If you want to see a pretty straightforward series about two best friends going down different paths, then the gentle drama of The Makanai: Cooking For The Maiko House should fill the bill.

Matthew Macfadyen is quite good as the somewhat vapid, wholly incompetent John Stonehouse. The rest of Stonehouse feels like it’s a bit light and trivial, but it wisely puts Macfadyen front and center in just about every scene.

The grim goings-on and generally sour worldview that Mayor of Kingstown established with its first season have not abated with the arrival of its second. But nor has the fine acting and character work that exists in its many one-on-one moments.

The new version has more than enough to like about it, and it gives us hope that as the writers figure out the supporting characters, the show will take off, just like the original one did.

If you go into The Price Of Glee with the right mindset, you’ll get some good information about just how much pressure the stars and crew of Glee were under. You have to basically ignore the producers’ attempts to link two of the stars’ deaths directly to the show itself, and definitely ignore their attempts to get any of the interviewees to call the show cursed.

A Frankensteined pilot. ... While there’s a lot to like about Alert: Missing Persons Unit, the generic cases of the week plus the logic leaps of some of the show’s storytelling lead us to believe that the show is going to contain more bad than good.

With a little bit less Cranston, a whole lot of confusing storytelling and characters that haven’t gotten any deeper than in Season 1, Your Honor‘s final season feels like an idea that was best left as just that: an idea.

Between Cumming’s scenery-chewing and the whole dynamic between the reality stars and the civilians make The Traitors fun to watch.

SKIP IT, unless you’re really into watching people climb rocks. Yes, The Climb looks spectacular, and yes, you get glimpses of Mamoa in each episode. But if you’re not into what’s going on during the contest, it’s going to get old fast.

Vikings: Valhalla is rich with history, the gore and glory of battle, and lusty romance. But its ensemble cast is also uniformly strong, with characters on all sides of the geopolitical and religious struggles at the heart of Valhalla having gained some valuable perspective.

Here We Go is one of those cases where the execution is so good that the fact that the concept isn’t fresh doesn’t matter.

This so-called origin story is off to a horrible start, and the few cheap laughs that you’ll find in the first episode don’t necessarily make it worth hanging around for 10 long, awful installments.

The characters in Koala Man are solid enough to make us think that the more time Cusack and his writers get to develop them, the better the show will get.

Break Point is not a serious examination of the state of tennis going into 2023, but it is a pulpy binge-watch that will introduce you to the next generation of tennis stars. To put it bluntly, Break Point gives pro tennis the Kardashian treatment.

There’s novelty to be found in Pressure Cooker’s combination of two familiar formats, but ultimately you’re not seeing anything here that you haven’t seen before.

Yet for all that is so clearly wonderful about this show, it’s a series that can never escape its roots. The Last of Us is hands-down one of the greatest and most inspired video game adaptations brought to screen. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? No matter how sharp the writing, how inspired the visuals, how awards-worthy the performances, this will always be an interactive story forced into a passive medium.

While there isn’t a ton of character development as The Rig starts, the acting is excellent, and it makes the tension that’s building on the Kinloch Bravo feel palpable.

Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test does its best to really show that the celebrities who are going through this extraordinarily difficult training aren’t getting any special treatment, from either the staff or the producers. We give credit for the celebs for participating, and many giving honest reasons why, and it’ll be interesting to see who makes it until the end of the ten-day training stretch.

With so many characters harboring so many secrets, or in some cases, secret feelings toward each other, the tension is already building in episode one. It’ll be a fun ride watching where this season of Ginny & Georgia goes.

Despite the distracting reenactments, Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street imparts a lot of good information about Madoff’s psyche, the structure of his Ponzi scheme, and why people invested in it in the first place.

Despite its very casual pace, The Lying Life Of Adults has an interesting family story at its core that will inform how its main character comes of age.

While the procedural part of Will Trent needs a lot of improvement, the characters are so well-established from the start that the first two episodes are entertaining and make us want to see more.

Treason has more than enough tension and intrigue to span its 5-episode season. As long as it doesn’t get too bogged down with unnecessary side stories, the show should be very entertaining.

Viewers will be drawn into the main story in The Control Room. We hope, however, they’re not distracted by the piecemeal flashbacks that build the characters’ backstories.

STREAM IT, but we’re not sure if our recommendation is going to stay that way after the first episode. As the story of Paul T. Goldman gets more outrageous, the less funny we think this meta-meta series is going to be.

As far as the show goes, it’s some pretty light drama that’s not supposed to bring up any moral dilemmas or force viewers to dig for deeper meaning. Esposito elevates everything he’s in. ... So far, the rest of the team outside of Stan feel like one-dimensional characters, but those may also fill in during the rest of the episodes. But, as heist dramas go, Kaleidoscope tries to concentrate on the heist as much as possible, which is always a plus.

Despite the years between sequels, the cast of The Best Man: The Final Chapters is a well-oiled machine, and it shows in this new series.

Alice in Borderland is bloody, violent, and sometimes stingy with narrative facts. But it revels in making or breaking the rules it’s created for its topsyturvy world, and the core characters are compelling and fully rendered.