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.