“The Residence,” now streaming all episodes, benefits from snappy (though profanity-laced) dialogue and quick cuts for comedic purposes, but the story and characters aren’t strong enough to support eight hours, especially given the formulaic approach to episodes.

Robinson, in particular, delivers a nuanced performance in a series that could best be improved by less build-up and even more exploration of the affair’s victim.

“Chicken Sisters” is a sweet, entertaining enough trifle.

“Zero Day” is another TV series that shoulda been a movie. Or maybe a four-hour series, but six hours is too much.

If CW dramas are your jam, you might like “Wednesday.” I was mostly bored and found the plot machinations predictable. “Wednesday” is at its best when it leans into the mordant humor Wednesday evinces.

This first hour is a slog punctuated by the occasional battle with a Ray Harryhausen-esque snow troll. The second episode, written by Gennifer Hutchinson (“Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul”), proves more satisfying.

There’s a ton of back-and-forth over who are the true heroes and it gets tedious fast.

“Muppets Mayhem” puts the spotlight on these one-note secondary characters. It’s like taking a recipe that calls for a teaspoon of spice and instead using two cups of spice — and no other ingredients. The result is unappetizing — a dry, dull and disappointing Muppets series.

Episode four ends on a promising cliffhanger, which makes it too soon to pass final judgment but “The Acolyte” gets off to a rocky start.

That’s the frustrating thing about “Paradise”: It toggles between compelling moments, mostly featuring Brown and/or the cataclysmic event, and people spouting uninspired TV dialogue that renders the characters one-dimensional.

Viewers who can make it past this bumpy beginning, this new chapter starts to settle into its changes in the second episode.

Series creator/director Abe Forsythe gives “Wolf Like Me” some occasionally funny moments, but it’s mostly a somber downer, careening from one traumatic event to another.

If “Downton” and “Gilded Age” offer a smooth blend of melodrama and lighter moments, “Forsytes” is choppier. It takes itself and its characters with utmost seriousness – until it doesn’t midway through episode three.

“Rebel” is an OK broadcast network soap thanks to snappy dialogue and dramatic scenes that should earn the show the nickname “10 Ways to Get Disbarred.”

Raymond Lee makes a decent first impression as the new Leaper, physicist Ben Song. ... The new “Leap” does have the added element of a connection to Beckett and his hologram companion, Al (the late Dean Stockwell), but that serialized story seems destined to drag on endlessly unless and until Bakula reprises his role.

It’s occasionally but not frequently funny.

The show, written by David E. Kelley (“Big Sky”), still feels fairly broadcast network-y, albeit slightly elevated.

This new story – a collection of vignettes, really – strays from the initial concept of elves who work to prepare the way for Santa, instead focusing more on the characters and their lives when not on the clock, which is not as magical or entertaining.

Unfortunately, the resulting product is frequently too on-the-nose. If there’s any reason to watch, it’s for the performance of actor Matthew Goode as legendary Paramount executive Robert Evans.

While some of the geopolitical commentary proves cutting, the father-daughter relationship tussle is pretty much the sitcom pabulum you’d expect.

There’s just not enough story to keep this second “Feud” frothy and fun.

Through eight often interminable episodes made available for review, “Death” has occasional moments of intrigue. But there’s way too much time dedicated to buildup.

“Let the Right One In” features strong performances, particularly from Bichir and Rose, but it’s a slow burn and doesn’t have much new to say about the themes it embraces.

Credit Marvel with attempting a half-hour comedy series for Disney+, but “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” proves too timid about leaning into humor.

fter six hours “Palm Royale” didn’t make me care enough to continue, though I did skip to the last episode and discovered the show does not wrap up in a way that suggests it’s intended to be a limited series.

The new “Willow” feels a little fan-fiction-y. Some will surely lap it up, but I can’t imagine this series, despite its big budget, registering in the pop culture zeitgeist in the same way “Star Wars” and Marvel shows on Disney+ sometimes do.

As soaps go, one can certainly do worse than “Bridgerton,” but season two, streaming Friday, feels like a bland mimeograph of season one. ... Happily, the new season gives scene-stealers Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) and Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh) more to do.

[Lea] Thompson gets the quickest, cattiest lines in this show that’s fairly entertaining.

More deadpan than laugh-out-loud funny, “Wellington” will require some American viewers to turn on closed captions, as the New Zealand accents pose a significant barrier to entry/comprehension.

This gives the show slightly more depth than many broadcast series today, but it’s nowhere near the entertaining, complex psychological machinations on display in “The White Lotus,” which airs on HBO at the same time.

“St. Denis” will conjure a smile but it doesn’t elicit belly laughs through three episodes made available for review.

The pilot episode is eerie and surprising at times but it also has that will-any-of-this-get-resolved? vibe hanging over it. There’s also a love-will-heal resolution that’s fairly cheesy as well as a frustrating opaqueness.

The show eventually gets to Billy (Tom Blyth) in his outlaw years, but it’s such a predictable and lackadaisical journey, only the heartiest of Western fans will bother to go along for the entire ride.

The musical moments are fantastic — as is Erivo, who evinces no sign of a British accent — but what comes between the musical numbers is a bit of a slog.

There are few revelations that justify the four-hour running time. ... The fourth hour is the strongest, showing how members of the investigation commission used “bureaucratic jujitsu” to thwart efforts to protect NASA’s image.

Early episodes offer some intriguing conflicts and points of view to consider. But later in the season – HBO Max made the first six of 10 episodes available for review — the show devolves into a less interesting cat-and-mouse game between the atheistic robots and the religious invaders.

Early on “The Undoing” seems like it may cast a spell, too, but that feeling wears off.

“Bel-Air” is a glossy, expensive-looking soap that, like Fox’s “Our Kind of People,” puts the spotlight on uber-wealthy Black families. But “fresh?” Not so much.

“Not Dead Yet” is only mildly amusing, not laugh-out-loud funny.

That lighter touch the writers take with Hailey draws more humor out of Sutherland’s Weir. ... That may not be enough to recommend “Rabbit Hole,” which is largely a generic conspiracy thriller, but it’s at least a differentiator.

The series improves somewhat as it delves into the backstories of its Mexican characters. “Coyote” proves watchable but too derivative.

“Good Sam” offers both medical-case-of-the-week and soapy storylines along with the who-needs-who more back-and-forth between father and daughter. This one’s more middling OK than good.

It’s fine if unremarkable. The series basically takes the plot of the 1987 film and elongates and attempts to deepen it with winks and nods to the movie.

It’s a sobering chronicle of a romance surrounded by death that’s, by virtue of its subject, more affecting than entertaining. It’s also slow-paced, suggesting the story may have been better told as a compact feature film rather than the drawn-out miniseries that has all episodes now streaming on Peacock.

“Monarch” is a decidedly old-school, broadcast network prime-time sudser.

While the family story and conflicts with the neighboring Tillersons — you know they’re bad news because they ride ATVs and the Abbotts ride horses – feels overly familiar, credit series creator/writer Brian Watkins with building to shocks at the end of the first two episodes that leave viewers eager to learn what will happen next.

To succeed in the long-term, “Animal Control” needs to get funnier fast and spend more time on its human characters and less time on animal gags.

Kids can forgive a lot and the sometimes-shaky effects work won’t detract from the story. But adults coming to this “Avatar” might be disappointed. From the performances (occasionally stunted and wooden young actors) to the general gee-whiz tone, “Avatar” is an OK but not amazing adaptation.

Representation matters, so the existence of an almost all-Asian cast on a broadcast network series is a welcome development even as the show’s format and themes feel overly familiar.

While there are some nice small moments – a few Will (Noah Schnapp) scenes indirectly address his sexuality; Max (Sadie Sink) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) have some welcome interactions – it’s all the overheated bombast that feels like filler that disappoints.

It’s an intriguing start to the series but the beats that follow flow predictably from the show’s premise.

Though the performances are uniformly terrific – Ferrell has to walk the highest tightrope, making Marty believable but not too pathetic — “The Shrink Next Door” is Exhibit A in streaming series bloat. There’s not enough story to justify eight episodes.

Bad choices naturally lead to worse outcomes in this anti-hero series that would have been innovative in 2005 but today feels like a dull relic.

Perhaps this third episode bodes well for continued improvement, but in the early going, “Clarice” is meh-see TV. It’s fine but surely there are better TV dramas to pair with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

It’s great to see an action-adventure with a young woman in the lead role as Disney+’s “Renegade Nell” offers. But this series is too violent for its intended audience of kids, teens and families.

Other than unnecessarily elongating the story and filming it in black and white, Netflix’s adaptation does nothing to improve on the Oscar-nominated film that already exists.

“Cruel Intentions” a serviceable soap but nothing more.

The medical case in the premiere is pretty dense and sometimes hard to follow but future episodes are more streamlined. Still, it’s not a show you can multitask through and completely grasp what is going on in the medical cases.

Unlike 2023’s winning Apple TV+ thriller “Hijack,” “Last Frontier” is another streaming series that should have been a movie.

Unlike, say, Showtime’s “Episodes,” which depicts how the TV sausage gets made in all its absurdity while still showing characters with heart, “The Franchise” gives no reason to have sympathy for any of its selfish narcissists.

Like “New Amsterdam,” “Transplant” is a high-gloss, middle-of-the-road broadcast drama. It’s “ER” with an immigration story overlay, but it doesn’t redefine the medical drama the way “ER” did in 1994.

“Kingstown,” written by Sheridan, is another muscular soap that’s long on characters talking in indecipherable lingo and short on clarity.

It’s a cynical and often predictable look at the seamy side of the entertainment industry.

Ted” offers intermittent but not consistent laughs, and, at those one-hour drama episode lengths, it’s not worth viewers’ time.

“Joe vs. Carole” is competently made and entertaining enough but having already sat through the first season of Netflix’s bloated “Tiger King,” “Joe vs. Carole” can’t help but feel like a rerun of something I already saw.

“1883” but make it sexy! And ridiculous!

None of the acting shines the way Maslany did the first time around. “Echoes” offers fan service at best but too often it’s just a degraded copy of the original “Orphan Black” series.

“Dexter: Resurrection” proves most interesting when Dexter meets an elite collective of serial killers who convene at the home of a wealthy admirer (Peter Dinklage, “Game of Thrones”) and his henchwoman/enforcer (Uma Thurman). It’s the only element of this season that feels like new, semi-unexplored terrain.

With so many characters, there’s not as much time for busting up bad guys — and when Walker goes too far in one beat-down he gets a mild reprimand from his boss — so this isn’t your grandfather’s “Walker.” It’s clearly The CW’s cookie cutter iteration.

The breaking-the-fourth-wall shtick grows old fast in the pilot — only one in four of the comments proves charming/funny — so it’s no surprise there’s less of it in the second episode.

A very Hallmark-style light drama.

Basically, “Happy Face” jumps off from the real story then moves into fiction immediately, a disappointment for anyone expecting this “true crime” story to be, well, true.

There’s some humor to be mined in flashbacks illustrating how Kenan and his wife met on the set of a sitcom – she was only three years older than him but played his character’s mother on the TV show – but the present-day stuff is pretty unfunny, marking this series as a dud on arrival.

Kline excels at pomposity, Linney nails exasperation and Tenney holds his own as a warm balm fighting the lunacy around him, but “American Classic” offers little to recommend beyond a generally comfy vibe.

Sure, there are tangents for “Kevin Can…” to explore, including a clean-cut guy (Raymond Lee) Allison knew in high school who’s returned to town. There are also hints of her attraction to a bad boy mechanic. But the main story feels limited and quickly stretched beyond a point where the concept ceases to be novel.

Rauch and Larroquette evince great chemistry and the new characters show promise, but much of the writing seems stuck in the ’90s.

Machado is excellent as the ferocious Dolores but the show is aimless and predictable with no big twist at the end.

After the first episode, the cynical “Your Honor” becomes a little less painful to watch but also more predictable. ... The arrival of the always-welcome Margo Martindale in episode four immediately improves “Your Honor” but it’s not enough to overturn the initial verdict: “Your Honor” is guilty of being a major downer.

This NBC comedy has potential thanks largely to the presence of Echo Kellum (“You’re the Worst”) and Nicole Byer (“Nailed It!”). Even so, the writing for Byer needs to be as sharp as she is – which in the two episodes made available for review, it’s not.

It is meat-and-potatoes storytelling served as a tiny portion on an oversized platter. As in real life, the story peters out with an unsatisfying conclusion.

Fans of Fox’s existing male-­skewing animated comedy lineup will likely welcome “UBG,” which offers a similar comedic point of view: dumb dudes doing dumb things designed to make viewers laugh.

[Her boss] strangely does not immediately kill her when she gives him guff.

It’s dumbfounding how much the show elides fertile territory for dramatic story in favor of the usual, predictable CW-patented relationship drama.

It’s a pretty light-hearted action-drama, the kind of show where Syd and Nancy banter their way through a bullet-riddled convenience store hold-up/hostage crisis.

Much less wild (and less entertaining) than “9-1-1.”

Since “Criminal Minds” was always a show about brutal crimes, the move to Paramount+ doesn’t result in that much more violence on screen, but it does allow star Joe Mantegna to drop the occasional f-bomb.

“Moonbase 8” has its absurdist comedic moments but they’re too hit-and-miss.

The “B Positive” pilot is decent enough as CBS sitcoms go. It doesn’t show the promise of “The Big Bang Theory” pilot but it’s not as bad as plenty of other CBS’s past sitcoms, like last season’s “Carol’s Second Act.”

If there’s a reason to watch – and judging by the first three episodes, I’m not convinced there is – it’s for the mystery. But even that seems like it might be predictable.

“Jury Duty” starts strong but by episode four (of eight), grows tiresome with occasional bursts of hilarity. It’s another streaming series stretched beyond what the concept will bear.

Overall, the whole endeavor feels overly familiar. McCallany owns the screen anytime he appears, but the story wasn’t original enough to inspire viewing beyond the first two episodes.

The writing and plotting by series creator Mark Gross (“Man with a Plan”) is as pedestrian as one would fear going into this bland multi-cam sitcom.

It’s a high-quality cast of actors but they have little to do beyond dole out exposition that pushes the plot forward while supporting Robyn’s efforts to aid the helpless.

“Wheel of Time” is very self-serious, which makes it easy to mock, particularly if you’re apt to make comparisons to other fantasy franchises: One screechy villain has Voldemort’s nose; an Army of horned beasts are this show’s version of Orcs. It’s all slathered on thick with an over-reliance on special effects-heavy battle scenes.

Viewers who can suspend their disbelief about that setup may be able to enjoy this conspiracy thriller that feels, frustratingly, like a wild goose chase.

“Reginald” lacks much dramatic or comedic bite.

Light legal drama that’s neither funny enough nor dramatic enough to make much of an impression.

Despite game efforts by Jon Cryer (“Two and a Half Men”) and Donald Faison (“Scrubs”) “Extended Family” is the kind of sitcom that gives multi-cam comedies a bad name.