The seven new episodes of Squid Game are stunning, shocking, heartbreaking, and even exhilarating. Squid Game Season 2 is good! It isn’t quite as good as the spectacular first season, but coming up a smidge short of utter genius means Squid Game is still pretty great.

We’re tempted to say SKIP IT, mainly because we hate that Beast Games takes advantage of people’s greed and/or desperation for drama. But the second episode shows that the game will start getting really fun as we get down to a manageable group of contestants, and a lot of that is thanks to the enthusiasm of MrBeast and his hoodie-wearing buddies.

Stephanie Hsu’s dynamic lead performance is the main attraction of Laid, but the quest to figure out why Ruby’s lovers are dying and what this all means to her romantic life will be a funny and interesting journey to take with her.

1992 isn’t reinventing the wheel when it comes to thriller series. But it’s just audacious enough, especially with its use of a cartoon rooster mascot, to make it watchable.

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.

At every turn in An Evening With, Dua Lipa finds ways to add interesting touches to her most memorable songs. .... It works wonders visually. From Dua Lipa, to the musicians, to the lively Royal Albert audience, there is palpable joy in the room.

While we’re not convinced that Dexter: Original Sin will be as compelling as the early years of the original series, we’re hoping that the new cast develops their own chemistry instead of trying to imitate the dynamic of the original show’s cast.

Dream Productions continues to effectively expand the Inside Out universe, which seems to know no bounds, given the fact that a preteen’s brain is so darn complicated.

If you don’t love the shtick, you definitely won’t love the show. But if you stick with all three episodes, you’ll absorb the entire spectrum of the Paris and Nicole experience: the humor, the friendship, the ineptitude that masks actual professional experience and an understanding of The Biz. The end result actually does feel like a celebration of their friendship.

What we’re hoping is that the one good story out of the four in No Good Deed can carry the series’ first season, at least until the others improve. The show’s excellent ensemble deserves that kind of patience.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude manages to do justice to the ambitious and sprawling novel it is based on, with good performances and expert writing and directing.

Even if you haven’t seen any clips of Jeselnik before, this serves as a perfect introduction to him.

There’s something in the way she declares “but I got my biscuits” or “and that’s why I’m gay”or even “it’s much cheaper than a therapist, and it comes with biscotti” that might make you want to stand and cheer.

It shows so much proficiency in creating these deeply-imagined addendums to established worlds, all we want is more.

Polo is a mostly boring look at a sport that very few people outside of elite circles have any particular interest in.

Although there are laughs to be had in this hour-plus, this is as much church revival as it is comedy special.

As a skilled roaster on both Comedy Central and now Netflix, Glaser also knows how to take a joke as well as she can dish them out. You probably cannot come up with zingers about her physical appearance that’ll knock her down any more than any of the lines she delivers about her looks in this hour.

The jury’s out on how many episodes Paris Has Fallen can sustain the relative juice imported from the Has Fallen movies. If there is a core HFU fanbase rising up for this small screen continuance, that contingent should be happy. But as action-thriller stuff goes, Paris Has Fallen in general feels kinda basic.

An intense and funny performance by Margo Martindale is the highlight of The Sticky, but the idea that this crazy heist story could go just about anywhere is what’s the most intriguing thing about it.

While the near-future shown in Tomorrow + I might be a little dystopian, it’s far from bleak, and that little sliver of hope is always welcome in a show like this.

Jentry Chau Vs. The Underworld boasts a good story, a fun visual style and fine voice performances from Wong, Yang and Chinn.

Churchill At War does a good job at repackaging well-examined material in enough of a new way to keep viewers engaged, and maybe even learn some things about Winston Churchill they didn’t already know.

We continue to enjoy Dalgliesh because of Bertie Carvel’s grimace-filled empathetic portrayal of Adam Dalgliesh. We just wish we had more info about the detective and somewhat more tightly-written mysteries.

Creature Commandos features a ton of James Gunn’s trademark wit and sweetness, lots of gleeful destruction, an adult-animation-worthy helping of boobs and butts and stuff, and for comic book heads, a shared visual aesthetic and the deliberate centering of oddball characters straight off the page.

Black Doves isn’t going to blow you away with some revolutionary spy story. But the story is intriguing enough, and is improved by the chemistry between Knightley and Whishaw, with a big assist from Lancashire.

Pop Culture Jeopardy! is a fun watch, with Colin Jost a natural at the hosting podium. It may not make Jeopardy purists happy, but casual fans will certainly like the show, because at least there’s a good chance they’ll be able to provide questions to most of the answers.

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.

Colman Domingo brings a veracity and intensity to his character in The Madness that elevates what is potentially a run-of-the-mill thriller. But so far, the show isn’t giving us any reason to think it’s getting ridiculous, which is a good thing.

Like we said, the cast of The Agency carries the show, but we’re not sure how much the stories will hold viewer interest unless they quickly get more interesting.

STREAM IT, but only for the fantastic racing scenes. If you’re looking for a show that’s got any drama that happens off the track, Senna will probably disappoint.

Get Millie Black is fascinating not only because of its Jamaican setting but Lawrance’s performance as someone trying to figure out her place as much as she’s trying to figure out the case at hand.

Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey fills in blanks in the JonBenét Ramsey case that have faded over the decades, and brings information to light that gives an indication that the case could still end up being solved.

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.

While we still like seeing Cuoco and the rest of the cast of Based On A True Story, we’re still not buying that the Season 2 story will be as good as what we saw in Season 1.

Cruel Intentions tries to be edgy but only ends up being eye-rollingly bad, with characters that are very easily hateable and stakes that are so low, you wonder why everyone is expending all this energy in the first place.

The Sex Lives of College Girls remains a cheeky and amusing ode to the modern-day college experience and female friendships, despite fan-favorite Leighton's (Rapp) impending transfer.

A Man on the Inside is a breezy and fun septuagenarian shenanigan tale from start to finish.

Our Oceans is a fascinating look at the environment that takes up the vast majority of our planet, the ecosystems that exist under the surface, and the manmade threats the oceans face.

We like Interior Chinatown enough to look past the “stuck in a cop show” conceit, but we just hope it doesn’t weigh the show down as the season continues.

There is some inherent cheesiness to the scripted parts of Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints, but the stories try to ground themselves in human reality, and Scorsese’s presents adds his gravitas and genuine curiosity about faith and the Catholic church.

Leonardo Da Vinci breathes new life into the artist’s legend; Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon have painted a pretty complete picture of a man who was much more than the sum of his most famous works.

Landman is pretty much a standard-grade Taylor Sheridan production, but Thornton makes it very watchable, even as he spends half of the first episode making speeches.

Dune: Prophecy has more than enough, between all the scheming between houses and the performances of Watson and Williams, to recommend it, but we just wish it had taken a different tack on the story of Bene Gesserit than the one it chose.

I was entertained by The Creep Tapes. It all pretty much depends on Duplass to make us laugh and creep us out, and he delivers.

It feels like after Silo‘s complex first season finale, Graham Yost has given viewers a chance to ease into Season 2 with the single-minded season premiere. For a series this dense in story, that’s not altogether a bad thing.

Just like in Season 1, there’s a lot going on, but it’s not as clear that these stories will flow together as well as they did during season 1.

Holidazed will make you dazed after the first episode, because of all the stories and characters that are introduced. But then the show should settle into what is basically a series of mini Hallmark-style holiday films, with all the feelgood scenes those films are known for.

We’re expecting a lot of tension and action in The Day Of The Jackal. The performances of Redmayne and Lynch give us hope that the tension can be sustained over 10 episodes, but we’re not sure if the intensity of the first episode can be maintained.

Cross is a solid crime thriller made very watchable by Hodge’s performance as the title character.

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.

Arcane continues its considerable dramatic momentum from the first season.

Knapp’s legitimacy as a journalist and his skepticism lends Investigation Alien an level of legitimacy that few other alien-sighting docuseries have.

Alan Cumming’s Paradise Homes benefits from the cheeky presence of the Scottish actor, transforming a dry topic into a show that’s warm and funny.

Say Nothing is spectacular television, deftly weaving multiple perspectives together in various timelines to give the viewer the full scope of the Troubles. It’s a show that doesn’t pull its punches, be it in terms of the bleakest moral nadirs of that time or in the sharply hilarious gallows humor of West Belfast. Say Nothing is propulsive, nervy, and FX’s latest must-watch masterpiece.

Whether it’s action, intrigue, humor, or heartache, this show nails it all.

We like Clarke’s strong, stoic presence as DCI Ellis in Inspector Ellis, which is why we’re recommending the show. But we hope the series has less-confusing and more-engaging mysteries in the other two episodes.

From the setting to the food that is integral to the plot to the performances of the show’s leads, the series is a feast for the senses.

It’s a well-acted show with some reasonably intricate foreign relations plotting at its core that would have been right at home on network television in the 2000s or 2010s, save for a few f-bombs here and there. Our opinion of the show hasn’t really changed in that regard, though we do think that the plot is now getting so intricate, the show may be nudging itself more towards the “prestige TV’ end of the spectrum.

St. Denis Medical arrives incredibly sure of itself, having learned all the best lessons from its predecessors. The cast has chemistry, the scripts are sharp and smart, and the guest star potential is huge.

Wizards Beyond Waverly Place will give the adults who were fans of the original series the proper nostalgia hit, but it also has more than enough laughs for the kids who are entering this world for the first time.

Meyers remains the least likely you’d expect to see doing stand-up comedy, and yet somehow, he’s also the most proficient of them at doing it right now.

Somebody Somewhere looks like its going to end the way it began, as a funny, emotional, poignant show with characters we love to spend time with.

Groundbreaking it sure is not, but cozy, it most definitely is. The Marlow Murder Club features a charming ensemble of British actors doing what they do best: countryside murder mysteries with low stakes and high quality. Pour a cuppa and get comfy under a blanket because this is peak cozy murder mystery material.

There’s still plenty of shooting and other action in the second season of Lioness, but at least now Sheridan understands that his stellar cast can do a whole lot more than grimace and hold a gun.

Billy Crystal’s lead performance in Before is what is the big attraction to the series, but we also hope that the episodes’ relatively-short runtimes will keep the storytelling focused on Eli finding out why Noah knows about his past.

Tyler Perry’s Beauty In Black is about a subtle as a slap in the face, which is something we’re surprised we didn’t see in the grim, abuse-filled first episode.

There’s no magic bullet in this hour to change your mind about Minhaj. As he even jokes in reference to his foibles: “breaking news: comedians aren’t wizards.” But his thoughts about class and race and how our relationships to boundaries have deep meanings both inside the family home as well as on the global map, those are illusions worth shattering.

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.

The first episode of Territory is a bit cluttered with characters and stories, but the sweeping vistas of the Northern Territories, backed by good performances by Torv, Taylor and Dorman make the show very watchable.

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.

There are some funny jokes, but the series feels like it belongs in 2005.

Poppa’s House works because both Wayans Sr. and Jr. lean into what makes each of them funny, and are great together. The more standard sitcommy parts will get better the longer the show stays on the air.

It’s Florida, Man. is quirky, fun and sometimes scary, which pretty much reflects the state where its stories take place.

Fire Country might be taking a bit of a soapier turn, but the fire rescue scenes are still well done, and the now-well-established cast work well together.

We were not super impressed with the creepiness or scares in Passenger, but we did like Wunmi Mosaku’s performance, and that may be enough to make this show tolerable.

Hysteria! is funny, loves heavy metal, and does up its 1980s setting well. But it’s also having a real good time keeping us on the back foot.

Happy’s Place is a throwback sitcom that relies on character humor instead of broad gags, and that’s always something that we will root for.

Despite the fact that the huge cast and massive number of storylines made us dizzy, Rivals is deliciously and unapologetically trashy, and we have to give the show credit for that.

Despite the “howcatechem” aspect of Elsbeth being less than satisfying, Preston is so good as the title character we will put up with unsatisfying cases just to watch Elsbeth do her thing.

Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage has a leg up on most of Lorre’s sitcoms because it starts with characters we already know and care about. Because of that, Lorre and company can delve into the more emotional parts of their relationships and let the funny come when it comes. There were a few funny moments during the first two episodes, but we hope those laughs come more often as the show becomes more established.

Even if you’ve never seen an episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, you’ll get a lot out of seeing Bloom speak openly about grief while keeping it harmonious.

Manuel Garcia-Rulfo thrives in the courtroom scenes that pepper Lincoln Lawyer. .... Lincoln Lawyer is also at its best when its centerpiece attorney is in reaction mode to the moves being made by the people in his personal and professional lives, which increasingly overlap.

Like most modern game shows, Are You Smarter Than A Celebrity would be better if either the episodes were shorter or more than one contestant was brought on per episode. If that were the case, we can forgive the relative uselessness of the celebrities as a trade-off for the entertainment factor they bring. And Travis Kelce definitely has a Michael Strahan-esque future in media, given how much fun he is as host.

In the second season of Shrinking, Lawrence’s patented “found family” vibe is in place, with different segments of the excellent cast mixing and matching easily in storylines that feel earned and unforced.

Coleman delivers her lines in such a stiff manner, you wonder if Jolie is really upset or just annoyed. In general, though, the show is inoffensive fare that you can watch with your teens and tweens.

Tracker‘s appeal [lies] mostly in Justin Hartley’s empathetic performance, a carryover from his This Is Us days. Otherwise, it’s a fairly standard procedural whose weekly cases are rarely compelling.

NCIS: Origins is a solid NCIS prequel that promises some backstory for Gibbs while introducing us to how the agency operated when even other government agencies had no idea it existed.

Calamy’s performance as the delusional Chris makes The Confidante a very intriguing series. We just hope that the Bataclan attack is more of a factor in the show than just being the launching point for Chris’ lies.

The first episode of Starting 5 is titled “Meet the Hoopers”, and it’s clearly focused on introductions, but the notion that introductions are necessary is pretty silly, given the star caliber we’re talking about here.

Hey, this thing is creepy. Teacup thrusts us into the everyday life of a family who must navigate their own internal problems as the world around them becomes increasingly unsettling. And weird! And probably morebloody!

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft has action, mystery, and a sincere emotional core that combine to form a fleshed-out world and story that will pique your interest. With plenty of compelling plotlines, questions, and characters set up in the first episode, we look forward to continuing on with them to see where this exciting adventure will lead.

Outer Banks season four is charging ahead with a solid new adventure while leaning into the cast of characters these actors have honed and developed over the past four years. The chemistry between all of these personalities feels real, and there’s a creaky, spooky vibe surrounding their new mission that adds to the fun.

As the first spinoff from Citadel, Citadel: Diana carries over and adds to that show’s world-building, establishes its own international flavor, and maintains an urgency driven by Diana’s double agent intentions.

Season 2 is bringing just as much drama, humor, and self-referential winking to the camera [as Season 1], and that’s all reason enough for all of us to STREAM IT.

“Look how much fun I’m having,” Wong says at one point. We can tell. And her joy at finding love again, or even at just rediscovering dating now that she has some newfound power in the dynamic, makes it fun for us to go along for the ride with her.

The chemistry between Bernal and Luna is at the heart of La Máquina, and we hope that the show’s producers lean on that for the rest of the season.

We like the cast of The Inheritance enough to keep watching, but it feels that the show is too distracted by lots of side stories to really concentrate on the mystery at its center.

There are parts of Last Days Of The Space Age that we liked, but the storytelling is too much of a shambling mess to keep our interest.