Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson is one of TV’s most beloved characters and as long as she’s there, the show is worth watching. But, boy, they couldn’t have come up with a more generic season premiere if they tried.

While not quite as intense as its first season, the second season of Suspect is still very watchable because of the well-paced half-hour episodes and a cast that can handle its tell-don’t-show storytelling.

Gremlins: The Wild Batch continues the pre-movie mythology of the Mogwai with good voice acting, fun action sequences and expressive animation.

Heartstopper continues to revel in the small moments in relationships as well as the big ones, and seeing all of this romantic stability onscreen makes us feel good, which is the show’s objective.

Where’s Wanda? is engaging and funny, but effectively shows how two parents wanted to be active in the search for their missing daughter.

Mr. McMahon isn’t the whole story, and it’s not reasonable to expect it to be given the financial conflict of interest between Netflix and WWE. It’s still a fascinating story, though, and there’s a lot to be taken from Mr. McMahon, even if you take it with a grain of salt on the side. (Or perhaps in the eyes.)

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon continues to work because it puts one of the franchise’s best characters in an unfamiliar situation. But now that his partner in zombie-killing is on the way to his side, that should make things even better.

Social Studies doesn’t tell you anything you haven’t already heard about teens and social media. But the sheer volume of what Greenfield shows teens being up to will scare any parent more than any blood-and-guts show Ryan Murphy can come up with.

9-1-1 is what it has always been, which is a show with great actors put in insane rescue situations. At this point, for it to be anything different would be strange.

Doctor Odyssey is a pretty dumb, inessential watch, but an entertaining one, mostly due to the performances of the main cast and guest stars.

We’re not sure how much more juice there is left to squeeze from the lemon that is Ashley and Gordon’s odd relationship, but Colin From Accounts tries its best to do just that, while expanding what we know about the world around them.

Even though we don’t completely buy the chemistry between Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, Nobody Wants This is funny enough, and the supporting characters robust enough, to keep us watching to see if Bell and Brody’s characters mesh a little better.

Whether it’s a good murder mystery is still up in the air after the first two episodes. But damn if Nash-Betts doesn’t completely command our attention during her copious screen time.

Midnight Family comes off as a bit soapy at times, but we get to see an aspect of how the medical field works in a place like Mexico City, along with a bunch of rescues that might be thrilling, tragic, silly or all three.

Murder In A Small Town is both a murder mystery series and a romance series. Can the two mesh? So far, it has, mainly thanks to the chemistry between Sutherland and Kreuk.

We enjoyed Penelope because Megan Stott’s performance is a clinic in solo acting, and we appreciate the story’s fantasy aspects. But those nagging questions that pop into our heads while watching it just don’t go away.

DeGeneres still has the chops as a shrewd observational comedian, but can she effectively chop away at her own mystique? Yes and no. .... While she gets sizable laughs making fun of men for getting away with making ridiculous public scenes by playing air guitar or imagining their golf swings, DeGeneres gets far less mileage with more shallow thoughts about somehow not knowing what it means to be in charge.

Your enjoyment of this series depends as much upon how well you know and follow the Whitehalls (as it does upon your enjoyment of reality TV projects in general). If you’ve loved watching the exploits of Jack and his dad in the past, or already love binging lite reality, then you’re obviously going to want to STREAM IT. But if you haven’t experienced Jack Whitehall and his dad before now, this might not be the best first introduction to them.

Zachary Quinto is a big reason why Brilliant Minds works in its first episode. But for it to continue to work, the rest of the characters need to be developed, and Quinto’s character needs to have his flaws explored in more depth.

Because of Bates, Matlock is certainly entertaining to watch. But would the show be equally entertaining if she wasn’t there? We’re not sure.

While Rescue: HI-Surf isn’t the deepest drama we’ve seen, the rescue scenes combined with Wells’ knowledge of how to build characters around the action give us confidence that the series has potential.

Twilight of the Gods happily gets lusty and bloodsoaked as it explores the tenets and characters of Norse mythology, with a strong sense of adventure to go with its weaving of fact, fable, and director Zack Snyder’s signature style.

La Maison works because it isn’t about what you might think it’s going to be about. Instead of it being about a stereotypical tyrant of a designer, it’ll be interesting to see two unexpected characters take over a fashion house and bring it into the 2020s.

What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates is informative, and Gates and the producers speak to an impressive array of experts and A-listers. But we wish it had a bit more of a wary eye about its subjects.

The new Frasier isn’t as awful at the beginning of its second season as it was at the beginning of its first. But it’s not great, either. The recommendation is because of all the guest stars that we’re going to see this season and a hope that the first episode of the season won’t be an indicator of what the rest of the season is like.

The Penguin is compelling because of the very different but equally riveting performances of Ferrell and Milioti.

Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story takes a pretty familiar story and makes it compelling by shifting the narrative slightly and through some excellent performances.

A Very Royal Scandal takes an event from the very recent past and gives it some fascinating context, aided by good performances from Sheen, Wilson and Scanlan.

We’ll watch Have I Got News For You because of Wood, Ruffin and Black. But the format is certainly can use some improvement.

It’s definitely a much better use of Hahn as Agatha than just continuing the WandaVision format. .... We’re excited to see Hahn, Plaza and the rest of the cast of Agatha All Along take Agatha’s story in whatever direction it goes.

Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal will bring back tons of memories of the music viewers might have listened to in middle or high school back in the 1980s, but the backstage stories will be what hold the interest of people who didn’t grow up with the music.

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.

We appreciate the fact that American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez treats its story with respect and not as a tabloidy story ripe for outrageous dramatic scenes. That and the generally good performances make the first season of this new franchise worth watching.

Ultimately, the show wants us to be as hopeful as Edelman, while also reminding us that sometimes we need safe spaces to simply exist. And we sure need a lot of hope right now.

We almost think at this point that Tulsa King is designed to be ridiculous on purpose, because as eye-rolling as the second-season premiere was, we still want to watch Dwight and his crew get the upper hand on everyone in Tulsa and Brooklyn.

Three Women might have worked better as an anthology, but in its current format, it has too many superfluous elements and not enough actual drama.

Shows like How To Die Alone completely depend on the charm of the star and the cast. And Natasha Rothwell is definitely charming. But she has also built a cast around her that we want to see more of.

Billionaire Island is just getting started setting up its soapy family rivalry story, and there’s enough there in the first episode to make us hope things will get better.

The strong performances of Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow continue to make The Old Man a must-watch, but it definitely has enough confidence in its ensemble to give us stories without either of them in front of the camera.

My Brilliant Friend: Season 4 kicks off with a compelling and dramatic premiere that will immediately have viewers hooked and hungry for more. From the incredible acting to the impactful writing, this Italian series continues to expertly depict the complexity of human relationships over time and seems poised to end on a high with this fourth and final season.

The Chicken Sisters is a pleasant, often amusing show that has a good cast and wraps family drama in a refreshing package.

Wise Guy: David Chase And The Sopranos provides a lot of insight into what made Chase tick and what went into the creation of the landmark series.

Simply put: Universal Basic Guys is a deeply unfunny show. And when it’s not funny, then all of the other problems the show has are amplified.

As long as the episodes of Trigger Point‘s second season continue to show Lana and the rest of the expo squad escape one tense situation after the other — and occasionally fail — the show will continue to be entertaining, even if the overall terrorist plot is just meh.

A well-organized script and some fantastic performances makes the expansive story of Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist an engaging, fun show to watch.

The only reasons we’re recommending The Perfect Couple are Hewson, Fanning, and our fervent hope that the series continues to be more irreverent than most shows in this annoyingly persistent genre.

Between the old lies and secrets that everyone is keeping and the new ones that have just been revealed, the show redefines “guilty pleasure” as a show where the guilty get pleasured… and pretty much everyone is guilty of something.

Just like Season 1, those personalities are so strong that we love seeing them interact with each other, even if the cases they’re working on aren’t that intriguing.

We’re unsure how the cold case ties in with the domestic homicide case that brings Collins and Adama together. It may not, but it seems that having a second, unrelated case taking Collins’ time would be a waste of plot if it didn’t tie into the other case somehow. We also are curious to see if Collins’ personal issues, plus her anger with Bradshaw, will factor in.

The Tower does a good job of telling its central mystery without a lot of filler, and Whelan’s performance as Collins is both intense and emotional.

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.

Terminator Zero takes a fresh crack at the most familiar stuff from the Terminator franchise – twisty time-travel hijinks, machine-born sentience, human-cyborg conflict – and lends the story new direction and life, as well as a distinctive, animé-inspired new look.

This is a fun show to watch, and all of the roughness Safdie throws at Sandler only just helps to show that what makes a comedy special special isn’t the big stage or production value, but the intimacy between the performer and their audience. And Sandler has that in spades.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power ups the ante in Season 2, but still takes its time to explore various sets of characters. It’s rare when a show gets five guaranteed seasons, and the show’s producers and writers are taking advantage of this expanded time to make the stories as good as they can be.

Despite our reservations about KAOS, we are riveted by Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, and we hope his performance makes up for a series whose satisfaction over its own cleverness shows in almost every frame.

After Baywatch: Moment In The Sun is one of those documentaries that perhaps doesn’t reveal all that much that’s new, but it’s fun to see everyone again and — yes, we’re just that basic — see what everyone looks like these days.

At this point Only Murders In The Building rides on the chemistry among Martin, Short and Gomez, and in Season 4, that chemistry is well-established. We just hope that Charles, Mabel and Oliver are as much fun running around Hollywood solving murders as they are running around New York.

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.

English Teacher’s impressive jokes-per-minute count delivers a steady stream of laugh-out-loud moments (a simple back-and-forth about Shrek is a contender for joke of the year). And as deliciously dense episodes whiz by, the show challenges viewers to keep up in the best way possible. Chief among English Teacher‘s hit comedy ingredients is A+ casting. .... It’s a winning comedy at the top of its class, and school will hopefully be in session for many seasons to come.

Pachinko continues to be a show that deftly handles its sprawling settings and themes to make for a compelling multi-generational drama.

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

Reasonable Doubt might not be as crazy as it was during its first season, but Emayatzy Corinealdi’s lead performance as Jax is as strong as ever.

Wyatt Earp And The Cowboy War takes an entertaining look at a surprisingly complex part of American history, with its judicious use of narration and interview supporting well-written and well-acted scripted reenactments.

Chimp Crazy is a docuseries that piles on the storytelling drama, but it also evokes strong emotions from us, which is what a good docuseries should do.

Over 20 years later, this series does a good job of stripping away the excess and offering the essentials of the case and the evidence against Scott. Most of all though, the series provides the narrative that, despite his best attempts to seem like a man in mourning, Scott Peterson knew what he was doing all along and was pretty bad at concealing it.

If you’ve stuck with Emily in Paris for three seasons, you’re getting more of what you love (or love to hate watch) in Season 4, Part 1. And crucially, it will take you back to Paris and help fill the Olympics void in your heart.

Bad Monkey has a bit of a shaggy feel to it, with potential to fly off in a lot of different directions and a lot of characters to keep track of. But if anyone can keep a show like this on point, it’s Lawrence and his crew.

Tension arrives quickly in the series, as they realize it won’t be like making and hustling their own content. They have to build reality show-like alliances, and factor in the opposite, a mutual agreement to oust more powerful players. It’s a different skill set, and it will be interesting to see who can best blend what made them social media influencers in the first place with the age-old concept of real life human interaction.

It’s breezy and fun, and you won’t need your brain too much.

Yo Gabba GabbaLand brings back everything kids loved about the original series, plus expands the gang’s universe, giving them more to explore.

There isn’t anything groundbreaking about the filmmaking, but the true crime at the center of the story is compelling.

Tales Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is definitely fun to watch and is certainly more sophisticated than the Turtles’ original animated adventures.

The six-episode conclusion of The Umbrella Academy is a definite STREAM IT.

Does Mr. Throwback have the potential to fly off the rails? Absolutely. But the show’s creators have decided to keep the goings on relatively low-key, which actually makes the show funnier than it should be.

It’s apparent that the new iteration, helmed by Hampton’s authentic tough love and direction, launches a solid ensemble cast exuding their own signature star power and sass.

Cartel gets a lot of use out of reenactments, with actors in big black Aviators and cowboy boots driving around Texas in a government-issue Impala, or trying to stay incognito as they surveil their persons of interest at horse auctions. And while that stuff is effective in building tension – Lawson and the FBI were targeting a criminal group known for killing indiscriminately, always wary of being made – it’s the case itself that’s the most interesting thing here.

If he says you shouldn’t trust what he says out of context while drunk and high in a three-hour long podcast, then perhaps you can get everything you need to know about him and decide for yourself by seeing and listening to what he says here while presumably stone cold sober but slightly sweaty for just over an hour.

The Change is a funny show with a simple premise, which works mostly because of Bridget Christie’s winning performance.

Industry Season 3 is a fabulous level up for an already great show. The impressive ensemble cast continues to excavate the beautiful, broken characters the[y] play.

A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder rides on the charm of Emma Myers, but there’s also a solid mystery to get to the bottom of, which isn’t always the case in shows like this.

While we don’t love the storytelling in the first episode of Women In Blue, the performances by the four lead actresses are very watchable and the serial killer mystery that will be a big part of the first season is going to be a good driver of action.

Elite is already stirring up its component parts for a satisfyingly spicy, gossipy, and bloody series conclusion.

There was so many directions Granite Harbour could have gone in, which is why its generic story and characters are so disappointing.

We’re giving The Decameron a lukewarm recommendation because there are characters that we do want to follow in this dark comedy, and we have confidence that the storytelling will help deepen the characters we don’t love. But the comedic elements don’t hit most of the time, and we wonder how much effort it will take viewers to really buy into the goings on at this Tuscan villa.

Dirty Pop smartly ties its year-by-year timestamps to songs, like Backstreet’s “I Want It That Way” and “We’ve Got It Goin’ On,” or NSYNC with “It’s Gonna be Me,” which allows us to follow how huge the 90s boy band phenomenon really got, and wonder how those groups allowed themselves to be swindled for so long. .... The AI thing is a weird outlier in contrast to how any of the other footage in Dirty Pop is used. The docuseries readily admits the footage was manipulated. But it gives off a reek of also manipulating the viewing audience.

Pete Rose is a complicated figure, perhaps as complicated as any in the history of baseball. Whether you love him or hate him, Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose will keep your interest; the whole story is there, and you can pick your side.

There are enough funny elements, and good performances, in Time Bandits to keep watching beyond the first episode. But we’re not sure there is enough there to sustain audience interest — whether it’s kids or adults — for ten episodes.

Kite Man: Hell Yeah! is a STREAM IT, especially if you’re already versed in the brash and bloodsoaked goings-on of the Harley Quinn animated series. This is a fun, foul-mouthed send-up of the superhero genre with expressive voice acting and a gleeful murderous streak that guarantees its NSFW-ness.

Not every athlete is worthy of a documentary, but Simone Biles isn’t just any athlete. Simone Biles: Rising is a well-crafted document of one of the best to ever do it.

Omnivore is a visual feast and an informative docuseries about essential everyday ingredients we all use and eat. We just wish it was a bit more warm and personal of a show.

Despite not really having a good idea how the show is going to get to its destination, the performances by Portman and Ingram make Lady In The Lake worth watching, hoping against hope that the story comes together at some point before the end of the season.

Those About To Die is too muddled, with too many characters, to even enjoy for the sex and violence, of which there’s quite a bit.

With Kreese back in the center of the action, everyone working towards Sekai Taikai and an extended final season in 2024 and “final battle” in 2025 on the horizon, we can see Hurwitz, Schlossberg and Heald focusing and being able to bring Cobra Kai to the finish line with a funny, emotionally affecting story.

UnPrisoned is a funny show that deals with some pretty heavy generational issues, and while it still rides on the fantastic chemistry between Kerry Washington and Delroy Lindo, the rest of the cast is getting some meaty material, as well.

Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution emphasizes the beats and songs that built a classic sound, and the communities, often marginalized or under-represented, who did the hard work – and all of the dancing! – to bring it to life by the light of a turning glitterball, before the music ever went slick and mainstream.

There are a lot of powerful, personal moments in the interviews featured in Teen Torture, Inc. But the docuseries also relies heavily on the kind of stilted reenactments that clog up a lot of today’s true crime stuff, repeated use of the same stock footage and personal photographs, and provocative statements that it doesn’t immediately back up with facts or research.

While Mafia Spies has a good story at its core, the series itself is at least two episodes too long to tell the story effectively.

Orlando Bloom: To The Edge isn’t the ego-stroking exercise we thought it would be. The show, which actually has a lot going for it, just needs some tighter editing.