There are nuggets of information in there that are enlightening. ... For the most part, though, it feels like we’re going to see four hours of mostly praise and maybe some good-natured ribbing from associates who think Branson tells his own story in a more grandiose way than how it actually happened. Your enjoyment of that will depend on how you feel about Branson.

If it weren't for Deborah Ayorinde and especially Sarah Niles, we'd likely tell people to skip Riches because it's so over-the-top soapy. But the two lead performances are so compelling that it will definitely make viewers flip to at least the second episode after the first is over.

A quality supporting cast and a light sense of humor also helps. Not every aspect of the show is light and airy, but it seems to know when it needs to be serious and when it needs to lighten things up. Because of this, Three Pines give viewers an interesting murder case to follow, quirky small-town folks with secrets, and a more serious case that tests its main character’s abilities.

Not only is the true story of The Thief, His Wife And The Canoe remarkable, but Marsan and Dolan make the Darwin’s scheme seem all the more believable, as well as funny and painful all at once.

If you go into The Barking Murders with the right frame of mind, it’s a tense and emotional drama about Stephen Port’s victims and their families.

If the only reason why you watch The Responder is to see Martin Freeman barely hold it together, then it’s a pretty good reason to watch the show. The rest of the plot is incidental to a performance by Freeman that utilizes all of his copious ability to be the aggrieved everyman who’s ready to crack at any moment.

Firefly Lane can be soapy and sappy, but it’s a fun ride full of humor and high stakes relationship drama. Heigl and Chalke are invested in their characters and they sell the friendship at the heart of the story.

Avenue 5 packs its half-hour episodes with laughs and a kind of manic absurdity that’s well-positioned to carry this comedy in whatever direction its hapless luxury space liner is pushed in next.

There is enough that’s interesting about Irreverent to keep watching for a few episodes. We hope we see more town and Paulo’s nemesis Mack than the tired stuff about Paulo trying to keep from getting killed by the mob.

We finally have a sequel that continues the Willow saga with the heart and soul the story deserves. Disney+‘s new series Willow is a raggedy, hilarious, and absolutely enchanting continuation of the Lucasfilm cult classic. Instead of wallowing in “grimdark” imagery or losing itself tripping over unnecessary mystery boxes, Willow embraces the joy of its source material. Willow is a tour de force of fun and fantasy frivolity.

In its second season, Gossip Girl has morphed into exactly what you want from a reboot. The costumes and directorial work are more refined and swoon-worthy than the original, and even though the drama is new, it feels familiar. There is a real sense that this is a new chapter in a beloved story.

I loved it. ... The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special delivers in every single way.

Short of Michael Jordan, there’s no figure in basketball history quite as compelling as Shaquille O’Neal, and SHAQ is a worthy documentary treatment of the man, myth and legend.

Either be the fictionalized show with the hip-hop music cues and the 21st century dialogue, or the docuseries that gives Anne the “You’re Wrong About” treatment, or the more accurate but less sexy knockoff of The Tudors, but don’t try to be all of them. ... This series needed to pick a lane and stick with it.

STREAM IT, but only because we like watching Adam Devine and Sarah Hyland in scenes together. Otherwise Pitch Perfect: Bumper In Berlin is too silly for its own good, especially because the silly isn’t even all that funny.

We’ll give Echo 3 the benefit of the doubt because it’s taking a more thoughtful and deliberate tack than most military shows. But boy, do things go pretty slowly to start.

It’s Ortega’s star power alone that helps drive this series from the very beginning into something that could have been mediocre into a totally watchable and exciting twist on a familiar franchise. ... While this adaptation makes some strange decisions, it ends up working in a weird way, which will interest both old and new viewers.

As much as it feels like it’s two docuseries combined into a big unwieldy mess, Our Universe‘s graphics, photography and narration still make it a compelling watch.

If you want to get a more complete picture of how Chppendales exploded in popularity and how Banerjee’s poor decisions led to his death, watch Curse Of The Chippendales or any of the other docuseries about the club’s history. Welcome To Chippendales is so over-fictionalized that it actually makes the story less compelling than the real thing.

If you’re deeply invested in this soap opera and love sexy Spanish murder teens, watch it. However, the hedonistic joy of past seasons has been replaced by an icky feeling of dread. That — plus the fact that we don’t have a long history with any of the characters left — makes it a wee bit harder to root for new couples, old rivalries, and friendship to conquer all.

Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? doesn’t even try to take itself seriously, making for a fun look at how the little guy tried to call a big corporation on its mistakes. We don’t imagine they got away with it, but we’re looking forward to the journey they took to get to that point.

Leopard Skin is too twisted and tangled to devote mental energy too. Add to that some uneven performances, and you’ve got the formula for an ambitious show that just misses the mark.

The story doesn’t particularly move quickly. Maybe as we dig into the back stories of the other passengers, things will pick up. But we get wary of shows that choose long shots of an abandoned ship over character development or plot movement, and 1899 will very easily slip into a too-languid pace if it’s not careful.

The Sex Lives Of College Girls continues the good vibes in Season 2, with a well-oiled comedic ensemble and an easygoing charm that makes the show very bingeable.

At times, Spector doesn’t seem to know how to align the man’s competing legacies. But it does its best to portray a fuller picture of the woman who paid the ultimate price for his behavior.

Dead To Me has a pace that never lets up, with plot and dialogue that are consistently, furiously both dramatic and hilarious. The first episode of season three seamlessly picks up where season two’s dramatic end left off, but it also introduces several new twists, including a precarious health situation for Judy, that you’re going to want ti see through to the very end.

Limitless With Chris Hemsworth puts the star in some extreme situations, but the insights into his life and thinking are what’s going to keep us watching.

This is a SKIP IT to all but the diehard Santa Clause fans out there. If you rewatch the entire Santa Clause trilogy every year, of course you’re going to want to see what happens next. The rest of us are fine sticking to the first film — or just rewatching Elf.

Crossfire starts off giving its viewers some real-life anxiety and then starts to squander that tension almost immediately. To be honest, it’s bad enough we see stories like this on the news; we don’t need to see it as entertainment at this point.

The second episode of Tulsa King gave us hope that the series can be an enjoyable series with a bit of a sense of a humor about its fish-out-of-water conceit and that Stallone can turn down the Sly schtick. But there were still a lot of issues that make us think that the show could end up being as nuanced as a plate of spaghetti topped with ketchup.

The sleeper stars of this first episode of season five are obviously the actors who get to play younger versions of the show’s core characters. ... Season 5 of Yellowstone, its longest yet, has the future of the Duttons, their ranch, and the complexion of the state they call home in its steady rifle sights.

Mythic Quest remains not only one of the smartest workplace comedies around but one of the funniest shows on TV.

We’re going to give Mammals a chance because it not only will likely get even darker after its dark first episode, but it’ll give Corden a chance to show people what kind of work he’ll do once he goes back to acting full-time.

Despite the languid pace of the first episode, the unique perspectives at play in The English make it different enough from your standard Western to make it interesting.

With Kelley writing and Levinson directing, there’s no chance that The Calling is going to look or feel like the average network police procedural. ... We’re just not sure what to make of how Avi is characterized on the show, if any of his fellow cops are anything but one-dimensional characters. ... Completely short circuits a deeper sketch of Avi himself but makes religion and faith into a tool instead of a way of life.

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.

Warrior Nun feels revived and reenergized as it begins the second season nobody was originally sure it would receive. There’s a lot to sort out, like Adriel’s true lineage and who will survive the continued bloodshed. But as Ava, Alba Baptista is ready to lead the charge.

If you’re willing to put in the effort, Fleishman Is in Trouble is a rewarding, intentionally maddening, often sweet experience that asks you to reexamine your own relationship with nostalgia. But in order to get to those depths, you need to watch more than a couple of episodes.

It’s hard to create a new story for 230-year-old characters and make it seem like it was part of those characters’ stories the whole time. But Harriet Warner and her staff have been able to do that with Dangerous Liaisons.

Mood is one of those shows that takes you on a ride with its main character. It’s a ride we think is worth taking, but it all depends on how much you relate with Sasha and the decisions she’s making for herself.

It’s an uneven, uninspiring season of television that fails to live up to the high standard of past seasons. ... It’s not all disastrous, though; there are some excellent things about this season, too. Namely, Lesley Manville’s Princess Margaret. ... Key members of the new ensemble cast feel like downgrades from the Emmy-winning stars of seasons past.

Lopez Vs. Lopez isn’t the “next great sitcom” or anything close. But the dynamic between George and Mayan Lopez is fun to watch, making up for the more generic parts of the series.

We like the cast of Blockbuster, especially Park, Fumero and Smoove. And Ramos has done enough time on successful workplace comedies to know how to make them work. What we see so far is underwhelming, but promising.

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.

It’s all patently ridiculous. If it were ridiculous in an entertaining way, that would be one thing. But Tennant’s side of the story is just so insane that you’ll be too distracted by it to be entertained by Tucci’s side.

The series features insightful conversations with fascinating public figures, and is genuinely educational.

We’re not completely sure that the story in The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself won’t get muddled again like it was at the beginning of the first episode. But we have faith that it will keep things focused on Nathan and his attempt to keep evil at bay.

Big Mouth is still as raunchy, funny, and surprisingly sweet as ever.

Even if Kroll doesn’t spill the tea on what happened on set here, he’s still more than willing to open his big mouth with embarrassing details from his own life. As he says: “Guys, we are all just doing our best.” His best is better than OK.

All of which just makes it seem as though Oswalt didn’t write enough material in lockdown, but wanted to or felt he was obligated to deliver another special this year, so here we are. ... Skip it. Unless you’re a die-hard Patton Oswalt fan, in which case you’ll stream it, lovingly enjoy the best parts and forgive the rest anyhow.

While the stories themselves are pretty fully told in their 11-15 minute runtimes, it’s definitely to the viewer’s advantage to watch all six episodes to get the full picture. ... Tales Of The Jedi brings some familiar prequel trilogy characters back to our screens, in stories that fill in more Clone Wars canon, which is always a plus.

Karen Pirie is a pretty straightforward entry in the genre of British/Scottish police mysteries. But the first season presents a solid, twisty case and the title character is refreshingly young and not grizzled. Those two factors make the show an engaging watch.

So far GdT’s CoC is terrific, and future outings hold even greater promise. STREAM IT, I say, and stream the HELL out of it.

In Season 2, he [Mike White] doesn’t just recreate the magic of the first installment, but he stretches his own creative muscles. The White Lotus Season 2 is a resounding triumph.

The Peripheral does a good job at setting up two future worlds that are relatable to a wide audience, and Moretz is great as Flynne.

Skip the first episode, go to episode two and stream it instead before you make your decision to commit to the rest of the season. The sketches in the season premiere don’t really heighten effectively past their premises, while at least the second episode, also available now, goes a bit harder.

From Scratch is a perfect slice of escapism for the wine moms and independent women of the world. It’s not worthy of awards, but it is worth recommending to my fellow die-hard romantics as a blithe bit of distraction from everyday stress and sorrows.

It would have been interesting for Unsolved Mysteries to get the authorities on record. But according to a postscript, those agencies denied a request to speak.

Like the first season, The Vow Part II moves quickly, even as it dives deeper into the people who were and still are loyal to Keith Reinere, finding out their reasoning, motivation and rationalizations. Those conversations, paired with the information from the trial, will make for an interesting second season.

The show is as addictive as ever, once the show gets out of the pods and into the real world, and it will definitely spark plenty of conversations (and, more importantly, memes). But honestly, the most surprising thing about Love Is Blind Season 3 is that somehow this show figured out a way to weave complex relationship studies through all the drunken shenanigans we expect from Netflix reality shows.

Fire Country has more story and stronger characters at the outset than a CBS procedural like this usually has, and that’ll carry the show when the fires start looking all the same as each other.

Shantaram doesn’t really dig too deep into the issues facing India in the 1980s, or how an expat like Hunnam’s character fits in given those issues. It’s a slow-moving thriller that we hope picks up some momentum as the series goes along.

While The Playlist doesn’t give audiences the satisfying dose of schadenfreude that other tech bioseries have provided, it does effectively show just how many perspectives there are to the start of a massive success like Spotify.

Whether you’re a fan of Tegan and Sara or looking for a queer, playfully nostalgic teen series, High School’s endearing, admirably restrained take on the genre is worth an afternoon of your time. More 30-minute dramas, please!

In another producers hands, The Watcher could have been a taut, tense thriller. But with Murphy and Brennan at the helm, it becomes more campy than tense, and even a stellar cast can’t save the show from itself.

Right now, it’s more of the two of them feeling each other out, and how the very experienced and skilled Mary and her friends will train the newbie in how to keep themselves safe. ... This isn’t This Is Us, after all. But given how quickly the “Scooby gang” of this show has been established, The Winchesters is off to a decent, albeit familiar, start.

Sure, it’s great to see Brendan Fraser and Tom Welling on our screens, running around defeating bad guys together. But Professionals is such a slapdash show that it doesn’t really tap into the potential of two fan-favorite stars playing off each other.

Let The Right One In is a bit uneven, mainly because some stories are less interesting than others, even if they’ll all get connected somehow by the end of the season. We just want to see how Mark and Ellie manage Ellie’s unusual life, and we want to see more of that as the show goes on.

If you want to get into the mind of Jeffrey Dahmer, there’s no better way than hearing from the killer himself, and Conversations With A Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes gives viewers more than enough opportunity to hear from Dahmer about the impulses that led him to kill.

The funniest show on TV is back for its final season. ... The show is as fantastic as it always was. ... It's a fitting end to the chapter and thankfully it hasn't lost any of its charm, punchy dialogue, or hilarious performances during the time off.

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.

The Mole isn’t quite as fun as the Anderson Cooper version, but it’s still a solid reality competition format that we’re glad is getting new life with Netflix.

It may be a low bar, but if we’re watching a network series where we don’t roll our eyes or throw up our hands at what we’re seeing on the screen, there’s a good chance that we’ll want to see more of it. And Alaska Daily had enough to like to make us want to see more.

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

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

Minhaj has always been more of an engaging storyteller than a joke craftsman. In this special, he remains in full control of the audience, masterfully pulling “awwwws” and applause breaks out of them with the greatest of ease.

Interview With The Vampire is still a bit melodramatic in its manner and baroque in its language, despite the time shift from the novels and film. But it reestablishes its story so well that we can see it continuing for a number of seasons.

The ensemble on Family Law is appealing enough that we get the feeling that, once Nielsen and her writers tweak Saite’s character a bit, the show will be a funny, light law drama that’s entertainingly quirky.

Jungle has an arresting visual style, and its rap and drill soundtrack layers in more interesting elements. We’ll see how well those layers play together as the stories get more complicated.

The third season is challenging but worthwhile.

Kid Cudi and Barris do a fine job of making Entergalactic feel like much more than a vehicle for Cudi’s latest music; it’s a hip hop take on a familiar story, but is a satisfying watch despite knowing how it’s going to turn out.

Its consistent, formulaic approach is perfect for a complex story with several moving parts. You won’t cheer for the implication this story has on modern foreign relations (a component teased in upcoming episodes), but you’ll be thankful it’s told with such focus and clarity.

The jury’s still out on whether the procedural part of So Help Me Todd will ever be a strong part of the show. But the chemistry between Harden and Astin, along with the deep story possibilities that the Wright family could generate, more than makes up for the lack of procedural heft.

If you followed the GameStop story or saw GameStopped, the information in Eat The Rich: The GameStop Saga will probably be familiar to you. But it’s presented in an entertaining way and also has a more complete picture of the stock’s ups and downs.

Shadowland is fascinating, upsetting, sometimes depressing, sometimes revelatory journalism.

The Real Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist feels like it glorifies the Bling Ring participants — at least the ones who agreed to be interviewed — and victim-blames the celebrities that got burglarized, which makes the series’ perspective really tough to swallow.

The great cast of Suspect saves the show from being a leaden disaster, but the story underpinning all that capital-A acting isn’t all that interesting.

Watchable, despite all of the ridiculousness. ... We’re going to give Reasonable Doubt a chance because Emayatzy Corinealdi is a sexy force to be reckoned with as Jax, and her cloudy ethics and taste in men is what gives some of the silliness in the series some depth.

Like its parent show, The Rookie: Feds is watchable because of its star and very little else. But Nash-Betts is just so damn watchable that you’ll enjoy the series despite any reservations you may have.

Despite one of the main plotlines being a bit wonky, Heartbreak High is a funny show with well-drawn characters. They just happen to hook up a lot.

The first two episodes, which is what ABC sent to critics, are equally as funny and heartwarming as the best of the show’s excellent first season.

The story is what’s going to keep viewers watching, because there aren’t really any compelling characters to latch onto.

This is a slow burn that assumes you’re somewhat familiar with this case. Most of the stress in “Episode One” worked for this critic because I knew what was coming. If I didn’t, there’s a chance this somber pacing drift into boring territory instead of being quietly terrifying.

Reboot is right up there with Abbott Elementary as 2022’s funniest new series, mainly because the confidence Levitan has in creating character-driven comedy is enhanced by a fantastic cast.

While it’s a bit of a slow burn of a show, Andor draws you in because it is so thoroughly and messily human. ... Andor is Star Wars, distilled down to its revolutionary soul.

The new Quantum Leap could end up being decent, but it needs to elevate itself above being a standard dark NBC procedural and take itself a lot less seriously.

So watchable right off the bat. ... Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners is a fantastic addition to the Cyberpunk universe. Its narrative is even more engaging than the original game in certain respects, with a protagonist it’s easy to get behind and root for.

The final season of Atlanta has a sense of the surreal that makes the delivery of its message a whole lot easier to take than the show’s third season, which felt like more of a take-your-medicine exercise at times.