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

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.

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).

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.

When it focuses on the tragedy of Nick Wasicsko, Hero is fascinating, with Simon and co-writer William F. Zorzi tying together the personal and the political in an intelligent and often heartbreaking way. But the series is less successful when it comes to the various supporting characters.

It’s still sometimes jarring when the occasionally broad humor transitions into the heavier political themes, but Simien is mostly good at balancing the two, using the humor (which is more clever than laugh-out-loud funny) to strengthen the social commentary and to show how even the most righteous characters have flaws and make mistakes. Read full review

The case may not necessarily be new or groundbreaking, but it is worth presenting, and Going Clear gets it out there in a direct, engaging way that will leave viewers eager to learn more.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The acting is strong, but the show strains for deeper meaning when its best modes are relaxed and observational.

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.

Better Call Saul isn’t to ascend to Breaking Bad’s place in pop-culture history, but as a guilty pleasure for those who miss Heisenberg and the gang, it succeeds on just about every level.

There are plenty of typical sitcom misunderstandings and miscommunications, and some of the humor is disappointingly tame coming from Fey and Carlock. But the looming darkness is what makes Unbreakable worth watching.

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.

Mostly the show is a breezy tour through history, sometimes informative but rarely affecting.

Armisen and Hader star in each episode, alongside guest players like Jack Black and John Slattery, and their spot-on impressions are funny enough that it doesn’t really matter if the jokes are hit-and-miss.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

The series gets off to a slow start, parceling out bits of the title character’s origin story over flashbacks in the first two episodes, and taking its time to introduce the supporting cast. But once Vincent D’Onofrio appears onscreen as Wilson Fisk, the dapper crime-boss villain known in the Marvel comic books as Kingpin, things pick up considerably, and Fisk turns out to be an even more fascinating and complex character than the protagonist.

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.

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.

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 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.

From a plot standpoint, Bloodline is completely flat, using its shifting timelines as a trick to make mundane developments seem more ominous than they really are.

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.

While it doesn’t have much in common with its source material (in which the main character was part of a larger monster cosmology and ended up having to save the universe), iZombie seems to be building a distinctive little world of its own.

With a cast expanded to include tons of popular comedic performers, First Day of Camp is frequently funny, even when its jokes don’t amount to much. Fans of the movie will probably watch it over and over again, making Netflix executives very happy. Everyone else will remain baffled.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Battle Creek is unlikely to inspire the same kind of praise and devotion as Breaking Bad, but it’s an entertaining exercise in typical TV crime-solving.

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.

As a TV show, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is mildly entertaining, and genre fans who aren’t familiar with the book might find parts of it enjoyable. But for all its flash, it’s missing an essential ingredient--magic.

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

Casual viewers may be a little overwhelmed by the show’s strong connections to Marvel’s movie and TV continuity.... But Marvel fans will be delighted by the way the show fills in gaps and expands on the cinematic world, and setting the show in the past means that it has entire decades of history to explore on its own.

The humor in Last Man is often more disturbing than laugh-out-loud funny, and some of it can be off-putting. But the show is more ambitious than any other current network comedy, and in just two episodes it pushes forward in bold, even reckless ways.

Both the scenery and the star of Poldark look great, but the storytelling isn’t quite as effective.

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.

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).

The family sitcom material is less effective, although that could develop over time, especially as the joke of a TV lawyer practicing real law inevitably loses its novelty. For now, it’s clever enough to make The Grinder one of the better new comedies of the fall season.

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

Having a prominent gay character on a hip-hop drama is still a step in the right direction, though, and Empire’s characters might develop greater nuance as the show progresses. For now, it’s a trashy soap with one entertaining performance.

Gaffigan’s show was originally developed for CBS, and it has the safe, middle-of-the-road quality of most CBS sitcoms, which makes it just right for TV Land’s mild reinvention.

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.

Like Stewart, Wilmore is good at using jokes to cut down overblown public figures, and he isn’t afraid to be self-deprecating. His opening monologue is typically the best part of the show.... The shakiest part of the show during its first week has been the middle panel-discussion segment, which features a mix of comedians and political commentators talking about the episode’s topic.

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

“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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Corden is inoffensive and upbeat, so it’s hard to hate him, but it’s hard to imagine him building a dedicated following, either. Unlike Ferguson, who made his little corner of late night into something unique, Corden is just marking time until viewers fall asleep.

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.

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

A mildly amusing pastiche.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unfortunately, the first episode is workmanlike to a fault: It sets up its characters, throwing in some forgettable, tedious character moments so we can care about them. Fear the Walking Dead doesn’t really kick into gear until Travis and Madison realize that the world has gone wrong.

All the creepy set pieces and engaging performances are no match for the increasingly absurd exposition.

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

Beneath its loud insistence on its own urgency, Blindspot is a complete blank.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s a worldwide story that manages to look and feel completely mundane, with boring visuals and inconsistent performances.

Since it’s set up to promote Major League teams and Ferrell’s charity efforts, the show can’t take any serious satirical jabs, so instead Ferrell makes a few blandly humorous comments, and the rest of the running time is filled with some slick game-play footage and lots of high fives.

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.

[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 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.

TV audiences may not have known they needed a small-screen equivalent of Spamalot--and the network may not really know what to do with it--but Galavant turns out to be completely winning in all its cheesy glory.

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.

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.

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

It’s far too dreary to be a comedy, and its social commentary is often blunt and ineffective. Worse, the narrative has no momentum, spending three hours on the tedious minutiae of relationships among more than a dozen characters, most of whom are barely fleshed out.

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.

As a music-industry story, Sex & Drugs is confused and outdated, with irritating, one-dimensional characters and self-consciously edgy humor. Like its protagonist, it’s mostly a sad relic straining to appear hip.

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.

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.

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.

Scream Queens is completely clueless about what’s actually scary, and its comedy is ugly and mean-spirited, full of hateful stereotypes and casual misogyny.