Despite our reservations about the storytelling in The Big Cigar, we were impressed by Holland’s turn as Huey P. Newton. That alone is enough to watch this fast-moving series.

The second season of Outer Range certainly isn’t boring, but we just wonder if all the time jumping is going to either get confusing or just make for a bunch of jumbled mysteries without answers.

The first chunk of episodes in Bridgerton Season 3 are an ecstatic delight. Bridgerton might have a new showrunner in long-time writer Jess Brownell, but the world is still as enchanting and romantic as ever. .... This season is truly a showcase for new leading lady Nicola Coughlan. The Irish actress absolutely sparkles as wallflower-turned-heroine Penelope Featherington.

There is no need to watch Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal if you already watched The Ashley Madison Affair. But if you haven’t, it’s an entertaining — if cringe-inducing — docuseries about the dating site and how its users got exposed when its weak security was breached.

Heron has come into his own as the hero of Olympus, and watching him grow into much more of a hero than a confused lead who doesn’t know what he’s capable of. That makes for a much more exciting narrative overall, and now that we know more about Heron’s lineage, there’s so much more that can be done with the story’s direction from here.

Spacey Unmasked is a relentless series of stories detailing horrific behavior by Kevin Spacey, but it also tries to give a little context by delving into the actor’s life. Still, it’s hard to watch.

Doctor Who may be taking a slightly different direction as it arrives on Disney+, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not as funny and witty as ever. And the chemistry between Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson does a lot to make up for any encroaching tweeness.

The fact that the five Liars on the show are in group therapy together for the shared trauma the endured last season is the grounding force of the show. .... The new season brings a new killer, new romances and friend dynamics, and enough changes from last season to make it feel like it’s not just treading the same ground.

Bodkin is relatively light and pleasant to watch, but we’re not sure if the show is going to get much deeper or more interesting than what we saw in the first episode.

Black Twitter: A People’s History is a fun and informative document of a phenomenon that is endemic to this particular era of social media discourse, but also helped change the discourse that was happening in general culture.

Because the bulk of the hour is chock full of bells and whistles and topical references, it might not have the same staying power as some of his earlier specials.

If you’re not a big Brady fan or a Patriots fan, then the three hours will feel like a slog. But if you’re a fan, then I don’t need to tell you to STREAM IT.

Crouch and his writers aren’t trying to confuse the viewers. As far as science fiction stories like this go, it’s a refreshing approach. .... Edgerton does a good job of showing both Jasons’ motivations.

STREAM IT but not because you love fashion or competition shows, simply because it works best as a half-hour comedy: funny, full of characters, and a very easy way to wind down after A DAY.

When MaryLand concentrates on Becca and Rosaline re-bonding while seeking answers about their mother, the series works the best, thanks the performances from Jones and Best. The rest of the stories surrounding the sisters feel like filler that won’t really have much to do with the general direction of the series.

This series of live talk shows demonstrates why Mulaney would’ve been and still remains a great candidate to anchor anything like Update.

It’ll be an entertaining May the Fourth binge, and likely an engrossing one for Star Wars fans of all levels.

Has Criminal Minds: Evolution changed the tried and true formula that carried its original show to over 320 episodes? Not really. But with an extended storyline and most of the cast back, it’ll feel like a refresh to the show’s longtime fans, while feeling familiar enough to keep them very happy.

Here in season three the very real challenges faced by Diddly Squat give him true pause, and that creates an effective balance against the usual gripes and galavanting. We’re invested in how Clarkson’s going to solve his farm’s host of problems, and particularly enjoy it when the solution as he sees it meets real world whammies.

The Tattooist Of Auschwitz shows that there can be a glimmer of hope in even the most horrific situations.

Welcome To Wrexham isn’t exactly about the same plucky underdog team anymore. But as long as the show’s producers continue to emphasize the team’s connections with its fans and city, it should be a little more than just a straightforward sports docuseries.

We want to see more of Marcus, whom we think got the short end of the narrative stick in Season 2. But for the most part, if the rest of Season 3 of Hacks is as satisfying as the first episode was, we’ll be pretty happy.

Really, the only reason to watch A Man In Full is to see Daniels swagger his way through six episodes as Charlie Croker. The rest of the show has some fine actors, but we have no idea if they’ll get any kind of meaty stories in such a brief series.

The alchemy of Season 1 was the intense chemistry Anderson and Reid shared. Zaman, Hayles, and Bogosian are all ferocious scene partners for Anderson, but none of them come close to capturing the lightning storm that is Louis and Lestat. That said, Interview With the Vampire remains the rarest of treats on television. It’s a soapy, gothic fairy tale full of sensuality, gore, and incredible performances.

The jury is still out for us whether The Veil will be worth the time investment; on first glance there doesn’t seem to be enough story there, but Moss, Charles and Knight give us hope that things will pick up.

It’s Bon Jovi’s own decision-making that figures into the biggest dramatic hook in Thank You, which is the whys and hows of Sambora’s departure, and that will certainly keep us watching.

Knuckles is a fun, light show that has just enough edge to keep parents engaged, but is completely suitable for the whole family.

Despite our reservations, Dead Boy Detectives is mostly fun to watch, and the flaws we saw in the first episode might be smoothed over as the season goes along.

The Big Door Prize works because it allows us to spend time with a group of appealing characters that have become a “found family” as they try to figure out just what they want to get out of their lives. That vibe continues in Season 2.

While The Jinx – Part Two is still worth watching, it feels not nearly as essential and compelling as the original series was, and some of its more meta moments left us scratching our heads.

Every aspect of Big Mood, from the chemistry between Coughlan and West, the sharp, comedic commentary on pop culture and social media, and the nuanced handling of mental illness is responsible for this show being a must-watch.

Dinner With The Parents is one of those shows that is elevated by the cast. Nothing about the show is particularly fresh or inventive, and some of the writing is maddeningly inconsistent. But the cast manages to take the material and make it funny.

The Spiderwick Chronicles isn’t scary enough or wonderous enough to hold our interest, and we get the feeling that kids who watch the show will seek out other shows that are either scarier or more whimsical.

Despite some missing context, Grant Amato’s strangely normal interview footage and audio effectively drives the narrative in CTRL+ALT+DESIRE.

The producers of Our Living World take a novel approach to the nature docuseries, showing different ways living beings on this planet are connected. Sometimes those connections are a bit strained, but the footage that is being used outweighs a lot of those flaws.

Under The Bridge has more than enough complications to make for compelling drama, and the first episode gives viewers just enough information about the case to hook them in without getting them frustrated.

Parasyte: The Grey has enough action to hold viewers’ interest, but the story of Su-in’s mutant existence is also what’s going to keep us watching.

There’s going to be a lot of quirky characters, a lot of stylistic filmmaking techniques used, and a very solid sense of place and time that permeates the entire narrative. That tends to be a good thing, and it will serve this narrative well. We just hope that The Sympathizer doesn’t get distracted by its gimmicks and focuses on Captain’s story.

We’re recommending Franklin because we were pleasantly surprised with how well Michael Douglas slipped into the role of Benjamin Franklin. But the rest of the show left us mostly bored.

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.

There were some parts of Crime Scene Berlin: Nightlife Killer that we wished got some more time, like the general cluelessness from the cops about LGBTQ club culture, but the show’s brief running time and straightforward storytelling is a good trade-off for the lack of self-examination.

Baby Reindeer is a very bingeable show because it’s funny while being incredibly dark, and it doesn’t take the easy way out when it comes to its characters. So, while we cringed every time Martha further wheedled her way into Donny’s life, we also wanted to know what would happen next. That’s not something we’ve said about a lot of shows lately.

Fallout does a good job drawing viewers into its expansive world without needing a ton of exposition to explain what’s going on. It helps that the show is visually stunning and filled with fine performances by Goggins, Purnell and others.

Despite the languid pacing, Sugar had us engaged for the entire first episode, mainly because Colin Farrell embodies the character of John Sugar so well.

We do admit that Ripley gets off to a bit of a sleepy start. But we’re intrigued by both Scott’s take on Tom Ripley and Zaillian’s decision to give Patricia Highsmith’s story a noirish patina.

Our mild recommendation for Loot continues from its first season to its second. The relationships between the characters are growing, which is great, but the show is just not as funny as it should be, and that’s always disappointing.

While we didn’t see a lot in The Synanon Fix that we didn’t see in previous Synanon-centric docuseries, the whole phenomenon of Synanon is just so fascinating to watch that we didn’t mind exploring it again, with some new voices to describe their experiences.

A little zany and a lot of heart, the show has enough well-timed jokes to keep you entertained and asking for the next episode.

It’s entirely possible that this show and its cast will evolve to a group we want to invest in, but this first season feels tired. Might as well hang a DO NOT DISTURB sign on it.

If you don’t consider yourself the biggest Steve Martin fan or you need a refresher course on how he became the most popular comedian of the late 1970s, then by all means STREAM IT to the first episode, but everyone should make sure to watch the second part, which provides a much richer, fuller portrait of the comedian, actor, playwright, art collector, and in his later years, husband, father and comedy partner.

Parish is a rather generic crime drama with shallowly-sketched characters. But Esposito makes it watchable, purely because we love seeing how he portrays his character’s barely-controlled rage.

If you’re not already a fan of Carmichael’s, STREAM IT this first episode to decide for yourself whether you’re ready for what’s to come. There’s certainly nothing here, though, that would surprise fans who have watched him become more and more self-reflective and performative, from the most sanitized broadcast network sitcom version of Carmichael he first presented on NBC, to his 2019 HBO home movies, to Rothaniel, to now this.

We hope is that Wainwright manages to balance the whimsical parts of Renegade Nell with the more dramatic parts. It feels like the whimsical dropped off quickly by the end of the first episode, and it needs to be there for the series to be watchable. But it’s off to a good start.

McGregor’s performance is key to the success of A Gentleman In Moscow, a series which has its dark moments, but is a whole lot more hopeful than it seems on the surface.

While the first episode of We Were The Lucky Ones is a bit confusing and the show has too many characters to keep track of, King’s and Lerman’s performances anchor the series and make it worth watching, even if the rest of the characters won’t get as well-explored.

The Grey’s cast has changed over the years, but the show has managed to stay familiar and retain so much of what makes it addictive. Time will tell if Pompeo’s absence diminishes what made this series the flagship of Shondaland, but for now, it’s off to a great start.

Despite good performances from Daniels and Tierney, American Rust: Broken Justice doesn’t make a case that a second season will be any more of a grim exercise than the first was.

Mary & George takes bold swings, with regard to its approach to the period’s details and to its depiction of history. These swings are wild enough that it could off-put purists of the genre, but I was delighted. Mary & George is the type of show pushing the period drama genre where it needs to go in the future: to a vision of the past that shows us how similar it really was to our present.

Once again, Time does a good job of showing inmates as humans, and how their lives suffer on the inside as they deal with real-life problems happening on the outside.

Youssef might not change your mind specifically about whom you’re voting for or what side you’re on politically, but hopefully he’ll get you thinking about how you engage with your friends, your families, and even with strangers, whether you’re on Instagram or at Olive Garden.

We hope that there will be more rule shakeups this season on Top Chef, as the show had started to become a bit rote over its past half-a-dozen seasons or so. But with the change in when immunity is won, and the new perspective Kish gives as host, Season 21 is off to a good start.

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.

X-Men ’97 works because it feels like the exact same TV show, but with its inhibitor collar turned off. This is X-Men finally cutting loose.

Alice & Jack sometimes feels like one of the most interesting love stories we’ve seen in ages, and at others it’s infuriatingly annoying. But Gleeson and Riseborough have undeniable chemistry, which is enough for us to want to see this decade-and-a-half romance play out.

Does Boarders say anything new? That’s yet to be seen. But even if it treads well-worn ground, it does so in a way that’s witty and funny, with just enough drama to let the audience know that the stakes for these five teens are pretty high.

The only thing that keeps Apples Never Fall from being yet another eye-rolling show about wealthy people being terrible is Annette Bening’s performance as a woman who is still looking for something, even in retirement.

The latest season of Girls5Eva took a risk by making a few significant changes to its formula, but it didn’t suffer for it. The fact is that the talented actresses in the group, along with the show’s funny-because-it’s-so-ridiculous writing and songs are as solid as they’ve ever been and keep the show’s frenetic pace moving.

he Reluctant Traveler With Eugene Levy finds the comedy legend less reluctant, than he was during the show’s first season. But the series is still entertaining, mainly because Levy is so self-deprecatingly funny and because we love seeing him discovering all of these new things in his later years.

The Signal does a good job of splitting its story into two storylines that are well-defined, bringing the viewer along on the show’s central mystery in a way that keeps them interested without jerking them around.

Unlike his treatise on 9/11 and the War On Terror, Knappenberger has done a good job of contextualizing just how the nuclear arms race got started. The first episode of this docuseries is almost 80 minutes long, but it’s riveting because it doesn’t just recite the history you might have learned in class or while watching countless History Channel docuseries on World War II.

3 Body Problem may fail to inspire true awe, but there’s enough fun, shock, and horror to keep sci-fi fans engaged. It is a completely competent season of television.

Like most of Guy Ritchie’s material when he’s in caper and kooky criminals mode, The Gentlemen is a romp. Chippy, funny, stylish, cartoonishly violent, touched with mild absurdity.

Manhunt winds up being a mixed bag of thrilling revelation and tortuous tedium. The Apple TV+ show often loses its all its juice by trying to squeeze in as much historical embellishment as possible.

Supersex revels in layering these themes in the most seductive ways possible. I soon found myself, like Noemi, happily at the show’s mercy. After plowing through the first two episodes, I was desperate for more. I have a hunch Netflix fans will be, too. Supersex manages to weave together smut and art in intoxicating measure.

Animal Control has a strong ensemble, and characters that are inherently funny without the need to spew gags. That is very evident in the second season, even after you get past the very funny view of drunken raccoons.

Extraordinary continues to mine humor from well-written characters and a finely-tuned ensemble, using its superhero conceit only occasionally.

The Program: Cons, Cults And Kidnapping does a good job of showing the harrowing conditions at the Academy at Ivy Ridge and other disciplinary schools, while also showing the resiliency of the people who were sent there and endured those conditions.

Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Easy modernizes an 85-year-old text simply by changing the nationality of its main character, and it makes the story a whole lot less creaky as a result.

While we like Fielding in the lead role, The Completely Made-Up Adventures Of Dick Turpin mostly misses the mark when it comes to the silly gags that permeate the first episode.

We’re suckers for the “howdunit” format of Elsbeth, and Preston has such a good handle on the character that we are looking forward to watching her catch wily killers week after week.

We’re not sure if throwing Ethan back into the mix, even if he somehow gets tangled up with the people chasing after Elliot, is the best idea, either. But there’s more than enough good stuff going on in Season 2 to override those concerns, at least for right now.

Iwájú is a visually fascinating look at a futuristic Nigerian city, with lots of clever character moments and an Afrobeat soundtrack that ties it all together.

American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders is a fascinating look at a case that not only has huge implications about how the U.S. government ran in the 1980s and ’90s, but it’s also gives a lot of insight into how journalists can get so deep into stories that sometimes have pretty humble beginnings.

It’s a bleak look at the ways in which power corrupts, seduces, and seesaws that will leave you howling in laughter and twitching in discomfort in the same breath. .... The Regime is a twisted triumph.

Deal Or No Deal Island is the Cool Ranch Doritos of game shows, taking some of the best things about original and subtly improving it.

Where Is Wendy Williams? is really hard to watch, but if you are at all interested in what’s been going on in her life in the last few years, or have been following the confusing drama around her care, this is a must watch.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is basically a love story wrapped in the usual TWD post-apocalyptic shell. But what we hope is that the love story breaks through that shell and shows us something we haven’t seen from the franchise before.

Slate describes her act at one point as “this weird love story in reverse,” and even if we cannot give her the same love her therapist does or even her real mom, we at least can see why she’s so lovable in the first place.

The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy throws viewers into a strange and exciting cosmic world with oddities at every turn. Though the episodes take on several subplots and medical cases, the overarching storyline with the deadly parasite is very interesting and will encourage viewers to follow Dr. Sleech and Dr. Klak on their research.

We’re reserving judgement about the slow pacing of Constellation until we get to see more episodes. But for a show that starts with a disaster and leads into a conspiracy, we were surprised at how little we were engaged with the material.

Avatar: The Last Airbender accomplishes a rare feat for a live-action adaptation of an animates series: It brings new people into its world while giving fans of the original more than enough to keep them watching.

Will Trent continues to entertain with characters that have really deep backstories and cases that are good enough to follow, even if they take a backseat to all of the character arcs.

It’s never been our cup of tea, but David Shore and company have managed to put together a good ensemble that still works well together as the show enters its final season.

It definitely suffers from a bit of bloat. (Not everything has to be a ten-part series, I swear.) Still, it’s comforting, well-crafted off-season sports content, a perfectly nice thing to spend your time with if you’ve got the time to spend.

Young Sheldon has been evolving into an ensemble family comedy for its entire run, but in its final season that goal is fully realized. And, with Armitage way past his “cute kid” stage, it’s come just in time.

Ghosts has become a true ensemble show in its third season, and it starts its new season with an episode that shows just how much of a family the ghosts and the “livings” have become.

The New Look may spiral into ridiculousness as the story gets away from its World War II beginnings, but it starts off as a unsparing look at how two French designers dealt with being under Nazi occupation.

If you like reality television, we recommend giving Couple to Throuple a shot! The show takes the voyeuristic nature of reality programming to the next level and offers nonstop jaw-dropping moments. But if you’re looking to learn about polygamy in an ethical and educational manner, stick to the YouTube explainers — or book a private session with Howard.