While everyone does a good job in their roles, the story at the center of The Rainmaker feels like something we’d see in a CBS law procedural, not a Grisham-based legal drama.

The drama has everything to keep viewers invested, turned on, and watching, potentially even in one sitting. It’s a fun, steamy escape and who would dare pass up one of those?

By flipping the perspective, Payback gives the traditional British crime thriller a somewhat fresher look, but it’s the show’s leads that really get our attention.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this new version of Great Expectations, but we’re wondering why someone would seek out this longer, slower adaptation when there are other adaptations that get more to the heart of Dickens’ novel much faster.

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.

This is more of a hopeful recommendation than a wholehearted one. There are lots of good elements to The Institute that just don’t seem to come together well in the first episode. But the hope is that they will coalesce as the series goes along. But there’s just as good a chance that the show will devolve into a mess of untied narrative threads.

This performance is so raw, director Jason Orley leaves in not just the parts Davidson says he’d cut from the special, but also the aside the comic makes to him from onstage about a joke he wants left in, too.

Because a) there’s the seeds of a good character-driven sitcom there, and b) Lorre and his writers have a track record of improving their shows. They’ll get every chance in the world to make it a decent show, but it’s not one right now.

We still think that Memory Of A Killer has the potential to go in directions other thrillers haven’t, simply because of the cognitive decline Dempsey’s character will be suffering through. But through the first two episodes, there’s not enough of that to make the show feel much different than other conspiracy thrillers of recent vintage.

Fit For TV: The Reality Of The Biggest Loser doesn’t reveal anything new to people who were fans of the reality competition series. But it definitely does a good job of showing exactly why it was popular and why it was a dangerous show for its contestants.

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.

The first episode of Freud is a bit confusing, but if you put the real Sigmund Freud out of your mind, you should be able to buckle in and enjoy the ride on this psychological thriller.

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.

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.

Bridge And Tunnel is potentially a good show, with some funny situations and a good amount of drama in the mix. Burns’ dialogue is generally spot on and well-delivered by the cast. But by the end of the first episode, there wasn’t one character we could latch onto and root for or against.

The original Law & Order is the TV comfort food we need right now. Whether the show will really go deep into examining the reality of policing in the post-George-Floyd era is still to be determined. But, judging by the first episode, it’s going in the right direction.

Pieces of Her is fast food storytelling presented on a high end plate. Collette and Shapiro do their best to lend depth to an otherwise shallow story. Which means if you just want a tawdry thriller to zone out to, Pieces of Her will suffice. But if, like me, you want something deeper, you’ll find Pieces of Her’s biggest mystery will be how this tonally mismatched, structurally messy show came to be.

The format of How To Become A Cult Leader isn’t quite as grating as its predecessor, How To Become A Tyrant, and that leaves room for the show to provide a lot of information about how the cult leaders it’s profiling managed to wield so much influence.

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.

While we liked the performances of Whitehall, Duchovny and van Houten, Malice really doesn’t give the viewers much in the way of dramatic momentum in the first episode, and the show doesn’t know whether it wants to be funny or scary.

You’re better off watching Squid Game again than watching the cynical, depressing mess that is Squid Game: The Challenge.

The thing that’s frustrating about Anatomy of a Scandal is that it’s ostensibly about serious issues like sexual violence, entitlement, and grey areas of the law, but it’s actually just a stupidly breezy thriller.

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

Despite our misgivings, we still enjoyed Camden. We just wish that we got a more historical perspective on the neighborhood before we heard about more modern artists.

A muddled mess. ... Waco: The Aftermath has a great cast, but it’s also massive, because of all the stories the show needs to cover. And none of them will get the attention they deserve in such a short limited series.

Even though the first episode of The Premise was uneven, there was enough there to make us want to watch the other episodes. Mainly we want to see if the big swings Novak takes in each episode connect, or if they’re admirable strike outs.

Anything is possible. And that’s what makes this wild ride of a show so endlessly enjoyable, even in its third installment.

Jury Duty is working on a lot of levels. ... Jury Duty generates ever more laughs from the everyday absurdities of human interactions as its actors disappear into their constructed identities. But there’s built-in tension, too.