We wish that the multi-level humor of the original series was here, rather than just a series of bug eye gags and heavy items falling on the characters.

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.

Just lighthearted enough to not set off a panic attack.

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.

There were some very funny moments, but they mostly involved the supporting characters (more on that in a moment). The connection between Ginny and Georgia (and, we guess Austin, but he’s just stuck in cute-kid-land for the entire first episode) needs to be warmer and stronger for us to completely buy in.

Zukerman is no Tom Hanks, but he’s sufficiently charming as Langdon to make us believe he’s the young version of Brown’s signature character. ... The more we buy into Langdon’s prolific skills and the more twisty the story is, the better. But we’re not sure if Dworkin, Beattie and their writers will be able to pull it off.

The first two episodes feel like a missed opportunity, given the cast. But what we’re hoping is that things will get better as its first season goes along, and there’s enough there to keep us interested while hoping it gets better.

[Bayer's] comedy chops here easily remind you of how she shined behind the Weekend Update desk with in-over-their-head characters such as Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy or flailing meteorologist Dawn Lazarus. ... The pilot, directed by Michael Showalter, has an even slower burn than say, Search Party, which he co-created.

Given the cast and the potential for a series with some good laughs, we’ll tentatively recommend The Z-Suite. But the writers really need to take their feet off the gas when it comes to cliches about both Gen X and Gen Z.

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.

If you’re fans of the quartet at the center of The Super Models, you’ll be fascinated at this look at their lives. If you’re looking for explosive revelations, you’re mostly going to be out of luck.

Based on the first episode, it seems that Abrossi and Calvo can handle this back and forth pretty well, but as we expand out the universe around Cristina’s life, we’re wondering how well they’ll be able to keep track of everything.

The story is fairly coherent from beginning to end, even if you make some choices that mean you don’t get to the “winning” solution. But as with the series it came from, we just wish some of the jokes whizzing by our heads were a wee bit funnier instead of just thrown out there to see what lands.

Hollywood Houselift isn’t a particularly interesting show if you’re not already a Flipping Out fan, and it definitely pales in comparison to that show. But if you’ve been missing Jeff Lewis’ particular sense of style and, uh, work ethic over the past three years, this should give you the fix you need.

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.

If the writing on The Crown Season 6 Part 1 falls a bit short where it counts the most, the cast at least delivers the goods. Imelda Staunton is still the most ineffectual Queen Elizabeth II the show’s produced, but she’s no longer in the spotlight, so it’s fine. Instead, The Crown Season 6 Part 1 belongs to Princess Diana and Elizabeth Debicki.

We’re not completely sure that the story in The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself won’t get muddled again like it was at the beginning of the first episode. But we have faith that it will keep things focused on Nathan and his attempt to keep evil at bay.

What we hope is that the level of episodic mysteries on A Taste For Murder get a little bit better than the muddled one we saw in the first episode, because everything around those episodic cases makes for an interesting show.

Perhaps as things go along, we’ll see more development from these characters. But it may also be that Halston is the only one we see any kind of depth from. And that feels like a missed opportunity. ... McGregor’s performance ties together the flatter characters that are depicted in Halston’s orbit. Despite the broad strokes, five episodes sounds just about right for this series.

We like the cast of Blockbuster, especially Park, Fumero and Smoove. And Ramos has done enough time on successful workplace comedies to know how to make them work. What we see so far is underwhelming, but promising.

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.

We’re still largely “meh” about Nine Perfect Strangers, but the show’s second season is marginally better than its first.

Right now, it’s more of the two of them feeling each other out, and how the very experienced and skilled Mary and her friends will train the newbie in how to keep themselves safe. ... This isn’t This Is Us, after all. But given how quickly the “Scooby gang” of this show has been established, The Winchesters is off to a decent, albeit familiar, start.

What we hope is that The Catch gives us a couple of twists and turns that makes it less predictable than we think it’s going to be after watching the first episode.

Twenties is definitely light on character development, but Gibbs shines as Hattie and the perspective the show presents is unique.

Simon Cowell: The Next Act combines the homelife version of the host’s caddish personality with the process of finding, founding and making a boy band flourish. We’re just intrigued enough to see if Cowell really can go from zero to One Direction in the space of six episodes.

We’re on board with Hitmakers because of the music that’s being produced in these camps. The interpersonal stuff may drive the drama, but it’s much less interesting to us in this context.

We’re liking some of the spicy international flavor Butterfly is featuring amid its central dispute between spy world adversaries Daniel Dae Kim and Piper Perabo. But we’re also looking for the actual action in this action series to really establish itself. Butterfly is a tentative Stream It.