We wish the new Star Search had some better pacing, and that the judges were a skosh tougher on the acts than they are. But for the most part we watched and voted along with the rest of the audience watching live, and rooted for those we liked. That’s the sign of an overall good show.

The Beauty is focused, gruesome and just funny enough to keep things moving. All of this is miraculous, given Ryan Murphy’s recent track record.

Will the six episodes of Steal be full of tension-filled twists and turns or just spiral out into silliness? We’re certainly interested enough in the story after the first episode to find out, but given that the running time is only about five or so hours, we’re hoping things will stay tight and tense.

Drops of God: Season 2 continues to deliver a layered, character-driven story that raises the bar from Season 1 as it blends cultures, explores complex family ties, and satisfies the senses on an even greater scale.

From witty one-liners and endearingly exaggerated personalities to physical comedy, musical numbers, and more it bears repeating that Shrinking is very funny and never maudlin. The series excels at giving viewers emotional whiplash (complimentary), but the team hasn’t just mastered the art of flicking from poignant to playful scenes on a dime.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is a perfectly entertaining entry in the now-60-year-old Trek franchise, punctuated by fun performances by Hunter and Giamatti. We just worry that the more generic-feeling Academy portion of the series will overwhelm the usually-reliable starship adventures.

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials is a well-paced, traditional Christie adaptation with a fun-to-watch young protagonist at its center, which is rare in the world of the classic mystery novelist’s stories.

Season 3 finds Spear, dead but not down, on a journey he doesn’t know the shape of, which only means more opportunity for this series’ already impressive animation and storytelling.

Between Will Smith’s joking but reverent hosting and the sweeping visuals, Pole To Pole With Will Smith is a show that’s worth watching, even if you stopped being a fan of his post-slap.

It’s a wildly entertaining rollercoaster that will have you rooting for the complex characters, questioning who you can trust, and reexamining your own biases in a way that doesn’t feel derivative.

Riot Women is a poignant and often funny look at women trying to break out of the bubbles they’re put in during their 50s and 60s, with the added fun of a great ’90s-heavy soundtrack and songs written specifically for the series.

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.

To be honest, there’s a lot I genuinely dislike about this show. .... And yet, the show is also undeniably addictive; the characters and their behaviors might be unlikeable, but with new lies and mysteries unfolding in every episode, there’s just enough there to get you to binge the whole thing.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a charming new addition to the Game of Thrones franchise that will woo you back to Westeros.

If you’re going to wait a decade to create a second season of a show, it’s got to do two things: It’s got to remind people who watched the first season what the connections back to that season are, and it’s got to tell a new story that’s just as compelling as the first season was. The second season of The Night Manager definitely accomplishes the first, but hasn’t yet proven that it’ll accomplish the second.

Whether you’re a fan of Jujutsu Kaisen or you simply love beautifully animated, eye-catching visuals, from the first episode alone, Jujutsu Kaisen: Season 3 cements itself as engrossing, intense, and well worth your time.

This season of The Traitors offers several big changes, fortunately all for the better.

While Laurie’s presence Anglicises Tehran a bit, we’re still intrigued by the subtleties of Tamar’s and Faraz’s stories, especially now that their stories have started to come together.

Girl Taken builds its tension in a straightforward manner, not through trickery or withheld information, and that is a rare commodity on streaming TV these days.

There’s a lot of entertaining weirdness going on in Coldwater, so much so that the problems we have with the characters and plotting might end up being overridden by it. So, even if the show isn’t all that good, it might still be fun to watch.

While we’re unsure if the twists and turns in The Game are going to be good or stupid, we’re still interested in how Huw is able to hold onto his family while playing this cat-and-mouse game with Patrick.

The performances and potential for lots of twists makes His & Hers a show that we want to see more of. But the first episode needed to give viewers a few more crums of contextual information in order for it to make more story sense.

[Coben's] insights tend to be generic in nature and spoken by Coben in a way that sounds like he’s reading from a cue card. In fact, Coben’s presence eventually becomes a bit of a liability. .... Despite the stiff and unnecessary narration by Coben, Harlan Coben’s Final Twist still does a good job of giving viewers lots of surprises in each episode’s brief running time.

Whereas it once felt like all of this show’s challenges were emanating from the same place they do on Jimmy Donaldson’s YouTube channel, with others doing them instead of MrBeast himself, Season 2 of Beast Games feels better positioned inside what we all understand as contemporary reality competition.

Will Trent continues to go deeper into its characters’ lives and psyches, transforming the show from an average crime procedural to one of the best character-driven dramas on any broadcast network.

Yet another spectacularly bold, absolutely brilliant, and shamelessly brash season of television, but it’s also darker, grander, and more culturally relevant than any season of the show before.

We enjoyed the quirky fun of the first episode of Best Medicine, as well as the layered performances of Josh Charles and Abigail Spencer.

The Pitt Season 2 is a perfectly executed season of television. Rather than buckling under pressure, the HBO Max show’s cast and crew returns with wholly-deserved swagger. .... An early, strong contender for the best show of the year.