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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.