Surface has not improved its slow pacing and logic gaps in Season 2; it’s just moved the locale from San Francisco to London.

The show comes off more like an exhausting parody than anything else. ... There were distractions beyond Zellweger’s fat suit. Doing a fictionalized take on the absurdity of a true crime story lends itself to too many stylistic flourishes that aren’t necessary. ... There also seems to be very little in the way of subtlety or shading to the story.

As much as we couldn’t take our eyes off Gugu Mbatha-Raw during the first episode of Surface, her performance can’t save a show that doesn’t seem to have enough story to justify an 8-episode series.

There are some stories that are not well served when they’re made into scripted dramas. Because of the muddled details, the Natalia Grace case is one of them, and the lack of nuance in Good American Family is a good indicator that viewers are better off watching docuseries about Natalia’s case rather than this drama.

Even if the action doesn’t keep a game show fan on the edge of his or her seat, it should still be engaging enough for the viewer to want to play along. The Hustler, despite the efforts of Ferguson to will the show into something interesting, doesn’t ever get to that level.

It’s all patently ridiculous. If it were ridiculous in an entertaining way, that would be one thing. But Tennant’s side of the story is just so insane that you’ll be too distracted by it to be entertained by Tucci’s side.

We’ve held out hope in the past that The Morning Show would control the impulse to spiral into flights of fancy and actually stick to the drama involved in trying to produce credible news shows in this trying media environment, but the fourth season has proven to us that this is not what the show is ever going to be about, and we’re just not into what it is trying to do.

Between the tired format and the idea that Tate is playing most of the featured characters, Hard Cell becomes a lot to take, even after the first 30 minutes. We can’t imagine it getting much better during its first season.

The Hunting Party is a generic action series that seems to operate on twists that either aren’t that surprising or are pretty much useless.

All of the good things about Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop are betrayed by poor writing, uninspired action scenes, and a truly baffling obsession with the most annoying characters in the series.

If you want to watch a cringey but hilarious show about the music business, go find Dave, which is also on Hulu. Maxxx will just make you cringe.

Tom Swift gets too stuck in its leaden dialogue and attempts at being edgy to tell a conspiracy story that makes any sense.

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.

Shining Vale may get better during its first season as we find out what’s actually driving this story. But its first episode was a loud mess of a show that seemed to be more satisfied with giving Courteney Cox as many chances to swear as possible than to actually establish its characters.

It’s more creepy than scary and the first episode does nothing to make us want to watch and find more of those scares. ... Helstrom was slow-moving and dull, and is more interested in brooding dialogue than actual scares.

The couples at the center of The Ultimatum: Marry Or Move On don’t feel like real couples to us, mainly because of their relative age and relationship newness, which gives us no incentive to root for or against them staying together.

There are parts of Last Days Of The Space Age that we liked, but the storytelling is too much of a shambling mess to keep our interest.

Tell Me Your Secrets is a bleak show that withholds information in order to ramp up the mystery, but to the detriment of a coherent story.

We don’t need more Paul bothers content, and Paul American really doesn’t give enough insight into Jake and Logan’s lives to make us want to keep watching.

The biggest flaw in How I Met Your Father, even two seasons in, is that I still don’t care how it ends.

While Mayor Of Kingstown boasts fine performances, it’s confusing at times and incredibly depressing at others. If we wanted to watch a show that’s relentlessly grim, there are much better choices out there.

Justice On Trial is an interesting idea but so poorly executed, [it] becomes really hard to watch.

We don’t expect The Pentaverate to get much funnier as the season goes along. And the longer we watch, we think the more painfully unfunny most of the gags are going to get.

Echoes is without question one of the most messy and confusing shows we’ve seen in awhile, and there really seems to be nothing for a viewer to grab onto that would tempt them to move to the second episode after the first is over.

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.

Cruel Intentions tries to be edgy but only ends up being eye-rollingly bad, with characters that are very easily hateable and stakes that are so low, you wonder why everyone is expending all this energy in the first place.

Nurses is a Frankenstein monster’s mess of piece-parts from other, better medical dramas.

There’s naturalistic acting, and then there’s mumbling. And the first episode had a lot of mumbling, especially from André Holland. The Eddy is a pretentious mess of a show, and even the expert music that is interspersed through the first episode isn’t enough to save it. In fact, it makes things worse.