The gameplay in Million Dollar Secret moves along at a good clip, and the playfully arch Serafinowicz really adds some fun to a format that we’ve been seeing a lot of lately.

The fact that Rogen, Goldberg and company manage to give everyone else a chance to be over-the-top funny makes for a good balance, with Matt’s desire to make good films grounding everyone else’s motivations of greed and ambition.

For the most part, David Blaine Do Not Attempt is an enjoyable look at people who achieve amazing feats through endurance and control of their emotions. Blaine’s attempts at the stunts are sometimes pulse-pounding and sometimes ridiculous, but the show is never boring.

Ludwig is a fun mystery series to follow, mainly because of David Mitchell’s performance as a reluctant detective who’d rather just create puzzles alone in his flat than solve murders.

While not hilarious, The Residence has funny moments. Paired with Uzo Aduba’s mesmerizing performance as Cordelia Cupp, the show is very watchable.

The performances of Ashford and Quaid, and the wry tone of Happy Face are what makes us want to keep watching.

There are some stories that are not well served when they’re made into scripted dramas. Because of the muddled details, the Natalia Grace case is one of them, and the lack of nuance in Good American Family is a good indicator that viewers are better off watching docuseries about Natalia’s case rather than this drama.

We’re willing to give Protection a pass because of Siobhan Finneran’s lead performance, but the show feels like it’s weighed down by a lot of British cop show cliches.

Devil In The Family: The Fall Of Ruby Franke is interesting because of the participation of Franke’s ex-husband and their two oldest children. Yes, it’s a tale of a family vlogger whose real family life was pretty dark. But the viewpoint of Kevin, Shari and Chad Franke really brings home just how horrible Ruby Franke was.

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.

Between Seyfried’s performance and the bread crumbs we get about Mickey’s past in the first episode, there’s enough to keep us watching Long Bright River. But we can’t shake the feeling that, without Seyfried in the mix, the show would be indistinguishable from other procedurals of its type.

The series is only getting more ambitious as it moves into season 3, which rewards the viewer with greater stakes for core characters we’ve come to know.

Much like last year’s version, this one retains a mix of the early years of Jimmy Kimmel Live! with the spirit of Saturday Night Live, broken up by footage of Los Angeles and its inhabitants talking to the camera as if they were extras in How To With John Wilson. .... Thank goodness for any differences he’s bringing to the format!

Am I Being Unreasonable? continues to be one of the darkest of dark comedies out there, though there may not be as many twists and turns as the first season had.

While Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances isn’t quite as funny as it should be, we like Williams’ vision of a near-future South Central and the really crazy friendship that the main trio has forged.

While we’re not in love with the separate storylines for the show’s main characters, season 3 of Dark Winds continues to combine Native mysticism with whodunits rooted in the real world, all anchored by the reassuring presence of McClarnon.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with When Life Gives You Tangerines, but your enjoyment of the series will fully depend on your tolerance of shows that are more dependent on slice-of-life stories than plot and conflict.

Ultimately, though, the show will come down to the chemistry between Mariela Garriga as Castillo and Maribel Verdú as Gutiérrez. The first episode doesn’t show the two of them interacting much, so the jury is still out there.

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.

While Douglas Is Cancelled has a lot of story flaws, the dialogue is funny for the most part and is expertly delivered by Wilkinson, Gillan, Kingston and the rest of the cast, which might be enough to endure this non-controversy for four 40-minute episodes.

For half a decade, The Righteous Gemstones has quietly been one of the best comedies on television, providing laughs and joy to anyone with a sick sense of humor and possibly a touch of religious trauma. The fourth and final season, which premieres on March 9 on HBO, is no exception and proves to be a hallelujah of a sendoff to one of television’s most underrated hits.

Because of the funny moments, and the idea that these two coddled young men are now going to have to get into hardcore criminal activity, we are feeling pretty good about the prospects that the first season of Deli Boys will be entertaining.

The Leopard is boring, with a large ensemble that blends into the background, except for the three main characters. It’s definitely a show about a part of history most people outside Europe know little about, and the show’s dullness will make it hard for people to connect to that story.

Rather than offering any real insight into Richards’ life, the show feels more like a platform for her to stay in the spotlight.

By the end of the first episode, we were rooting hard for Andy, Gabriel and Jake to become a strong family unit, which is certainly a product of the show’s strong performances and inventive storytelling.

Fans of the original Daredevil series should enjoy Daredevil: Born Again, because it continues the original series’ story and its dark tone, with a story that’s feels like it’s going to build to an exciting climax.

A disappointment for those of us hoping for something more authentic.

As a resolute Celtics hater, it brings me absolutely no pleasure to report this, but Celtics City is quite good, and has appeal for fans of any NBA team–even the 29 that the Celtics like to look down their noses at.

Kate Hudson is the best part of Running Point, but Kaling, Ko, Barinholtz and Stassen have built a winning ensemble around her, with a story that’s not only a workplace comedy, but one about family, as well.

Already adding more layers of emotion into the show’s usual rapid-fire dialogue. Keeso is great at the loudmouthery in Shoresy, and the heady hockey-centric stuff. But between the lines of season 4, it really feels like the sensitivity that’s steadily grown within Keeso’s performance will become the biggest factor.

While the ER in Berlin ER looks grungier and bleaker than ones we’ve seen on American TV, the beats of the show will be familiar to people who are fans of medical dramas. In this case, the show is watchable because of its cast, especially Jones and Popadic.

Baker’s point of view may come across as more than a bit blunt, but that just makes her punchlines hit that much harder.

Eyes On The Prize III: We Who Believe In Freedom Cannot Rest 1977-2015 is a compelling companion series to the 1987 original, putting the civil rights movement into a modern context through the stories of the people at its forefront.

Best Interests is certainly one of those shows that would be considered a “heavy watch.” But Sharon Horgan and Michael Sheen both do a fantastic job of playing parents put in a difficult situation as they have to make literal life-and-death decisions about their disabled child.

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.

Suits LA benefits from strong performances by Amell and Davis, but Korsh’s strong sense of banter and character, which made the original Suits such a sucess, is what really makes this spinoff worth watching.

Perhaps the main characters in Grosse Pointe Garden Society will become more than just cartoon characters and things like the annoying narration will calm down. But we’ve seen shows like this, done much better, for a couple of decades now.

[Tom Hanks] manages to take what are pretty standard nature documentary scenes, like baby animals being unsure about leaving the nest or predators stalking their prey, and gives them a simi[l]ar air of importance that the best known narrator in this genre, Sir David Attenborough, gives the docs he works on. If there is anything innovative about The Americas is that it makes things that were previously unseen into interesting drama.

While Beyond The Gates isn’t reinventing the daytime soap formula, just the idea that we’re being introduced to a new set of characters, and we’re getting a soap that features and affluent and powerful Black family, is more than enough to get us to keep watching.

While we wish there was a bit more of Ruth Ellis’ backstory at the beginning of A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, it’s still an intriguing story about the last woman executed in Great Britain, with a fine lead performance by Lucy Boynton.

The cast of Zero Day is the main reason why we’re going to keep watching, but the final moments of the first episode gave the story more intrigue than what we’ve seen from terrorism thrillers in the recent past.

Surface has not improved its slow pacing and logic gaps in Season 2; it’s just moved the locale from San Francisco to London.

A Thousand Blows does a good job of tying its stories together well, and tries to keep the action going in the process.

[Reacher] doesn’t live in anything resembling a rules-based society, either. It’s more like a closed loop existence. And if you’re inside, he’s either helping you or killing you. Everything else gets sorted out in between, which makes for a refreshingly simple, satisfyingly trashy viewing experience.

Win Or Lose manages to tell detailed stories about each of its characters, with emotions rooted in reality while taking advantage of Pixar’s ability to create a fascinating visual landscape.

History’s Thomas Jefferson docuseries tries its best to make sure the Founding Father is seen in a proper light, and for the most part achieves that goal.

While American Murder: Gabby Petito probably won’t tell you much more about the Petito case than what the news media did, some of the context it provides certainly gives the story more depth than the splashy tabloid headlines did.

We might be getting to the point where we may want a break from Love Is Blind. But, so far, Season 8 is interesting enough to keep watching, even if the first episode felt more generic than what we’ve seen during the past few seasons.

We’re sure that the storytelling of Season 3 of Yellowjackets will even out as the season goes on, but it really feels like we need to see more of the teens than the adults at this point, and that imbalance is pretty evident in the first episode.

The beats of the season are rote, the characters verge on cringe-worthy cliche, and The White Lotus seems to be lazily conforming to a formula that’s already inspired countless pale imitations since its 2021 series launch. .... The biggest thing the The White Lotus Season 3 has going for it, though, is its phenomenal cast. The actors that Mike White has assembled give each character a pathos that maybe wasn’t originally there on the page. .... Ultimately, The White Lotus Season 3 is still the best at what the show sets out to do.

Surviving Black Hawk Down is an engaging docuseries because it goes over the Battle of Mogadishu in an amount of detail that most people have never been exposed to before. .... While we generally rail against reenactments, the ones in this series are very well-done, so no complaint from us.

Cassandra’s spirited opener is entertaining, and even though it points toward more predictable plot developments, it’s still worth sticking with for another episode or two.

Despite fine performances from Dever and other parts of the ensemble, Apple Cider Vinegar is too busy scrambling around the storytelling for no particular reason than just concentrating on telling the story in the best way possible.

While we wish Clean Slate was funnier and took a bit longer to have Harry accept that Desiree is now a woman, it feels like it’s going to be a warm show about rebuilding relationships and Southern small town life. Given the presence of Cox, Wallace and Hopkins, we’re on board for this one.

Invincible continues to tell very human stories about Mark and the superheroes of the GDA, highlighting the main storylines of the season while keeping other stories cooking with a very good cast of celebrity voices.

Given the cast and the potential for a series with some good laughs, we’ll tentatively recommend The Z-Suite. But the writers really need to take their feet off the gas when it comes to cliches about both Gen X and Gen Z.

Love You To Death has the potential to be a sweet, occasionally funny, mostly emotional story of two people getting together at a strange time in each of their lives.

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

We like Wild Cards because it’s a “good silly” kind of show. The things that are ridiculous about it don’t distract from our enjoyment of it, mostly thanks to a good supporting cast and good chemistry between Morgan and Gianniotti.

Celebrity Bear Hunt‘s gameplay is a bit confusing, and it would be just fine as a celebrity survival competition without the presence of Bear Grylls, who just seems to slow things down.

The Hunting Party is a generic action series that seems to operate on twists that either aren’t that surprising or are pretty much useless.

Common Side Effects is definitely more thriller than comedy, but there are enough funny moments to lighten the mood as things get more complex and serious by the third and fourth episodes. Once we get to that point, though, it’s a surprisingly gripping thriller that keeps viewers engaged.

We forgot how complex Mo is, considering that it’s ostensibly a comedy. But there aren’t many comedies that bring together three cultures, the thorny topic of immigration and personal identity quite the same way this show does.

Despite its compressed format, Vietnam: The War That Changed America has remarkable footage and fascinating interviews with people who had a first-person perspective of what it was like to fight the Vietnam War.

Because The Recruit is at its heart a silly action series, its success really leans on Centineo’s charm and the comedic vibe of the show’s writing, and that continues in the second season.

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

Even though we now know what happened to Maddie’s body, there is still plenty of mysteries to unravel in the second season of School Spirits, and the season is off to a fast start with an action-filled first episode.

American Manhunt: O.J. Simpson is at its best when it collects all of the places where the LAPD and DA’s office botched what seemed to be an overwhelming case against Simpson, but otherwise it doesn’t reveal anything all that new about the case.

Mythic Quest is at a stage where it can take its time exploring and evolving the key relationships between its main characters, while keeping things funny, and we see that during the fourth season.

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.

Season 5 of Harley Quinn keeps the hilarity coming at a rapid-fire clip, concocts a whole host of new misadventures for its main duo – this time with Metropolis under threat – and expands on and strengthens Harley and Ivy’s love story in ways well worth shipping.

What we hope is that The Catch gives us a couple of twists and turns that makes it less predictable than we think it’s going to be after watching the first episode.

Wood is a consummate pro as a stand-up, not afraid of any audience. He even sticks the landing with not only one killer callback, but also an actual call back.

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.

Let’s just say timeline-jumping isn’t the only storytelling method Fogelman borrowed from his most successful series. It certainly sets up some intriguing possibilities, but let’s hope that it’s not the main driver of the story Fogleman and company want to tell. They’ve done a good job of setting up the personal relationships at the center of Paradise, as well as the timeline, and that’s where they should concentrate things.

While the mystery in C.B. Strike: The Ink Black Heart is a bit slowly-paced, we do appreciate the elbow room the writers have to explore the lives and relationships of Strike, Robin and the other series regulars.

With a top-notch host in Alan Cumming, tricky, high-level game play, and a tantalizing cross-section of reality show talent as its players – competitive Survivor styles up against Real Housewives wiles, or reality randos confronting established format schemers – Traitors is taking reality competition to stylishly outrageous new levels.

While we still feel that there’s a bit of a lunkheaded feel to The Night Agent, Basso’s and Buchanan’s characters are established enough in the second season that the improved mission they’re on is something we’re looking forward to watching.

Jansson-Schweizer takes what could have been a very serious Cold War tale and turns it on its ear, making the incident a product of a drunken crew and making the various world leaders involved in the negotiations into the caricatures they were portrayed as at the time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

We’ll give the show a tentative recommendation. But this show is the rare case where the first episode just doesn’t give viewers enough to figure out whether the show is worth watching, and what we did see didn’t get us all that excited about what’s to come.

The Couple Next Door really leans on the stupidest parts of a plot that should just depend on the sexual chemistry among its four stars.

SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night takes a refreshing approach to Saturday Night Live’s history, and we hope that we see more episodes going forward, even if they have to change the title to SNL51, SNL52, etc.

This new version of Hollywood Squares isn’t far off from actually being a pretty good take on the original. There is room for funny lines and celebrity hijinks in each episode, as long as Barrymore and the rest of the producers find the right formula that takes advantage of their panels without grinding the gameplay to a halt.

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.

Hard to find what counts as memorable here when so many of the premises and punchlines date back to the previous election cycle of 2020, or even 2016.

I’m feeling an Odd Couple vibe pockmarked with extreme cartoon violence, which leaves me indifferent. Maybe it deserves another episode or two before we dismiss it, but it feels like only fans of the manga will hang on to compare and contrast this with the source material.

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

Asura doesn’t depict this family’s secrets as melodrama or a bustling mystery to be unraveled, it slowly and methodically lets us get to know these well-drawn characters. The family is not dysfunctional in an unrelatable way, like the Roys on Succession or Yellowstone‘s duplicitous Duttons, what’s so engaging is the fact that their problems, and the emotions that spill out as a result, are entirely possible and could happen to any of us.

On Call has a nice pace to it, and the performances of Bellisario and Larracuente are understated and effective. Sure, it’s a police procedural, but at least its format and subject matter are a little different than what we normally see.

American Primeval is an unsparing look at a segment of the American West in the 1850s that pretty much saw conflict, blood and death every single day. It’s certainly bleak, but it also reflects what it was really like for people heading West at that time, and why survival was probably their greatest achievement.

They Call It Late Night With Jason Kelce had a bit of a rough start. What we hope is that Kelce and the show’s producers and writers take this first episode and tweak things so the show is geared more towards comedy — even football-related comedy — and less towards relatively dry sports talk.

Doc doesn’t fail because it’s full of medical show cliches. It fails because its central premise feels like a house of cards, and there won’t be much to watch when it collapses.

The reason why we’re so hard on Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action is that The Jerry Springer Show, and Jerry himself, are such fascinating topics that we wanted a deeper exploration of the cultural phenomenon that the show was than what we got. It’s one of the few cases where a docuseries needs more episodes, not less.

Severance Season 2 is exemplary.

Lockerbie: A Search For The Truth is carried by Colin Firth, but its concentration on one man’s quest for the truth also keeps the show’s writers and producers from drifting into melodrama around a real-life terrorist act.

The Pitt features clunky dialogue, ridiculous cliffhangers, and overly obvious messaging associated with easy primetime viewing. It also boasts propulsive filmmaking, endearing characters, and one seismic performance from star/EP Noah Wyle. Whatever ingredients The Pitt did or did not poach from E.R. come together to make a slight drama that nevertheless speaks to the existential angst of seeking or providing healthcare in 2025.

The largely unfunny pilot of Going Dutch would normally lead us to give the show a “skip it,” but given the showrunner’s pedigree and the interpersonal potential of the father-daughter story, we’re giving the show a chance to improve.

Cunk On Life is often laugh-out-loud funny, mainly because Diane Morgan plays Philomena Cunk with just the right tone; Cunk is dumb, ignorant about her own stupidity, and confident in that stupidity without being cocky. Combined with Brooker’s dry sense of humor, it’s a formula that Netflix can count on for the next number of years.