Probably the best comedy series on television. ... "The Larry Sanders Show" offers the sharpest of television's multitudinous media jokes while always remaining grounded as a comedy rooted in character. [16 Jul 1995]

The first case in this innovative series is terrific. [18 Sep 1995]

Taut, efficient and directed with a scalpel, Breaking Bad remains a marvel.

Whether it's Brent's starry-eyed foppishness, Dawn's artistic daydreams or Gareth's organizational stiffness, these are characters we don't see on American TV. They're not accomplished, clever or distinctive. But they're so well-observed, and so subtly personified, that it's as if we're finding amusement in people we know. [21 Oct 2004]

If there were an Emmy for most great moments per hour, "The Wire" would deserve it. [17 Sep 2004]

For fans of The Leftovers, the third season looks like the best yet. It’s funny, horrifying, strange and baffling.

A critic for this paper once declared "The Wire" "the greatest dramatic series ever produced for television" and as the fourth season gets under way Sunday night, there's no reason to quibble with that assessment.

Watching the first couple of episodes once again I am marveling at how good the show really is. [16 Jan 2000]

A worthy successor to the original, Blue Planet II also brings an urgent environmental warning that the first lacked: It demonstrates that the seas are in trouble and that the world must act.

Atlanta is still good and still roughshod, but there’s a tougher texture to this season. That’s mainly the robbin’ part.

Bigger, brassier and even more thrilling, Homeland has boosted the stakes.

It's stunning for a TV mystery. It's actually mysterious. The mood, the characters, the surreal quality of how the story is told, are something different. It has a slow hypnotic movement, a style like a boxer in slo-mo. It hit me with tremendous energy and made me abandon despair at the state of TV mysteries. [5 Apr 1990]

Excellent, balanced, powerful, engaging, comprehensive perspective on the “trial of the century” and race. The first two parts are best.

A stunning, brilliant, terrifying launch to TV's best series.

Stitched into every word, every gesture, is an implicit recognition of that brutal Fargo credo: People can be cruel, stupid, mean and unintentionally funny, even the nice ones. Another winner.

Prepare to reattach those jaws once again. Spectacular. What else?

The Americans remains a superior American drama and--admittedly, without having a working knowledge on the subject--possibly one of the best Russian TV dramas, too.... These four [episodes] also feel weighted and forlorn, as the chain of lies loop around and around the ankles of Paige and Martha, or those others unlucky enough to know Philip and Elizabeth, with an anchor just waiting to be tossed overboard.

Be forewarned that opener is dense, quick- moving and largely absent the sort of explanatory dialogue that dramatic series typically use to ensure that we have our bearings. Even viewers who savored each installment of the original series may feel disoriented. Newcomers may feel as though they're watching a foreign-language film without subtitles. My advice is to videotape it, re-watch and have faith. The coherence quotient goes up by the hour, and patience will be rewarded. [30 May 2003]

I love the characters, the actors, the spell they weave, the way of telling a story. By the second episode, I didn't want them to solve the case so it would go on and on. Homicide: Life on the Street is another stroll down heartbreak alley. [31 Jan 1993, p.21]

With just eight episodes as evidence, this third season appears to be flawless.

Insanely great start.

Still TV's best--dive in while the water's warm.

"Galactica" is so beautifully designed, shot, edited and acted that you can practically smell and taste its emotional validity.

Still strange, dark, harrowing and often — unexpectedly — very funny.

Transparent is no longer as interested in trying to locate the comedy in these lives as the tragedy. The tonal shift is a huge one, and not necessarily a welcome one either.... Transparent is still sharply observed, and it’s still easy to admire the actors, especially Hoffmann and Tambor. Just harder to love the show.

One of TV's best shows, comedy or drama, because this series often succeeds as both.

The fourth season was great. The fifth at least needs to match it, and the evidence so far establishes that it will.

An overlooked TV gem wraps, and for the most part, beautifully.

Larry David is obnoxious in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" but very funny. Gervais' David is just obnoxious. ... It's the sort of comedy that only certain people can get, like the way dogs can hear sounds human can't. I'm ashamed to say, I couldn't take it more than one dinner hour. [19 Oct 2003]

Louie very much remains Louie in the best sense.

The behind-the-scenes access to “Homecoming” is important. ... However, those scenes interrupt the momentum building in the powerful concert.

Not quite on the level of last season's best, like "Woods," "FUBU" or "Teddy Perkins," these openers are nonetheless pure, unfiltered "Atlanta." Take that as the praise intended.

It is even better - if that is possible, and it is. Take my word. We are talking true comedic masterpieces here. [20 Jun 1994]

"Succession" is going out with a bang, but — at least in the early episodes — a resigned one.

As always, excellent.

True-blue fans will swoon. Everything they - you - love about this classic is laid out, banquet-like, Sunday night - the fashions, style, elegance, writing, characters, precision, beauty and most of all, the humor.

Wallops don't get more walloping than the one that arrives at the end of the premiere of FX's adult cop show The Shield. Won't tell you what it is, and don't you dare read other reviews in case they blab it. This is one of those punch-in-the-stomach moments of TV you'll want to remember being stunned by. Although The Shield looks pretty dang good to that point - or pretty %@$#! good, as its characters would swear - the show suddenly becomes flat-out brilliant. [12 Mar 2002, p.B27]

The best show on TV remains — emphatically — the best.

"The Underground Railroad" is often difficult to watch, at times impossible to watch, but at least there's beauty, power, and some first-rate performances, as compensation.

With "Succession" now over, "The Bear" makes a compelling case for being the best show on TV.

The best show of 2025 also happens to be the best show of 2026.

This remains a superior TV drama.

Douglass comes to life, or those words vividly do.

All the performances are outstanding — O'Reilly has played Mothma in various movies and series for two decades — but the ones that'll knock your socks off are by Kyle Soller and Denise Gough.

Showtime lets them take their time to spin serpentine story lines, gradually pulling us deep into one very sticky, scary web of intrigue.

Cox's performance is staggering but then so is the performance of everyone else. Prepare to be staggered. Triumphant return of TV's best.

"Driving" is cool, methodical and comprehensive, but does leave open that one question: How would you feel? ... Essential viewing.

Beautiful, immersive and joyless, Tale can be tough to watch, but “rewarding” trumps “tough.”

This indisputably is Amazon Prime's “Orange Is the New Black.” That--believe me--is praise enough.

Besides the scenery, what's best here are the characters, and their lives--or unlives--of quiet desperation.

Holzman's writing is brilliant. [25 Aug 1994]

Tragedy is hard, comedy harder, while mixing both together seamlessly is just about impossible week after week. That Louie usually succeeds is a minor miracle. That it doesn't always is inevitable. Thursday's opener, "Potluck," has a funny twist but ends up in a strange, bitter place--even by Louie standards.

The show also feels more nuanced. If season 4 was like a giant exhaled breath, then season 5 is an inhaled one. The story beats are more deliberate. There's also a sharpened sense of building anticipation--or impending doom.

As you would expect, very (very) funny.

Great start to the much-anticipated second season.

A remarkable tour of a terrible part of our history that makes the case--a compelling one--that this history isn’t entirely in the past at all.

The complex impact of the crime--and of its investigation, news coverage and town reaction--is the real story here, laid out in the decidedly ordinary faces and raw silent spaces that British drama delivers so well.

Stunning, beautiful, hypnotic, engrossing, spectacular... That oughta do it here as well, except Frozen Planet unexpectedly adds another word: Unprecedented.

As always, magnificent with a moving subtext.

Sunday and the next three episodes are superb while the rhythms and beats of the story are very nearly hypnotic. Nothing here feels wasteful or cheap.

Diaries is for Shandling fans, certainly, but it’s especially for any kid who might want to become a comic, or write for TV or get into this industry. “Zen Diaries” is a nearly five-hour-long master’s degree in “the business,” and also a sober, clear-eyed view of the risks as much as the rewards.

Based on the first three episodes, this looks like another finely crafted season. Also intense, uncompromising and demanding.

Character--as the old saying goes--is a long-standing habit, and their habits remain very much intact. The same could be could be said of Justified.

The series never quite convincingly establishes what could have been a powerful undercurrent-- whether Naz and by association the rest of New York’s Muslim community had been tried and convicted based on their Muslim faith alone. That’s OK. Everything else--and everyone else--cclicks just about perfectly.

"NYC" celebrates the human spirit, not just an institution. ... A beauty.

The TV breakout Glover fans have been waiting for, also unlike anything else on TV.

Fast, furious, funny, with a twist.

Human beings live on the corner, and "The Corner" makes us care about them. [16 Apr 2000, p.D15]

Still funny and still not for everyone. Louie remains very much a taste that you either acquire--or don't.

Best series of the year so far. Easily.

It’s easy enough for new viewers to join this Emmy-nominated gem, as its third season reshuffles everyone’s deck at least once.

Smart, engaging second season (so far). The ensemble cast gets better and better.

TV's best (but do your homework before diving in).

Aside from a nagging sense that Sam and "Things" are standing in place. Inertia is part of the joke except that we think we already know the punchline. TV shows are about journeys too but through the early episodes, this one seems like it may be stuck in neutral.

A must-watch: The most important TV program of the year.

Another brilliant, powerful, moving season of one of TV’s best.

If you loved last season, there's nothing so far to indicate you won't like the second just as much.

TV's best of the year, so far.

Lean, laconic, precise and as carefully word-crafted as any series on TV, there's pretty much nothing here to suggest that the third season won't be as good as the second--or better.

Good, crackling start that--as the old saying goes--changes everything and may even point to the end.

This show--still TV's best--remains utterly true to itself.

Man, is this a good show...Boomtown is so good, it single-handedly restores your faith in broadcast networks. They can compete with the "freedom" of premium cable. All it takes is creative smarts. And NBC's Boomtown has plenty of those. [27 Sept 2002, p.B02]

Better, richer, more compelling than season one.

There’s some temporizing in the first couple of episodes, but not enough to subvert what this third season so clearly is--another winner.

McDormand will win an Emmy for this. Already, there's no contest.... Cholodenko's direction is masterful, and so is the bleakly funny script by Jane Anderson, but they clearly have a vision that is both part of--and separate from--the source material.

Battlestar Galactica is a worthy successor to Sci Fi's late and much lamented "Farscape." That's about as high as our praise gets. [9 Jan 2005, p.11]

Justified remains as good as ever--and as tautly written, acted and directed, and deeply, completely pleasurable as the fifth season, and the one before that and... all of the other seasons, too, now that I think of it.

Nobody tries to be funny here, so they're more hysterical than the folks falling all over themselves elsewhere. They're simply hopeless specimens of spoiled humanity who haven't a clue how to operate in the real world. [2 Nov 2003, p.04]

L.D. is back, and - based on viewing the first three episodes - his genius remains intact. [7 Sep 2007]

Like "Mad Men," Wife has an obsessive attention to detail; it's a hurricane of detail, in the visual touches, legal patter and the actors' unspoken flourishes. Nothing seems extraneous or out of place. Also like "Men," this show cares as much about silence as words, or that which isn't said (also a form of eloquence).

Initial indications are good--the second season of Broad City may even exceed the first.

Mad Men is back and back in all the right ways--the humor, the writing, the period details, and best of all, the flawless attention to these characters and their cluttered interior worlds.

Despite occasionally expressing Simon's concerns about journalism too pedantically, The Wire continues to deserve its accolades as the most remarkable drama series in television history.

It's a wonderful show. Don't miss it.

In TV terms, we call this a re-set, but in Veep terms, it’s genius. HBO offered three episodes for review, which seen together play like a movie--the funniest movie you will have seen all year, maybe next year, too.

This show captures a distinct culture, and the people jockeying for places in it, trying to prove, mostly to themselves, that their lives have value. And so Friday Night Lights has more than almost any network show today. [5 Oct 2007, p.B33]

Still excellent, still hard to love.

The most entertaining--and beautiful--new series on TV this fall.