Actually, the casting is pretty great and works well. Everything else about the show is pretty much what you'd expect. There are some fun action scenes and attempts at pathos, especially around Riggs and the death of his pregnant wife that's turned him into such a loose cannon. But Lethal Weapon also feels extremely familiar.

It's an OK CBS procedural where Weatherly's character, Dr. Jason Bull, always seems like the smartest guy in the room when he's running mock trials using a mock jury.

Speechless has its funny moments, but they are interspersed with So. Much. Yelling.

Designated Survivor pilot has its share of gaps in logic but it’s engrossing, if not entirely believable, and features the best opening scene of fall’s broadcast drama pilots.

The Good Place offers a clever high-concept premise that’s complemented with intelligent, sometimes absurdist humor.

It's a particular kind of wry, quiet, slightly depressing in its self-deprecation style of humor that won't be to every viewer's liking.

A languidly-paced hour that ultimately comes together in a satisfying manner. But have patience because it takes a while to get there.

Atlanta provides an interesting slice of life and a slice that's not often seen on TV.

[The Get Down] has its excellent musical moments and winning performances from a young cast of newcomers but too often it’s an indulgent, rambling bore, particularly in its overlong, almost 90-minute pilot.

Now it’s just a tired minor media property and product placement tool for Comcast, which gets name-checked multiple times. At this point, Sharknado deserves to sleep with the fishes.

It’s not homage as much as it is a recreation of a classic 1980s’ film stretched into eight episodes, a deeply satisfying series that’s all the more entertaining for anyone who grew up in the 1980s.

The two-episode premiere not only re-establishes the world of Mr. Robot but it also introduces new characters, expanding the show's world while still rooting it firmly in the present.

The A Word is at its most affecting when the focus is on Joe and his parents.

Deliberately paced but never dull, The Night Of offers a serialized criminal story that’s more interested in the characters and the criminal justice system’s process than in the crime itself.

Tyrant continues to fascinate even as it’s flawed. Adding Chris Noth as an American military leader with a connection to former first lady Leila (Moran Atias) doesn’t bring much to the series, which also suffers from a lack of sandy, panoramic exterior shots that marked the show’s first season.

With Roadies, Showtime debuts a series focused on a fresh subculture (the behind-the-scenes crew responsible for staging a rock band’s tour) with a lighter, if overly earnest, tone. Only one member of the band is shown in the pilot in a brief scene. This tactic might be an overly calculated conceit if the roadies were a less interesting bunch.

Will seeing a female drug dealer's rise (and potential fall if that bullet proves to be fatal, although I'm guessing it won't be) be enough to differentiate this series, told from a female point of view, and justify in investing in Queen of the South? It does seem like a more complicated, different character story. But plot-wise it's less interesting than, say, "Traffic," or certainly "Breaking Bad."

There are some intentionally light-hearted, even funny moments squeezed in here and there. The show's concept offers nothing really new for TV but it executes the wealthy, murderous family drama well enough for low-stakes summer programming.

Ms. Dandridge makes a positive impression as the show’s lead character and it helps that she has such strong support from Mr. David and especially Ms. Whitfield, whose character proves an effortlessly serene scene-stealer.

Uncle Buck isn't the worst thing ever, but it is predictable and pat, going down all the expected avenues. It's entirely skippable.

BrainDead is an entertaining enough summer distraction through its first three episodes, but it’s no “Good Wife.”

Come for the stupid, sexy young things making bad choices; stay, if you must, for the weird, outta-left-field guilty pleasure of an oddball lawyer who waltzes in.

Animal Kingdom, based on a 2010 Australian film of the same title, won’t be to everyone’s taste, but fans of dark, family criminal enterprise shows (think: “Sons of Anarchy,” “Outsiders”) might be intrigued.

Few of the jokes land and although the show gets mild props for its series premiere cliffhanger (and to a lesser degree the out-of-left field resolution in episode two), Still the King looks shoddy and fails to produce many laughs.

The big problem with Wrecked is that the pilot episode is just not that funny. A second episode was slightly funnier but not entertaining enough to warrant watching a third half-hour.

There are times the whole affair feels little to similar to season one, but by the end of the second episode a new character has entered the series, promising to shake things up in a necessary way.

Feed the Beast feels like a broadcast network crime underworld show circa 2002--it feels like same old, same old TV.

The new Roots offers a strong dose of drama--too strong, perhaps, for some viewers who will shy away from scenes of brutality--and compelling character stories.

Fans of bold, dark-themed (and darkly funny) TV series inspired by comic books will have a blast watching AMC’s Preacher, a welcome new entrant in the expanding genre of offbeat, gory, supernatural dramas.

The mystery has largely been replaced by a dystopian soap opera that disrespects one first-season character in particular by having the character take an action that doesn’t reflect the character’s first season strength and resolve.

From the music to the dialogue, Houdini & Doyle seems laughably flashy given the characters involved and time period (London, 1901). But the plot is fairly standard in its procedural trappings.

A multi-character drama, Containment is fine but unexceptional.

As serialized mysteries go, Game isn't terrible but some of it is preposterous enough that viewers may not want to play it again.

The Detour is pretty consistently funny but the humor tends to be filled with sexual innuendo that some viewers will find offensive. For others, it will be just fine.

One of the schlockiest, most amateur series to come along in the #PeakTV era, Syfy’s Hunters delivers a mashup of a terrorist-tracking drama and alien invasion story.

It was often laugh-out-loud funny as Ms. Horgan’s quips found equal footing with Mr. Delaney’s quick-witted retorts. Season two continues in the same tone but somewhat less successfully now that the pair are enmeshed in domestic woes.

A paint-by-numbers action-comedy.

It's not that Lopez is terrible, just terribly unoriginal as it depicts its lead character as slightly out-of-touch, overly concerned with his image, etc.

It’s frustrating when a series hitches its drama to a lack of communication as its primary conceit because the solution seems so simple: Just ’fess up! The addition of new sources of dramatic conflict in episode two helps explain Eddie’s choice but doesn’t completely eliminate the show’s weak dramatic raison d’etre.

The relationships are paint-by-numbers predictable as are the plots and Alex's I-know-better-than-everyone-else reactions. Heartbeat has a pulse but just barely.

Crowded has a couple of laughs--mostly due to Warburton’s deadpan reactions --but mostly it mines well-trod sitcom ground with jokes on parents smoking pot (they get the munchies!) and old people yelling.

Through the first four episodes of the new season, the ever-excellent spy thriller explores the parent-child dynamic, introduces the concept of biological weapons and plays on the suspicions of FBI neighbor Stan (Noah Emmerich). The Americans is mostly adept at surprising viewers by not tacking in expected directions, although one plot results in a dead end that left me to wonder, why did the writers spend so much time on that?

The pilot is relatively inert for a thriller as it pretty much tacks in all the expected directions.

The whole affair seems like a major miscalculation: Of Kings and Prophets seemingly features too much sex and violence for some churchgoers and not enough clarity for anyone else.

Underground is a rough watch, but it offers twists and compelling characters worth watching for viewers up to the challenge.

Funny enough and real enough, The Real O’Neals fits in well with ABC’s established Wednesday night comedies.

Although it feels overly familiar, The Family kicks off with a strong pilot. But like many series, the question is, will it keep viewers hooked? And will the “is this the real Adam or a fake” question linger so long viewers get annoyed with the tease?

The first episode does a nice enough job juxtaposing scenes from the original with parallel scenes in the present, but enjoying Fuller House will require a high tolerance for laugh tracks and corny sitcom humor.

I watched two episodes and with the exception of one riveting segment on security failures pre-9/11, I was bored out of my gourd.

In its first two episodes, season two of Saul offers a welcome return to form.

Vinyl drags in its occasionally predictable, too infrequently surprising premiere and invites viewers down a rough road. It feels authentic; it looks and sounds believable. But the situations and characters in Vinyl are overly familiar in this post-antihero, peak TV era.

Somewhat shockingly, this 10-part, limited series quickly proves itself deeply engrossing and surprisingly entertaining, even though many viewers will know almost every beat of the story. Credit a strong cast--especially “American Horror Story” veteran Sarah Paulson as prosecutor Marcia Clark--and writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, working from Jeffrey Toobin’s book “The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” for turning this “trial of the century” into what could be the limited series of the year.

It's a mildly entertaining hour as far as crime procedurals go.

By episode two, Mulder and Scully are, jarringly, back on the job and once again investigating an X-Files case that may or may not involve alien-human hybrids.... [The third episode is] the best of the first three episodes but also the weirdest.

Jousting on ATVs aside, there’s not a lot of exciting, forward plot momentum in the first few episodes, but later episodes spend more time with characters in town, and episode four includes a plot twist that will either make viewers sit up and take notice or prompt them to turn off the TV.

The character [Zach Galifianakis] plays in Baskets (along with the main character's twin brother) is too often unfunny and too mean to the poor insurance adjuster, but I found [Martha Kelly's insurance adjuster character] and Chip's mother to be pretty entertaining.

It’s not so bloody to turn off viewers coming to it from lead-in “Downton Abbey,” but it’s also not so mercenary in its attempts to be compatible that it seems watered down.

If it digs in to explore the conflicts inherent in collaboration, resistance and protection of family, this soapy saga might have legs.

It's soapy and action-packed while still paying attention to developing its characters, the typical ABC Family Freeform mix of elements that's proved successful with its audience so far.

It's not terrible but it is quite MTV-y with a soundtrack that at times feels more like any typical teen angst drama and looks that suggest of-the moment fashions (male elves sport a variation on the manbun hairstyle).

Overlong compared to the compact, well-edited six hours of "The Jinx," "Making a Murderer" could use a lot of tightening. ... And yet it's a fascinating story.

Second Chance is pretty much another Fox attempt at a crime procedural crossed with a high concept.

There are moments when Shades of Blue feels like more than the sum of its recycled parts but then there's a manipulative, tension-filled scene that tacks in just the direction a savvy viewer could predict.

Their scrapes and misadventures in the pilot are quite reminiscent of "The Hangover" and the show got funnier as it went along. But as is often the case, personal taste will dictate whether one feels the need for a lesson from this Guide on a weekly basis.

There's little that's magical about the cold, poorly paced Magicians pilot. It takes 16 minutes until Quentin arrives at Brakebills and feels longer. The pilot is rife with drab colors and while the story has potential, it made me want to go find the book rather than watch more of the TV series.

Childhood's End is more thought-provoking than many Syfy miniseries of the recent past even as it stumbles through plot holes.

The Expanse is pure space opera with political and cultural undertones that aren’t always communicated well, but there are compelling enough stories in the foreground that perhaps in time the detailed universe the series attempts to build will become clearer.

The show is just as strong as it was at the end of its first season. To be sure, Transparent isn't for everyone, and not because of its central transgender character, who’s actually one of the most likable of the bunch. Viewers are more likely to have a problem with the rarefied, tony Los Angeles setting, and the self-absorbed characters who populate the series.

The show clearly wants to be like the movie “Soapdish,” but Telenovela can’t quite pull it off. A second episode is considerably less funny than the pilot, a danger sign. The pilot episode has fun riffing on TV stars with swelled heads and telenovela camera trick clichés, and it all plays to Ms. Longoria’s comedic strengths.

Created by writer Justin Spitzer, Superstore has its funny moments as it alternately mocks People of Wal-Mart types while trying to protect the dignity of the store’s employees. It’s difficult for the show to have it both ways. Superstore is at its funniest when it’s also at its most ruthless and offensive, but those moments are few.

While appropriately grimy given the 1620s, rural North America setting (Although it was filmed in South Africa), the dour deprivation depicted proves dull over the miniseries’ first two hours.

The Man in the High Castle is a show that walks a fine line; it’s just intriguing enough to keep me coming back, but it doesn’t make me yearn to watch the next episode.

Director Kirk Thatcher is saddled with a fairly dated concept--family in crisis finds salvation off the grid with magical woodland monsters--that might have worked as a one-hour special but feels stretched to fill the film’s two-hour running time.

Jessica Jones could still use more levity, but its second episode reveals a streaming series that’s headed in a more balanced, intriguing direction.

Bunga stops a gazelle stampede with a big old passing of gas heard and shown in all its green-hued glory. Kids will love it, of course, and it's certainly better than fighting turtles but between tarnishing memories of the original film and that shouting honey badger, Return of the Road won't encourage co-viewing among children and their parents.

A lackluster entry that's unessential viewing in this age of #PeakTV.

The heart-tugging medical stories and conflicts all feel familiar, none of them delivered with anything that approaches a fresh twist.

AMC is airing only the show’s first hour this weekend, and if it leaves viewers confused about the world, come back for episode two, which fills in a lot of blanks about the Badlands and its characters.

There’s a lot of dark humor in Spotless--another “Breaking Bad” hallmark--and while the twists may not be quite as twisty, many are still surprising enough to make Spotless one of TV’s better thrillers.

There's little in Donny! that's surprising or unpredictable but as "soft-scripted" comedies go, it has the occasional funny moment. But mostly it's just another comedy with a cringeworthy Dumb Daddy (Donny Deutsch) lead character that's easily skippable.

Master of None avoids comedy conventions, eschewing a regular cast in favor of recurring characters and guest stars who pop up in episodes devoted to different themes. The show plays a bit like “Louie” in that way, but Master of None is funnier, less dramatic and tonally closer to Woody Allen’s lighter fare.

It’s intriguing for its setting and some of its stories--although the fine arts world in New York does call to mind the lighter “Mozart in the Jungle” on Amazon--and yet at the same time it’s often predictable in its premium cable-style plotting and pretentiousness, which is where the irritation comes in.... And yet, Flesh and Bone proved highly addictive, encouraging a binge of all its episodes in just a few days.

Yes, it’s all a lot of hokum in this mostly lighthearted adventure series that situates Ms. Stone as the boss while she watches Agent X run missions via video link.

Knowledge of the past movies is unnecessary to follow Ash vs. Evil Dead, but an appreciation for scenery chewing and sometimes cheesy special effects will come in handy.

It’s not a terrible show for fans of crime dramas but it’s not great either, occupying the same mushy middle ground as summer’s “Aquarius” on NBC.

Supergirl charms through its strong casting and earnest storytelling.

Through the first four episodes, Fargo remains a terrific thriller laced with black humor.... Welcome back, Fargo, which in its early going proves itself the best TV series fall 2015 has to offer.

[The] fall’s most unusual series concept and easily the new season’s most promising pilot.

Unlike some seasons of “AHS,” Hotel lacks dark humor, at least in tonight’s initial outing.... Visually, the premiere episode is a stunner, from the hotel set to the use of a fish-eye lens on the camera that squeezes so much into the frame.... Heavy on atmosphere in its early going and light on plot, a storyline starts to kick in around the premiere’s halfway point.

It's not the worst way to spend a half-hour, but Red Oaks also doesn't feel like essential viewing.

As "Thrones"-aping series go, The Last Kingdom is a better bet than plenty of others. It's easier to follow than "Bastard Executioner" and less battle-crazy than "Vikings," occupying a gentler middle ground.

The show tries to keep up with the goings-on at Lockhart/Agos, but these stories are awkwardly untethered from the main Alicia plot in the first two episodes of the new season.

Home Fires offers British drama that’s as satisfying as a warm cup of tea.

At home, Dr. Ken is just another sitcom-patented dumb daddy, although with an added shading of self-absorption. Mr. Jeong’s performance can best be described as over-the-top back around the other side and over-the-top a second time.

Gigi has a one-joke premise.... It's occasionally funny but not funny enough to tune in on a weekly basis.

Benders feels similar in its comedy style to all the Leary shows that have come before.

Code Black brings nothing new to the genre, except, perhaps, more chaos than usual for an ER show, and the dialogue is heavy with exposition and barked medical show cliches.... It benefits from a strong cast and a brisk pace, so there’s reason to hope for improvement.

In practice, Grandfathered is cute but forgettable.