The first three episodes are full of impressively strong criminals. [23 Jan 2012, p.40]

If you pay attention, the writing and direction reward the effort.

Thanks to the nimble Leary, ever riveting as TV's most nuanced antihero (sorry, Tony Soprano), Tommy's tenuous struggle for sobriety is even more rewarding than last season's harrowing downfall.

A well-crafted, surprisingly intelligent update of ABC's late-'70s Star Wars clone.

[It] looks to be a season of solid suspense. [30 Jan 2006, p.37]

It's the season's best new series, period.

The show still tends to go suddenly flat--it's hard to tell whether the party is supposed to be dead or it's just incompetently staged--but Hamm is always superb as Don. [2 Apr 2012, p.37]

The show is infernally good. [17 Mar 2014]

[It] promises to be a dizzyingly clever season 2. [3 Mar 2014, p.39]

The show is gorgeously produced and spectacularly violent but its success depends chiefly on Buscemi....A brilliant, brutally funny performance. [20 Sep 2010, p.51]

The episodes have grown slower and schmaltzier since the gripping pilot, but this series is still as sweet as an egg cream made with Fox's U-Bet Chocolate Syrup.

The relationship of saint to sinner has seldom been so moving. [26 Feb 2007, p.39]

It has intelligence and feeling and brutality. The Sopranos hits all the notes.

The makers of 24 needn't overuse the split-screen technique to emphasize the onrush of events. Viewers can feel the suspense start to build without seeing the seconds tick off on a digital clock. Give the gimmicks a rest. We're hooked without them.

The young actors are natural and convincing, and the high school characters manage to be funny without too much Dawson's Creek glibness.

Hilariously peculiar.

In its second season, the spy parody remains my favorite animated series, thanks to its retro visual design--this is a cartoon for the age of Mad Men--and the vicious, dead-aim put-downs that make up most of the dialogue. [14 Mar 2011, p.42]

Andy's humiliations as a minor celebrity aren't quite as funny as was his earlier shame at being a nobody, but as a satire of showbiz vanity, Extras can still be described as (what else?) stellar. [29 Jan 2007, p.43]

Co-created by David Simon and Eric Over­myer, the team behind The Wire, this is a lovingly textured, slowly unfolding series set in post-Katrina New Orleans. [26 Apr 2010, p.40]

You'll laugh so often that you may not notice the blessed absence of a laugh track.

Matthew Weiner has advanced the show far enough into the '60s that its fundamental philosophical question begins to generate its own oppressive suspense. [15 Apr 2013]

This haunting New Zealand miniseries boasts a strong, tense performance from Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss as a detective, but it's very much the work of director Jane Campion. [25 Mar 2013, p.44]

Russell has an unassuming sort of star quality that draws us to her character, and the writing in the pilot is sensitive without being soapy.

[An] amiable send-up of small-town life.

It's a raw, ironic, occasionally touching comedy of post-millennial manners. [23 Apr 2012, p.37]

Very little happens in the first three hours of this anthology crime series, yet it's absolutely riveting. [20 Jan 2014]

For the most part, the miniseries honors the soldiers' bravery without hiding their fears or failings.

[A] fast, funny political satire. [14 Apr 2014, p.49]