Both the tone and the visual style are dark and murky, and while some of the historical details are fascinating, the crime drama around them is tedious and tiresome in any era.

A manipulative sociopath and compulsive liar, Cunanan is a tough protagonist to invest in for nine episodes, and while Criss makes him suitably unsettling, the show too often skews more toward the sleazy excesses of a ’90s erotic thriller than the methodical refinement of something like The Talented Mr. Ripley.

“The Commuter” benefits from having Timothy Spall as its bedrock; his performance as railway employee Ed Jacobson, a man with a chance to undo some of his life choices, is classic Twilight Zone stuff. ... It’s downhill from there.

The cases are fine for the genre, and 9-1-1 seems like an acceptable time-passer for procedural fans. From Ryan Murphy, though, that qualifies as an anomaly.

With jokes about strippers, quickie weddings and niche conventions, the show certainly doesn’t have a sophisticated or original take on Vegas. Its take on air travel is slightly fresher, but for the most part it occupies the same sitcom level as the budget airline for which its characters work.

The six-episode season gets increasingly outlandish, eventually including time travel, doppelgangers and a machine that controls the weather. It’s not quite enough to transcend the mediocre comedy, thin characters and rote fight scenes, but at least it’s more entertaining than another assembly-line D-level action movie.

Happy! has a cartoonish sensibility more suited to drawings than live action. The more it strains to be edgy and shocking, the more laughable it becomes.

It’s not surprising that Sherman-Palladino’s dialogue sparkles, but she also effectively captures the time period, injecting just the right amount of quirkiness into the historical context. The set design, costumes and visually inventive direction (often from the creator herself) lavish as much attention on Midge’s home life as her professional aspirations, filling both with rich, rewarding detail. Marvelous is an understatement.

Sometimes the sheer number of characters gets a bit unwieldy, and the interpersonal drama is less thrilling than the prospect of colorful superhero action (which goes mostly unfulfilled in the first four episodes). But the teen characters are likable and grounded, and worth watching even when they aren’t tapping into their superpowers.

It’s a slow, monotonous story without a clear antagonist, and Frank is a grim, one-note character who works better as a supporting player than a lead. Amber Rose Revah brings some liveliness as a potentially sympathetic Homeland Security agent, but she barely interacts with Frank in the first six episodes.

The thrilling final battle is masterfully staged. It takes far too long to get there, though, with entire episodes in the middle of the series that seemingly could have been removed entirely.

It’s still mostly restrained and respectable, though, with modest production values and uneven performances.

When it premiered in 1998, Will & Grace was groundbreaking for its matter-of-fact depiction of the friendship between a gay man and a straight woman, even if its sitcom rhythms were already somewhat played out. Those jokes and storylines have only gotten weaker with age, and what was once a trailblazer is now left far behind.

The most successful shows of the current true-crime boom do more than just lay out the facts, but there isn’t much indication that True Crime will be more than a competently produced eight-part Law & Order episode.

Yacenda and Perrault create such an unexpectedly engrossing mystery that the eventual muddled resolution is a bit underwhelming, and sometimes the jokes get lost in the intricate details. Over the course of eight episodes, the show develops an impressive range of believable teenage characters, and as silly as the story can be, it’s the grounded reality of the show’s world that makes it funny.

It takes a little too long for the show’s eight-episode first season to bring its focus to the porn industry, and the middle episodes in particular are dominated by less compelling, more conventional storylines. But even the more thinly sketched characters are engaging to watch, and Simon and his collaborators effectively re-create the NYC of the past, closely enough that you can feel the grit.

At best, Inhumans resembles a mediocre ’90s syndicated genre series, and blowing it up to IMAX size just puts a bigger spotlight on the flaws.

Neither a hilarious parody nor an engrossing superhero story, this version of The Tick ends up in a dissatisfying middle ground.

[The Defenders] is a plodding, clumsy and unlikable dud. It takes too much time ramping up, wastes its resources on unnecessary characters and subplots and lacks the visual appeal of Marvel’s previous Netflix outings.

The showbiz material is pretty thin, and much of the series takes place in dusty desert locations (shot in New Mexico), focusing on tired crime-drama devices. There’s none of the playful humor of Sonnenfeld’s film (there’s barely any humor at all), or the sly cleverness of Leonard’s crime novels (captured much more effectively in the Leonard-based Justified).

Some of Room 104’s episodes do have a sort of half-formed quality to them, built around character relationships that seem like they are just getting started once the episode ends. But for the most part, the series is an intriguing experiment, allowing the Duplasses and their collaborators the chance to explore multiple genres and approaches.

[The Last Tycoon is] full of awkward, hokey dialogue and clumsy contrivances. Even the production values are mediocre; the occasional clips meant to replicate ’30s-era movies are especially phony and unconvincing. Fitzgerald based Monroe on real-life studio executive Irving Thalberg, but the show has Thalberg appear as a separate character, and the consistently ineffective mix of real and fictional characters highlights how poorly the series captures such a fascinating world.

The producers have come up with a somber, plodding, almost entirely humorless mix of Breaking Bad and Justified, when they should have made a show about this spitfire of a character, the only one in the ensemble who isn’t bringing everything down.

Star Francois Arnaud, who plays psychic bad boy Manfred (everyone on the show has a silly name), is bland and affectless, and even a supporting cast that also includes an angel, a witch and some sort of international assassin can’t liven up the hodge-podge of elements from better supernatural dramas (including True Blood).

The writing and direction fail the talented actors (including high-profile guest stars like Kate McKinnon and Seth Rogen), trapping them in annoyingly contrived storylines and unfunny set pieces.

The problem with Will is not necessarily that it fictionalizes Shakespeare’s life, but that it does so in such a dull, haphazard way, with little connection to what makes Shakespeare’s work endure or what makes his time period fascinating.

The acting is mediocre all around, and the direction is slick but anonymous, with the look of any number of B-movie crime thrillers. That would be okay for a show with B-movie ambitions, but Snowfall seems to be aiming higher, only to fall back on the kind of overused devices it should be subverting.

After going a bit overboard on the ’80s signifiers in the first episode, the show dials things back in subsequent episodes, but it’s still full of gloriously terrible fashions and endearingly trashy pop culture.

While the movie spends comparatively little time on the thousands of people Madoff defrauded (acknowledging them in a couple of brief but intense montages), it conveys the severity of his crimes in the devastation of his immediate family, showing how he did lasting damage to the people he loved most, and none of them ever understood why.

The generations who grew up with previous incarnations of Anne might not have their favorites supplanted, but the new series offers a promising introduction to the character for a new audience.

It’s an admirable artistic exercise (an episode consisting entirely of monologues by several female characters is particularly striking) that’s almost never enjoyable to watch.

While the heavily stylized sex and violence can look beautiful, it’s often just as grim and ponderous as the dialogue and pacing. Only late in the fourth episode does the story begin to coalesce, but by that point it’s likely that anyone who wasn’t a fan to begin with will have long since tuned out.

Tale is paced maddeningly slowly (the result of taking 10 hourlong episodes to adapt a novel that was made into a single feature film in 1990) and too often belabors its most dramatic and intense moments. Even so, those moments are frequently powerful, thanks to Moss’ mesmerizing performance and a concept that is both timely and frighteningly timeless.

It’s often hokey and overstated, with Winfrey giving a broad, showy performance. By the end, you get the idea that Henrietta Lacks was very important, but as a person, she remains distant.

Ray, Yount and Vaughn may take a little time to perfect the chemistry that the various original stars (most of whom worked together for many years) had, but they’re still consistently funny, and that’s all that really matters. The show still has the same joke-a-minute pace, so that any gags that fall flat (or references that fly over viewers’ heads) are quickly forgotten by the next laugh.

Shots Fired drags as the story progresses, and the detours into its main characters’ personal lives are mostly distracting. The result is an uneven but sporadically engaging drama that tries to titillate its audience while also making it think.

The show’s corporate intrigue is tedious and boring, and Danny’s business rivals are less villainous than greedy and sleazy.

There’s a juicy, entertaining and still-timely Hollywood story hidden under the show’s typically Murphian excesses.

Bryan’s missions have little to do with his passion for rescuing helpless young women. Change the main character’s name and this could have been any forgettable network action series, with nothing distinctive in its concept or execution.

As a tool for outreach, the show is admirable, but as drama, it falls short of its ambitions.

The show could turn out to be soapy or campy, but instead it demonstrates the power and impact of family, community and friendship, how those bonds are just as meaningful and just as dramatic as any grand political or criminal enterprise. It doesn’t need dragons or mobsters or robots to stand as HBO’s best drama in years.

The producers surround [Katherine Heigl] with a strong supporting cast as her fellow lawyers, including Elliott Gould, Psych’s Dulé Hill and Orange Is the New Black’s Laverne Cox. But the cases are dull and formulaic, watering down hot-button issues to fit in the show’s neat, simplistic framework.

Seeing Jack go through the old motions in 2014 revival season Live Another Day had a certain nostalgic appeal, but without him Legacy is mostly just a pointless retread.

The show’s narrative trickery is a reflection of David’s fractured psyche. That can be more frustrating than illuminating, but the dazzling visual style makes the deliberately confusing narrative easier to embrace, and Stevens is fantastic as the conflicted but eager title character.

Their charming, flirty interaction--Barrymore reaping bloody chaos, Olyphant doing his best to put a sunny face on it--makes Santa Clarita Diet worthwhile. Otherwise, its taste is all too familiar.

Even their [the likable cast's] enthusiasm can't give life to the stale workplace humor and the half-hearted comic-book references.

References are not enough to build a compelling narrative, and the show’s central mysteries become less intriguing over the course of the four episodes available for review.

It’s often too straight-faced to be satirical, and the hodge-podge of accents sometimes undercuts the dramatic intensity.

The Netflix show is smartly scripted, boasts some feature film-worthy production design and has a terrific ensemble cast that includes Patrick Warburton as kindly narrator Lemony Snicket and Neil Patrick Harris in prime scenery-chewing form as the villainous Count Olaf.

Hardy and his collaborators have tapped into some of the atmosphere of Dickens, but at this point they fall short of his characterization and storytelling abilities.

It’s hard to root for the characters to form a makeshift family when all of them are such terrible people, but their terribleness is compromised by the need to make them semi-likable. It’s the worst of both worlds.

Sherman-Palladino and company meet expectations by positioning familiarity as a jumping-off point rather than an end goal. As a result, A Year in the Life proves--in true Gilmore fashion--that the most challenging do-overs often offer the greatest rewards.

TBS is airing the entire 10-episode season in a weeklong binge, which means the choppy plotting is easy to overlook as long as the characters remain painfully funny to watch--which they do, right up to the horrifying final laugh.

Letty might actually be a better protagonist for an old-school TNT show, taking on another caper and identity in each episode. Forced into a dark, gritty ongoing storyline, she ends up a chore to watch.

The character dynamics are genuine and refreshing and also quite funny; although Insecure features its share of angst from its main characters, it never loses sight of the comedy, which often comes from the way that Issa and Molly feel slightly out of place among all of their supposed peer groups. The show stumbles when it focuses on a love triangle.

Parker and Church are both solid actors, but there’s never any sense that Frances and Robert ever had any love or passion for each other, even at some point in the past. Every time they reminisce about their former life together, it rings false.

From a plotting standpoint, the show doesn’t always make logical sense, but it looks amazing (every penny of the huge budget is evident onscreen) and features multiple strong performances (Thandie Newton and Shannon Woodward are additional standouts).

The dialogue is stilted, the performances are awkward and most scenes go on twice as long as they should, as if that was the only way Allen could fill enough time for six episodes.

The new MacGyver lacks [USA's "Burn Notice's"] creativity and wit. It’s clumsy and forgettable, and it’ll probably end up lasting seven seasons without anybody really noticing.

Designated Survivor opens with far too much complicated plotting, and it could easily become a morass of ridiculous developments within a few episodes. There’s promise in Sutherland’s determined, principled leader, but he’s surrounded by too many distractions.

Crawford and Wayans are likable enough, but they aren’t Riggs and Murtaugh; they’re just the stars of TV’s latest variation on the tired buddy-cop formula.

The fantasy sequences featuring Tig’s late mother can be a bit cheesy, but they represent a depth of feeling that Better Things is still reaching for. Both shows follow Louie’s example well, even if they don’t have as unique an artistic vision just yet.

The sometimes clichéd showbiz material isn’t as effective as the family dynamics.

The deliberately rudimentary animation mixes poorly with the more sophisticated live action, so that any character interacting with Zorn is very obviously an actor talking to an empty space. That’s also part of the joke, but like all of the humor in the show, it gets old before it even comes around the second time.

Vice Principals doesn’t offer much of a twist on the familiar high-school setting, or even on the idea that teachers and administrators are despicable. It’s just a slight variation on McBride’s grating, played-out persona.

The show frequently loses sight of the murder mystery, introducing alternate suspects who then disappear for multiple episodes. Khan himself is a bit of a cipher, which might be necessary in order to keep the audience guessing as to his guilt, but makes him less interesting to watch as the series progresses. Stone, however, is fascinating, even if the show sometimes spends too much time on overly symbolic details of his life.

Instead of sounding passionate and honest, the characters on Roadies sound like they’re reading promotional copy for the artists who appear as guest stars.

Overall Danger is a bit more fun than A Deadly Adoption, but it’s not nearly the subversive deconstruction that Lifetime probably hoped for when they hired Franco in the first place.

The Kings deserve credit for taking a risk and not just putting out another legal drama, but if anything BrainDead isn’t weird enough. By hedging its bets, it ends up in an awkward middle ground between straightforward drama and something more original.

By the end of the fourth episode, the plot starts to show slight signs of life, but there’s nothing to indicate that the show will capture the energy and creativity of the source material that should set it apart.

It’s a forgettable time-filler that doesn’t aspire to anything more.

Writer David Farr and director Susanne Bier make the undercover work and the spy-agency infighting equally riveting, sustaining the suspense all the way to the inevitable (if slightly disappointing) end.

Rush Hour isn’t particularly funny, and there’s nothing exciting about its familiar crime-drama structure. Without unique star power to carry it, it’s just another dull procedural on a network already filled with them.

The first episode sets up a storyline with limited long-term potential, but it’s entertaining and stylish enough to be worth following to see where it leads.

Flaked offers up weak jokes and even weaker drama, as later episodes pile on contrived, overwrought plot twists.

Fuller House is like the childhood friend who never grew up, who still lives at home, still hangs out at places frequented by teenagers, still makes the same dated pop-culture references. Visiting that person usually isn’t fun; it’s just sad.

Although there are moments of suspense when Jake gets close to major historical events, nothing (including the obligatory twist ending) is quite enough to shake the feeling that the series is just a really, really long Twilight Zone episode.

It’s more interested in exploring, often inelegantly, issues of race and class, big ideas that get steamrolled under Murphy’s usual bombastic production style (his main contribution as a director is a lot of distractingly swooping camera moves).

Duchovny and Anderson slip easily into their old roles. But character chemistry and nostalgia are not enough to carry a new season, even (or especially) such a short one.

The superhero cheesiness that is often endearing on The Flash and Supergirl goes into overdrive here, and while some of the action is impressive, it’s in service of such silly, borderline nonsensical storytelling that even hardcore geeks might find it a bit much.

Chip’s sad life is neither funny nor moving; it’s just a parade of discomfort, for both the characters and the audience.

Any meaningful resonance with issues of financial inequality and government collusion loses out to bitchy backstabbing and awkward celebrity cameos.

These cops are not even particularly good at corruption, with Harlee and her colleagues frequently making up clumsy lies that instantly fall apart, in order to cover their tracks from previous, flimsy fabrications. The subplots about the other detectives in the unit (aside from Harlee and Woz) are especially thin, and anything about the characters’ personal lives is a tedious waste of time.

With its quests broken up into bite-sized pieces and its carefully crafted band of adventurers, Shannara is like watching someone else play a prepackaged Dungeons & Dragons campaign, only not as much fun.

The jokes that do take on topical issues rely on cheap stereotypes (about both Mexicans and working-class whites) rather than anything insightful. The character design makes everyone look ugly and vapid, which at least matches the dialogue that comes out of their mouths.

The tone is more restrained than outrageous, but Burr and Price don’t have a strong enough perspective to compensate for the mediocre humor. Their average family is a little too average.

The Expanse manages to take familiar sci-fi elements and synthesize them into something that looks and feels distinctive.

Even in its special effects, Childhood’s End looks chintzy and unimaginative.

Like Murray’s endearing real-life antics, the show was probably loads of fun for the people involved, but the feeling doesn’t necessarily carry over to the viewing audience.

Some of the supporting characters (including fellow superhero Luke Cage, played by Mike Colter, who is set to get his own Netflix series) end up with more character development than they would in a feature film, but in the end everything comes back to the same plodding conflict between Jessica and Kilgrave, and it drags down too much of what surrounds it.

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross’ easy chemistry is still there, but the sketches often feel in style and occasionally in substance so outdated as to be historical curiosities.

The characters themselves are mostly one-dimensional, and the performances range from stiff to dull. The only exception is Marton Csokas, whose hammy turn as the evil, Southern-accented baron who employs Sonny is a highlight.

Like Louie, Master of None sometimes seems a bit scattered, and not everything Ansari tries works.

Campbell certainly has the wit and charisma to make Ash a welcome weekly TV presence, but without Raimi, he might have to carry the show on his own. For now, at least, he seems to be up to the task.

The show sometimes goes too far with Kara’s rom-com-style personal life, but it never undermines her superheroics, and she holds her own against a nasty villain in the first episode.... It’s a promising--if a bit overly familiar--start.

His version of the show doesn’t differ much from the one Stewart hosted at the end of his tenure. The correspondents are a mix of newcomers and holdovers, and the tone remains mostly bemused outrage at the state of the world.... In his first four shows, his personality didn’t shine through often enough. He was awkward in his interviews, failing to give Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie much of a challenge, and bumbling through more superficial celebrity chats.

All of that balancing might collapse over the course of an entire season, but in its first episode, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is clever, winning and unique, making it the most promising new show of a fairly dismal fall TV season.

Dr. Ken lacks any of the warmth, subtlety or cleverness of network sibling Fresh Off the Boat, instead relying on listless sitcom clichés and broad, obvious jokes (accompanied by loud, unwarranted audience laughter). It’s completely tone-deaf when it comes to depicting modern youth culture, and it wastes talented supporting players.