Don’t get us wrong; the acting is top-notch across the board, but this just feels like one of those shows where the characters will really find minds of their own a la Westworld or it’ll continue to be antiseptic and dull. We’re thinking it’s going to be the latter.

Mid-Century Modern feels old-fashioned, even for a four-camera sitcom, mainly because it can’t seem to portray its characters in a way that’s more appropriate for 2025 than 1995.

While everyone does a good job in their roles, the story at the center of The Rainmaker feels like something we’d see in a CBS law procedural, not a Grisham-based legal drama.

Devin and Bobby are archetypes, and archetypes stop being funny after awhile, because, as we’ve said many times, the best comedy comes from character, not jokes. The more interesting characters are the people around Devin and Bobby that are immersed in sneaker culture as more of a business, like Nori or Stuey.

As much as we like Holmes and everyone on How We Roll, we don’t see any signs that the show is going to get funnier, despite the warmth we saw in the pilot.

Despite the performances in the first episode, this remake of American Gigolo just doesn’t have enough going on to justify an 8-episode series, and it’ll likely get really boring and frustrating before it gets interesting.

Q-Force feels like a missed opportunity to present LGBTQ characters in a light that doesn’t necessarily point to their queerness with such a big, 1990’s-style arrow. But we’re holding out hope that the show gets better during the first season.

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.

SKIP IT, unless you’re really into watching people climb rocks. Yes, The Climb looks spectacular, and yes, you get glimpses of Mamoa in each episode. But if you’re not into what’s going on during the contest, it’s going to get old fast.

Sure, The Night Agent could get better. But the first episode established that it’s a show with a lot of stock characters and a conspiracy that doesn’t start in a particularly interesting way.

The first episode of The Swarm suggests that there will be a lot of throat clearing and not a whole heck of a lot of actual thrills.

Little Birds just tries to do too much, leading to an unfocused and hard-to-watch first episode.

While the performances in Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero are worth watching, we get the feeling most viewers who aren’t hardcore Christie fans will be to bored to hang in for the entire 3-hour run.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this new version of Great Expectations, but we’re wondering why someone would seek out this longer, slower adaptation when there are other adaptations that get more to the heart of Dickens’ novel much faster.

We are always tempted to say that any new NCIS will appeal to fans of the franchise, but we’re just not sure about NCIS: Sydney. There’s snippets of hope here and there, but the overall setup seems clumsy, and much of the dialogue is just as clumsy as the setup.

I found The Girl Before frustrating, if not downright ludicrous at times.

Black Narcissus just doesn’t have enough story to latch onto and pay attention to for three hours. It’s slow and talky, and it doesn’t have any characters that you want to follow by the end of the first hour.

Disclaimer is too much time to spend with characters that the filmmaker regards with indifference at best and ignorance at worst. Cuarón renders this tale of rage, regret, and retribution in broad strokes. He loses the thread on their interiority, outsourcing the conveyance of their feelings to long-winded internal monologues.

Victoria is a woman to be respected, and her story is interesting enough, but only her most devoted fans and fashionistas will probably care about watching the whole thing through. Try out episode one for some good retro gossip, and then SKIP IT.

The Monster Of Florence is a depressing slog of a show that feels exploitative at times and disjointed at others.

In trying to make this sprawling narrative TV-friendly, a narrative momentum has been lost, with too many characters and too many timelines and situations going on at the same time. The three leads, Patel, Hewson and Green, all do good jobs with their roles, but the show just feels like it’s going to wander in the wilderness like the delirious Anna before it figures out where to go.

Though DOTA: Dragon’s Blood features some interesting elements here and there, overall it attempts to weave too many plot elements into one episode, which will undoubtedly become an issue as the series wears on. It’s also somehow less interesting than playing the game.

While the idea of hearing the story of Pablo Escobar’s son is intriguing, Dear Killer Nannies just doesn’t go deep enough into Juan Pablo Escobar’s life to make things interesting.

There’s novelty to be found in Pressure Cooker’s combination of two familiar formats, but ultimately you’re not seeing anything here that you haven’t seen before.

While we’re hoping that the TV version of True Lies gets better as it concentrates on the chemistry between Howey and Gonzaga, the rest of the show feels like an artifact from another age of network dramas, and not in a fun, Poker Face kind of way.

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.

While Murdaugh Murders is a somewhat concise guide to the murder charges around Alex Murdaugh, there are better options out there.

We were pretty bored by the first episode of The Trust: A Game Of Greed, and we’re not sure if the rest of the series is going to get any more interesting.

Even though House Of David will likely appeal to faith-based audiences, it still hasn’t been able to make its Biblical characters into people 21st century audiences can connect with.

There is actual potential in the new animated version of Good Times, but Shepard and her writers are too busy pushing the envelope to take advantage of that potential.

No amount of filmmaking flourishes, which we see when interviewees enter rooms, or turn to the camera, and other gimmicks, are going to make the viewer forget that they’ve seen all this before. Less gimmicks and more in-depth information on the particular parts of the event would have made for a better docuseries.

It gives me no pleasure to share that the show is now fixated on its characters complaining problems of the characters’ own making. In one episode, Midge literally thinks her biggest problem is not getting free milk. Worse, the once guillotine-sharp dialogue that made the Sherman-Palladinos favorites amongst TV snobs has been replaced with nonsensical dialogue that constantly loops back on itself.

The Republic of Sarah has its charms, but the premise is unsustainable and it’s larded down with too much “CW stuff” to give that premise a chance to make itself sustainable.

While Tampa Baes certainly gifts us with a few memorable reality characters, the show’s drama feels forced and the cast does not feel representative of Tampa’s diverse LGBTQ population.

The pilot of Outmatched is long on good ideas and short on smarts or funny lines, and that’s a disappointment.

Viewers who aren’t familiar with the facts surrounding the killing will find them well-presented in John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial, buttressed by eyewitness interviews. But ultimately, this docuseries is a SKIP IT. Conspiracy theories alluded to don’t materialize, and we’re left with a docuseries that wants to apply the structure of generic true crime to a momentous celebrity death.

Brand New Cherry Flavor has its high points, but its story isn’t unique enough and its weirdness seems like the free-floating kind that makes most viewers scratch their heads at what they’re seeing.

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.

While Orozco is a charming lead, Just Alice has a highly annoying premise that we know is going to have to make a lot of written somersaults to keep it going for the entire first season.

Quarterback is a tightly-produced piece of sports television, but it doesn’t offer much insight beyond what you’d get in a Sunday pregame show.

As good as Weisz and the cast of Vladimir is, they’re trapped in a story that’s smothered in gimmickry instead of character development.

She really doesn’t have to say much more about how she’s standing alone or what she’s standing for these days, exactly.

While there’s something undeniably charming about the world of After Life, its final season is bland and forgettable, weighed down by cliché dialogue and a muddled tone.

Despite some clever writing and decent performances, Joe Vs. Carole can’t really add to the craziness that the real-life Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin showed in Tiger King and all of its offshoots.

Despite the ever-charming presence of Cuoco and fantastic European vistas, Vanished just feels slight and predictable, and even borderline implausible.

A Frankensteined pilot. ... While there’s a lot to like about Alert: Missing Persons Unit, the generic cases of the week plus the logic leaps of some of the show’s storytelling lead us to believe that the show is going to contain more bad than good.

While we liked the performances of Whitehall, Duchovny and van Houten, Malice really doesn’t give the viewers much in the way of dramatic momentum in the first episode, and the show doesn’t know whether it wants to be funny or scary.

We would have really liked Conversations With Friends if it were a movie or maybe even a four-part limited series. But there just doesn’t seem to be enough narrative energy to sustain the story for 12 episodes.

Even with Scott’s new testimony, the series isn’t adding anything new to the narrative that didn’t already exist.

Florida Man is a muddled show that has some interesting characters and story points, but they’re lost in a show that’s far too crowded with characters and storylines.

Aaron Rodgers: Enigma might be slickly-produced and tightly-directed, but ultimately–like Rodgers–it doesn't have as much to say as it thinks it does.

While we still enjoy Quinto as Dr. Wolf, the rest of Brilliant Minds is just too generic to get excited about.

Expats is a show that should be better than it is, given its cast and Wang’s pedigree. But its storytelling is frustrating and its characters are ones we feel we’ve seen on TV a whole lot over the past few years.

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.

Even if you’re a fan of the Kardashians, the whole more-of-the-same vibe of The Kardashians is just a crashing bore.

Despite the performances by the miniseries’ leads, Death And Nightingales is just too boring and inaccessible to really get into; by the end of the first episode, we were even more in the dark about the story than we were at the beginning.

Do yourself a favor and show your kids the originals on Disney+, and pop in Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks to satisfy your own need for nostalgia. The Schoolhouse Rock! 50th Anniversary Singalong is just going to frustrate both you and your kids, and no one wants that.

It feels like it’s going to be an exhausting show to watch; for every moment that will be interesting and show the real change in the power dynamics between men and women, there might be two others that will feel like we’re barely in one story before we rocket to another.

Despite a fine performance from Perez, we fear we’re not going to see enough of her to make suffering through the generic main characters of Now And Then tolerable.

The first episode of Boston Blue twists itself into storytelling knots to get Donnie Wahlberg’s Blue Bloods character working with the Boston PD, and the way the Silver family is constructed feels equally as contrived. That being said, it might still be a hit among viewers who miss Blue Bloods.

Romero’s zombie movies were as much about societal ills as they were about the undead. This new version of Day Of The Dead tries to mimic that formula, but doesn’t follow through with good enough storylines or characters that we care about.

The Continental feels like it’s more for John Wick completists than fans of well-plotted action series.

As far as Sonic productions go, this is a bland adventure that you’d be better served skipping to play the newest video game, Sonic Frontiers. The establishing episode is 45 minutes of schlock that might work well as a video game, but it doesn’t translate well to the small screen, with its muddled premise, eye-rolling dialogue, and downright boring story beats.

If the focus was just on Bloom and how she figures out if she’s a changeling or not, that might have worked. But the “Scooby gang” approach to this story seems all too familiar, and not at all interesting.

While there are elements of Death And Other Details that have the potential to be entertaining, the show feels overstuffed and too interested in messing with the viewers to sustain what is a very complex whodunit.

We still appreciate Wiig’s performance as Maxine, as well as the performances of Janney, Duffy and more. But Palm Royale is so in love with its own sense of late-’60s, early-’70s kitsch and piling on characters and plotlines, that those performances often get lost under a blizzard of words.

The recreations on A Wilderness of Error are irritating, and it doesn’t really feel like it’s going to answer any questions or break new ground in the 50-year old MacDonald case.

We wish After The Flood would concentrate on one story instead of the handful it has to juggle, because the talent in front and behind the camera is so good. But the show continues to be messy and muddled, and really hard to connect with.

The problem is that while it’s certainly bingeable, it’s not necessarily… what’s the word… good. If you want soapy, relationshippy melodrama, I’d suggest finding it in Firefly Lane or Ginny & Georgia instead.

While acting and visuals in the first episode are excellent, and we have some hope that Lisey’s Story will go beyond just imagery and symbolism and give us an actual story, it feels like it will ultimately end up being a bit too frustrating to follow week-to-week.

There’s some behind-the-scenes stories that will be entertaining to hardcore fans. Largely, though, there’s a stiffness to the proceedings, a conscious attempt either not to be Winning Time or to directly rebut it. ... Legacy seems so determined to avoid controversial subjects that it comes off dry as a result; even the show’s willingness to discuss the Buss family’s internal struggles over control of the team feels somewhat contrived.

Despite Moss’ best efforts, the show is breaking at the seams when it comes to its larger narrative. ... Unless you’re already a dedicated Handmaid’s Tale fan, you can skip the drudgery of this season and check back in with June when the series comes to a close with Season 6.

While there are good performances and some interesting characters in We Were Liars, we were pretty bored with the nondescript teenage characters at the show’s center, and wanted to scream every time we heard Candence’s narration.

Transplant feels like two different shows: A gritty one about Bash’s experiences as a doctor in war-torn Syria, and how he brings his life experience to his job; and a standard medical drama with pretty people solving medical mysteries every week. And the two really don’t mix.

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.

Nothing about Wolf Pack works for us, and there’s not nearly enough of Sarah Michelle Gellar to redeem everything else that’s wrong.

Watson jams Holmesian mythology, quirky doctors, and complex medical mysteries into stories that can’t really handle all three at once, and it shows in how none of it feels well thought-out.

56 Days is supposed to show the erotic chemistry between two people that led to a wild affair then a gruesome murder. But the affair feels artificial and the investigation of the murder feels excruciatingly drawn out, and the timeline jumping makes the show tiring to watch.

If you want to watch Kitchen Nightmares, go to Hulu and watch the old episodes. Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service feels like a remodel of Nightmares that makes what was a pretty silly show even sillier.

Class Of ’09 is too busy jumping between timelines to tell a cohesive story that has any kind of momentum.

While it’s tempting to give V.C. Andrews’ Dawn a recommendation just on the strength of the performances of Mills and Bassinger, the rest of the first episode is cheaply made with an underbaked story and clunky dialogue. For some people, it may put the show in the “it’s so bad it’s campy” category, but we think it’s just plain bad.

It’s one thing to say that the new Frasier is missing the chemistry between the cast members that made the original series so special. But it also tries way too hard to parallel the original in the most crucial spots, making it painful to watch at times, and not nearly as funny as it could be.

Ghosts Of Beirut tries to take the exceedingly complex Lebanese Civil War and tries to make it into a good-guys-bad-guys spy thriller, but fails to do so simply because that time in history can’t be boiled down so easily.

Writer Julie Gearey wastes no time getting to the meat of the story. In doing that, it makes the characters one-dimensional. ... Intergalactic tries too hard to create its world, leaving a confusing mess in its wake.

Palm Royale feels surprisingly cynical and empty for a prestige TV series with such a blockbuster cast. There is some potential for the show to get deeper than what we’ve seen, but enduring the rest of it to get to that depth isn’t something we’re willing to sign up for.

We don’t think the producers care one iota about seeing these contestants actually get better. They salivate at their deeply personal and traumatic stories and want to see them fight and kiss each other.

The personality of The Terminal List can best be described as “grim,” as are the performances of Pratt and the rest of the cast. Life right now is pretty grim as it is; we don’t need this much monotonous darkness in our entertainment, too.

Despite the presence of Graham and Mays, Code 404 just isn’t funny enough or interesting enough to spend any time watching.

Camila Morrone’s compelling performance in Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen isn’t enough for us to get past the cartoonish supporting characters, the foreboding with little payoff, and a plot that just seems to consist of little more than tense moments.

As nicely shot and acted as Museum Of Innocence is, the story isn’t fleshed out enough to give us a real idea of what drew its main characters together, besides it just being a taboo pairing.

It feels like she miscalculated with bringing back her old vapid persona in Cooking With Paris. We wanted to see a more unvarnished Paris, not the one we’ve been seeing for the last 20 years.

The Upshaws has “good sitcom bones”, but is so saddled with tired plots and dialogue it just makes for a show that feels like it’s already stale, even though it just started.

Olympo needs to tighten up its plotting in order for it to be more than just scenes of perfect bodies in motion, whether that motion is athletic or sexual.

The Fugitive is typical for what Quibi has given its (very few) viewers so far: A project that’s not well-thought out, especially for the streamer’s 7-10 minute episode format. Oh, and it’s bad too.

We hate to give Call Me Kat a thumbs down, given all the talent in front of and behind the camera. But the show sacrifices character for gimmicks, and the parts that aren’t gimmicky are mostly hacky and unfunny.

The Great tries to be irreverent and funny but fails on both accounts. In fact, some of what passes for jokes on this show is downright painful to watch because it’s so dark and mean-spirited.

The parts just don’t make a cohesive whole. ... Aside from Maya Rudolph’s narration, Eater’s Guide To The World doesn’t offer anything you haven’t seen in dozens of shows on Food Network and elsewhere over the past 20 or so years.

If you’re expecting another outlandish chapter of Tiger King, you’re going to be disappointed with The Doc Antle Story. In fact, the more we watched, the more we wanted to take a shower for a good half-hour just because we turned it on.