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.

With its global backdrop, imaginative designs, and two of the friendliest faces you’ve ever seen reunited on TV, Making the Cut is exactly the show we need right now.

While The Consultant isn’t that funny or scary, and many of the supporting characters are one-dimensional. But if you just like watching Christoph Waltz being weird, this show will have lots and lots of that.

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.

Adults definitely starts out a bit frantic, and the characters a bit cartoonish, but there is more than enough that’s funny about this group of friends that makes us want to spend more time with them.

We grant you that the first couple of episodes of The Investigation will be frustrating to watch, given what you know about the Wall case. But seeing these cops and prosecutors make their way through Madsen’s lies to get to the truth will be interesting to watch.

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.

It’s an uneven, uninspiring season of television that fails to live up to the high standard of past seasons. ... It’s not all disastrous, though; there are some excellent things about this season, too. Namely, Lesley Manville’s Princess Margaret. ... Key members of the new ensemble cast feel like downgrades from the Emmy-winning stars of seasons past.

Things take a little while to develop in the first episode of Hijack‘s second season. But once we learned exactly what was going on, we were locked back into what we expect to be a fast-paced season, with the usual excellent performance from Idris Elba.

We are hoping against hope that most of The Morning Show‘s third season will be more like the first episode’s first 45 minutes and less like the last 15. But given the evidence we’ve seen to this point, we don’t have a lot of faith that it will be that way.

The storytelling chaos that Loki sews can cause headaches. But this series remains worthwhile and entertaining because its cast is so great. Tom Hiddleston, Wunmi Mosaku, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Owen Wilson, and Sophia Di Martino keep us in this thing even as the premise sometimes skids along the edge of a deep, unknowable chasm.

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.

The Most Dangerous Animal Of All is intriguing enough to spend three-and-a-half hours on, but you may find yourself wondering why this story couldn’t have been told in half the time.

'Barkskins' is well-acted and looks fantastic, but it's too confusing at the start

Bridgerton Season 4 Part 1 retains the charm of past seasons, but it often feels like two clashing shows, competing for ultimate attention. .... My only hope is that that drama can be a bit more streamlined, a bit more sexy, and bit more focused on our wonderful season leads when Part 2 rolls out on February 26.

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

The fact that this group has such good chemistry with each other despite not being in the same room, and the fact that Gero and Gall are able to craft story arcs as we go through the pandemic is almost miraculous. We genuinely laughed many times through the three episodes NBC sent for review.

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.

We wish Harlan Coben’s Shelter gave us a bit more of a cohesive story in its early going instead of what feels like taking all of its mysteries and putting them in a storytelling blender. But the charm of the leads and the fact that the mystery has multiple layers give us hope that as things are revealed, the storytelling will become a bit less frenzied.

It may be a low bar, but if we’re watching a network series where we don’t roll our eyes or throw up our hands at what we’re seeing on the screen, there’s a good chance that we’ll want to see more of it. And Alaska Daily had enough to like to make us want to see more.

Shining Girls takes its time to reveal the entire picture of what its story is about. But with a fine lead performance by Moss and expert direction, it’s still got enough tension to make us OK with getting only little bits of info.

The second episode of Tulsa King gave us hope that the series can be an enjoyable series with a bit of a sense of a humor about its fish-out-of-water conceit and that Stallone can turn down the Sly schtick. But there were still a lot of issues that make us think that the show could end up being as nuanced as a plate of spaghetti topped with ketchup.

La Fortuna’s distinctive story, combined with the standout performances from Tucci and Peters, make the show one we want to stick with.

Murderville isn’t a show you watch for any sort of story; you watch it to see how the guest stars react to what’s going on around them. And you watch it to laugh. And you’ll laugh a lot.

Between the CGI blood, the disjointed dramatic scenes, and the somewhat stilted expert interviews, it feels like anyone who wants to get the history of the Colosseum in Rome would be better served reading its Wikipedia entry than slogging through 8 hours of Colosseum.

If you’re interested in jumping into Neighbours, you may want to read some online wikis and other articles first. But even if you don’t, you’ll still feel like you’re somewhere warm and familiar, just by virtue of actors and characters that have been around for decades.

Season three proves that the show is still as reliably funny and original as ever thanks the array of funny supporting characters and an intriguing plot refresh.

While America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders isn’t going to get too dark or delve too deeply into real issues, it’s still a good behind the scenes look at how one of the most famous cheerleading squads in the world gets ready for being in the spotlight.