humor is purely character-driven, and it gives a view of autism that we’ve rarely seen on TV.

Latifah’s empathetic performance makes The Equalizer extremely watchable, as does the rest of the cast. We just hope that the cases Robyn McCall gets get better as the season goes on.

As with every anthology series, Black Mirror‘s episodes will vary in quality, but they’re always entertaining, and the first episode gives the new season a good start.

While it could have been a bit more informative, it does seem that Superpowered: The DC Story touches upon some aspects of the company’s history that aren’t their proudest moments, which is always welcome in projects like this.

My eyes roll at the thought of another road-trip series to far-flung locales, but Men in Kilts has just enough personality and lighthearted spirit to warrant your time.

We trust Greg Garcia to not beat a dead horse with pandemic gags on Sprung. But for the first episode, they are a good way to introduce the story of Jack and the rest of the characters, and Garcia is well on the way to establishing character humor as the center of the series.

You certainly need to be in the mood to laugh at slapstick in order to enjoy Man Vs. Bee. But there is no one on the planet who does slapstick better than Rowan Atkinson, and this series shows off all the skills that have made his career so successful.

We’re concerned about the pacing of 1883 and how it depicts Indigenous people, but the story is compelling, and Sam Elliott’s multi-layered lead performance is more than enough to keep us interested.

While we still think The Artful Dodger is still a fun watch, we’re wary about the second season making jumping through story hoops to make sure Jack and Belle stay apart.

It’s telling that Wexner himself did not want to be interviewed for the docuseries. That association with Epstein is going to be explored in-depth in the subsequent two episodes, especially episode 2, and it seems like that is what is going to dominate, more than even the usual vagaries of the fast fashion world that Wexner helped pioneer.

It treats Oly’s surprise pregnancy as a fact of this girl’s life, and it will be interesting to find out how she manages being a mother and an overachieving student.

There feels like there’s more substance to Escaping Twin Flames than Desperately Seeking Soulmate, or at the very least more testimonials to what Twin Flames Universe was all about and exactly what Jeff and Shaleia Ayan’s grift really was.

Jaws @ 50 can be formulaic, and it doesn’t break the mold of making-of docs. Even if it’s not quite a must-see, it’s nevertheless a fun watch for fans who appreciate a little rehash and newbs who want insight into a true cinematic benchmark.

There’s going to be a lot of quirky characters, a lot of stylistic filmmaking techniques used, and a very solid sense of place and time that permeates the entire narrative. That tends to be a good thing, and it will serve this narrative well. We just hope that The Sympathizer doesn’t get distracted by its gimmicks and focuses on Captain’s story.

Despite our misgivings, we still enjoyed Camden. We just wish that we got a more historical perspective on the neighborhood before we heard about more modern artists.

In Chad & JT Go Deep, their characters are as earnest as they are detached, like stoners who make no little plans but falter on the perception and follow-through. And that earnestness can mostly make up for wherever the humor becomes so indirect as to be scattershot.

Once things settled down, we appreciated the thoughtful approach of the new series. ... Padalecki’s version of Cordell Walker has a real family situation he needs to address, all the while trying to protect his home state from drug cartels and other bad guys. It’s a refreshing new take on a character that was very one-dimensional in the 1990s.

While it won’t win any points for originality, its ambition, creativity, beauty, and slightly menacing tone will keep your attention, and its moments of “whoa!” deliver. You can tell from one episode that this is going to be a lot of people’s favorite animated series of the year, even if it’s unlikely to be mine.

The Haunting Of Bly Manor is entertaining to watch even during the times it’s not trying to scare the audience, and that’s something that not many horror series can do.

Land Of Sin is a solid Scandi noir thriller, and any issues you may have with the plot or story telling won’t take away from following along with Dani and Malik as they try to figure out the case.

Cobra Kai still has a great combination of character depth and self-referential humor that makes it one of the best shows of the reboot era. We’re just a tad afraid that the story has nowhere to go and will get more ridiculous than the first two seasons, but not in a good way (like those first two seasons).

We felt a whole lot better about The Problem With Jon Stewart after watching the second episode. What we saw was a show feeling its way, but with the steady hand of Stewart at the helm, even the bumpier, less funny episodes will be informative about issues that are pretty damned serious.

The first episode is more heartfelt than hilarious, but there’s enough of the former for us to forgive the lack of the latter.

The 9-1-1 franchise wears its ridiculousness like a badge of honor, and that gives them the freedom to put their first responders into pretty much any situation, which is why 9-1-1: Nashville might be silly, but at least it’s entertainingly silly.

Breath Of Fire takes its entire first episode to set up the controversies surrounding the Kundalini Yoga movement and its two best-known leaders, but even after slogging through that first episode, we still want to learn more.

Beyond the visceral thrill of watching zombies chow down on their unfortunate victims, All Of Us Are Dead puts social hierarchies and human beings’ mechanisms for survival under a microscope.

When you watch the first episode of The Most Hated Man On The Internet, all you want is to see Hunter Moore get his comeuppance. Thanks to this relatively brief docuseries and its speedy pace, you’ll get that wish pretty quickly.

If you’re already aware of the accusations against Armie, I suggest skipping directly to episodes two and three because that’s where you’ll get to some of the more shocking anecdotes about other family members. But overall, House of Hammer is a fascinating, truth-is-stranger-than-fiction look at the way absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the way it can hurt people when no one calls it out for decades.