At times, it’s still tough to watch. But Mr. Cumberbatch brings wit and flashes of wicked humor to a story of childhood trauma and its impact on one man’s life via substance abuse and mental illness.

Warm, welcoming and occasionally tear-jerking, this three-hour production goes down like a warm glass of milk at bedtime.

It feels authentic, save for one calculated-to-take-advantage-of-premium-cable scene in the premiere (characters on TV seem more prone to engage in grief-fueled sex at funeral receptions than people do in real life).

Sweetbitter certainly presents recognizable characters, situations and reactions that may have an appeal to young people who are living on their own for the first time in a big city, but it has precious little new to add to that familiar experience.

While Handmaid’s Tale comes across as more disturbing because the world it creates actually feels like it could come to pass. Neither program [Handmaid's Tale or Westworld] is an easy viewing experience; both shows represent today’s TV at its best.

It takes a bit for Westworld to get back up to full steam, but by episode three (five hours were made available to TV critics), this futuristic, violent drama returns to fine form, introducing new parts of the park (Shogun World!), new characters and apparently new technology goals on the part of Delos, the corporation that owns Westworld.

It’s a dark, sometimes dreary Lost in Space with great special effects and some interesting character relationships that sit awkwardly alongside predictable plots.

It’s an engaging (and, perhaps to some defenders of Joe Paterno, it will be an enraging) film that explores character, the politics of college athletics and the value of local journalism in a style that’s more process piece thriller than it is anything like a biopic given how “Paterno” concentrates on a short period in the coach’s life.

Even though the premise of The Crossing seems like it’s another TV show that should really be a movie or limited series and not an ongoing drama, the pilot offers (for a broadcast network series) some decent twists, welcome casting against type and a somewhat intriguing plot.

While it isn’t as culturally significant as, say, Mr. Peele’s “Get Out,” “The Last O.G.” is genuinely funny and transfers Mr. Morgan’s skills from co-star to lead far more successfully than his short-lived NBC 2003-04 sitcom, “The Tracy Morgan Show,” ever did.

The Child in Time takes some bizarre turns that draw it away from the grief/guilt cycle endemic to the film’s premise. There’s Stephen’s publisher friend (Stephen Campbell Moore) who has a Benjamin Button-style awakening that plays into the theme of childhood. And the film also offers an ending of hope, a welcome if somewhat unbelievable salve on the almost unbearable pain of the program’s earliest moments.

Forward momentum--for the plot, creature action and character development--finally kicks in during episode three but it’s a big ask for AMC to expect viewers will return after the first two episodes.

It’s more pathetic than funny.

A serviceable if predictable single-camera comedy.

HBO’s Barry marks viewers’ best bet for a smart, darkly comedic new show.

Because it’s so true to its roots, the new Roseanne does feel somewhat dated at times with longer, talkier scenes than many of today’s comedies. But the writing is crisp, smart and, most importantly, funny.

The body count is high in early episodes and Philip gets pulled back into spying, just not in the exact way as before. This new avenue threatens to upend his family, which, of course, lays the groundwork for one of the show’s psychologically intense Philip-Elizabeth relationship-defining scenes early in the season’s third episode.

Entertaining and light in its first two episodes, Trust turns more dramatic with higher stakes in episode three as a cold-blooded mafia killer enters the picture. It’s a rough transition in tone and leaves one to wonder how the balance of the 10-episode first season will play out and whether the plot can justify 10 hours compared to the two hours devoted to the same story in “All the Money in the World.”

Some of the supporting characters, including Victoria Hughes (Barrett Doss) and Dean Miller (Okieriete Onaodowan), make decent first impressions. But the whole enterprise feels so similar to “Grey’s”--co-workers as family, love triangle, heroics on the job--as to be unessential, which programming in the Peak TV era cannot afford to be.

Ultimately, dull, dreary Krypton does feel like a waste of time.

For the People is OK but not great, too all over the place for any of the legal cases to make much of a dramatic impression.

Deception is fairly charming in spite of its blah procedural trappings thanks to Mr. Cutmore-Scott and his character’s bag of tricks and magic team.

Rise is likable enough, but through its first five episodes the show doesn’t rise above a pale analogue to shows in the family drama/football/drama club genres that came before.

Mr. Totah steals the show with his witty retorts and Mr. Favreau makes Matthew likable despite his naiveté. The rest of the cast, consisting mostly of the gym family, have yet to come into focus through three episodes made available for review.

It’s warm and funny-adjacent but it has too much voiceover narration and doesn’t offer the emotional truths of reigning prime-time family drama champ “This is Us.”

Series creators Michelle and Robert King spend the first two episodes extricating Maya Rindell from federal charges stemming from her father’s Ponzi scheme, including some disappointing turns in episode two that rely on things-that-would-not-happen-in-a-real-courtroom TV tropes. The Good Fight is better than that. Episode three finds the series in sharper form as the law firm comes under threat, relationships clarify and a legal case explores reality TV.

A few lines generate a mild chuckle, but Living Biblically mostly feels stale and unfunny--the kind of show that gives broadcast network comedies a bad name.

Showrunner Dan Futterman (writer of “Gracepoint” and “Foxcatcher,” once a co-star on “Judging Amy”) keeps the tension high and the pace generally relentless. “The Looming Tower” only falters in an embarrassingly trite early scene of O’Neill with one of his many women. But when the focus is on the work, “Looming Tower” looms large as a well-made story of human and systemic failings.