What's certain is that Condor, though perhaps a little too conspiracy-laden for its own good and more than a bit heavy-handed in the portrayals of its villains, is a beguiling trip through the wilderness of mirrors that's modern intelligence work. You don't have to believe it; just enjoy it.

The audience, tentatively, clapped, and Fitzgerald's dancing career was over. Forty million records later, it seems the Apollo audience got it right.

A slow-burning horror-genre delight.

With Bruce Helford (The Drew Carey Show) and Whitney Cummings (2 Broke Girls) overseeing the writing, the punchlines come fast and furious.

If there's a breakout star in Zoo, though, it's probably the state of Louisiana, which does an astonishingly good impression of the African veldt that's used to excellent effect. Using little in the way of computer-generated effects, Zoo is a striking example of how much a talented director of photography can achieve with just his cameras.

An unnervingly close-up study of the conflict. Given an astonishing level of access to both Mexican drug lords and American junkies, he's intercut their stories with a narrative about an Ohio police narcotics squad, which though far more ordinary, is still revealing.

Perry Mason is the ugliest fun-to-watch show (or perhaps the funnest-to-watch ugly show, I don't know) since Showtime's cuddly serial-killer-next-door series Dexter left the air nearly a decade ago, and the cracked side of America's national psyche will be the better for it.

A funny, charming, and optimistic tale of rolling with the punches.

There's more than one escape going on in Dannemora, even if all the routes end in the same place.

The script, when it's going for laughs, is absolutely riotous. The scenes taking place in the frat-boy bullpen at Lisa's new hedge fund office—favorite on-going prank: during conversations with SEC compliance officers, they mute their end of the call, then drop trou and rub their junk on the phone—are pee-your-pants hilarious.

HBO's clear-eyed documentary Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma, produced in conjunction with CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen's new book, United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists, tries to imbue the discussion with some intelligence and nuance.

With a talented cast and writing staff and a truly original premise, it might really turn into something exceptional—if the American Taliban doesn't put it to death first.

Queens is undeniably a soap opera—a highly entertaining one—but it's also a wry and often endearing commentary on both the wisdom and the decrepitude of advancing age.

An absorbing drama.... To the extent that Show Me a Hero is flawed, the problem lies not in Simon's dramaturgy but his journalistic instincts. Show Me a Hero is but a single snapshot of a lumbering crisis that unfolded over a period of nearly three decades, and while the show's narrative is painstakingly accurate within its timeframe, its wide implications are not.

If Minority Report is a satisfying stew of crime drama and sci-fi adventure, the seasoning is sly wit.

The whodunit and dunwhat? elements of Blindspot are terse, fast-pitched and intriguing.

First and foremost, this is a show in which dildo injuries are a constant menace (and, possibly, an allusion to the obsessions of earlier generations) and virtually any visit to a friend's home is likely to interrupt sweaty, noisy rutting. (Lest you accuse me of hyperbole: twice in the first three minutes of the pilot.)

The women of Flack are relentlessly savage: in their disdain for their wayward clients; in their open contempt for the stupid and greedy journalists they use as pawns in their schemes; and in their off-handed manipulation of their husbands and boyfriends. This is all very entertaining. Flack will undoubtedly win the Emmys for Bitchiest Dialogue and Best Puking Sound Effects.

Angel from Hell, originally penciled into the CBS fall schedule and postponed for reasons too secret to disclose but probably having to do with something one of the network's crack programming experts saw in the entrails of a chicken, also has an emotional core surrounded by multiple layers of beguiling loopiness.

What's for sure is that if you like the Reacher books, you'll like the Reacher TV show. The blend that marks the books—of brute force and dry wit, of rootlessness and personal loyalty, of animal savagery and human decency—is present and accounted for.

Superstore is funny enough to be well worth your while.

[Producers Josh Pate and Cynthia Cidre] keep Blood & Oil living large without quite stumbling over the top. They get a lot of help from their skilled cast, particularly Crawford, who has grown some grit since his pretty-boy heir in Gossip Girl. And Johnson gives his best performance in years.

Roots' greatest service may be in reminding us that, as we blunder through the ugly turmoil of present-day American race relations, we've survived worse.

Amazon Prime's ZeroZeroZero might be the most extensive collection of narcotrafficker aphorisms ever, sort of a Red Book of the cocaine trade.

Speechless deftly blazes trails between irreverence and crudity, topicality and political correctness.

HBO's production is relentlessly grim, a smothering tapestry of insanity, nutballery, and emotional and physical brutality.

Practically every damn word of this review gives away some whopping twist or turn in Epix's new costume-drama-soap-opera Belgravia.

The show's intricate plotting and its complex female characters—the desperately ambitious McClaren, the angel-faced, black-hearted Beaumontaine—make it fascinating despite its flaws.

It's funny, if not clamorously so; superbly acted, by a bunch of people you never heard of; and good-hearted, without being Hallmark-ish.

Explosive and appalling, 61st Street tears off its mundane outer wrappings to reveal foundation garments of pure steel.

Hulu's odd but engrossing new drama about life inside an 18th-century London brothel.

It's a story well-acted and well-told, its cast folding together like fingers in a glove.

Between the intricately staged violence and Smulders' wonderfully wisecracking, knuckle-busting performance, the Stumptown pilot is an intense experience—so much so that it's hard to believe the rest of the series can hold up to the same standard.

Leary, one of the sharpest comic writers in television, has a feast on this stuff, lampooning the infirmities of his geezer characters even as he lashes out at the current rock generation with the fury of a scorned old hippie.

Call me crude, immature, and jejune—editors do, all the time—but I cannot help but feel a certain fondness for a show in which characters have names like Judge Horsedich. And any comedy casting Shepherd deserves special recognition.

Everything about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is balls-out nutbaggery, including its origin: It started out as a half-hour comedy for premium-cable channel Showtime and somehow wound up on a network devoted mostly to high-school bitchery and boy-band vampires, where it's not always clear if the demographic target of 13 to 34 refers to age or IQ.

In short, you've seen American Rust so many times you can recite most of the lines before they're spoken. And yet… and yet… there's just too much talent stacked up in the cast of American Rust to turn away from it.

Baskets is difficult to categorize but extremely funny.

This is a story about not Wall Street but what happens when powerful, amoral men go after one another in a fight without rules or restraints. It might not be pretty, but it's always fascinating.

This is the first time anybody has unleashed director Seth Rogen, the overlord of Hollywood juvenilia, on the subject, and Black Monday is every bit as madly, sickly funny as you might expect.

It has an underbelly sufficiently dark that grown-up Kirsten's hands sport a generous number of the tattoo equivalents of gun-stock notches, keepsakes of her capable work with knives. There's also a pervasive feeling that someone—or something—is watching. And what's that mysterious comic book to which Kirsten keeps consulting as if it's a training manual?

Like the history from which it springs, Glória is taut, tight and terrifying.

There are plenty of intriguing subplots and red herrings in Too Close, but what drives the engine is the full-speed collision of two cracked psyches, expertly played.

A scathingly funny cocktail of hardball racial humor, caustic Hollywood self-lampoon and general filthy talk.

A skillful editor probably could have trimmed 90 minutes out of I'll Be Gone in the Dark that wouldn't be missed.

Stateless is a good reminder that neither the politics nor the human tragedy of immigration has gone away, and that in the United States, the conflation of immigration with hatred for or love of Trump has almost completely obscured the real issue, the immigrants themselves.

But the veteran Williamson—who's masterminded everything from the maniacal Scream franchise, to the terrifying murder-cult drama The Following, to more teenage vampire claptrap than can be listed on cyberspace—can really rattle your bones even when he's not necessarily engaging your intellect.

Pizzolatto's writing is not without its irritations, particularly his dialogue.... Ultimately, the characters are too fascinating to turn loose of–particularly Farrell's explosive Velcoro and his political godfather Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn).

The bang-bang in L.A.'s Finest is long and loud—two car chases and two shootouts in the first 12 minutes—but it's too well-staged to complain about. And the lurid back stories of the detectives—even their secrets have secrets—keep things interesting even in the infrequent moments when nobody is being tortured or killed.

The manic Brink can be exhausting and overbroad, but it also has moments that are acutely, if childishly, funny.

The stupidly-titled Manhunt: Deadly Games is a crisp, absorbing recounting of the search for the bomber who killed two people and injured 150 others at the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta.

It's more of a generational collision over the meaning of sex and relationships, disquieting and discouraging regardless of which side of its generation gap you're from, but surprisingly engrossing.

Punchy, clever, and entertaining.

To the extent that The Passage is political, it's the age-old horror/sci-fi skepticism about science empowered by government but untempered by moral considerations, the same perspective that's driven everything from the big ants of Them! to the relentless microbes of The Andromeda Strain.

The second season is still well-plotted and satisfyingly mysterious as long as you're new to all this. On the other hand, the first season is better written and has Plummer.

What really makes The Rookie interesting is watching Fillion maneuver among all these sharp elbows while balancing the shortage of adrenaline with the bonus supply of experience that both come with middle age. He does it all with the same let's-have-a-beer amiability he's displayed in shows as diverse as Firefly and Castle. He'll make you forget Kate Jackson is missing.

It's diverting in an Agatha Christie sort of way, but ultimately beside the point. Whoever Q is, he clearly didn't really have access to secret White House dope. And as the Trump administration fades further into the background, so does the importance of Q's identity. Paranoia may strike deep, but then it moves on.

Overall, the show—or at least its pilot episode, the only one The CW made available—manages the extraordinary feat of appealing to young genre fans as well striking a chord with their parents, even those still wondering if modern technology can't produce a pair of X-Ray Spex that really work.

There are laughs aplenty in Patriot, but they're delivered at the mellifluous pace of old whiskey rather than the slam-bang of a Belushian beer can crushed against the forehead.

Grandfathered is a well-crafted piece of work, with jokes coming in at all angles.... But it's also a quietly touching story of emotional lost-and-found, with a cast of remarkable range.

The exuberant and universal cynicism of Notorious makes it a lot of fun to watch, even as your concept of morality shrivels up like a vampire in the sun. Not that the show won't force you to ask some searching questions.

Designated Survivor has a terrific pilot episode. Yet it could go off the rails at any moment.

Like most Chuck Lorre-branded shows, B Positive starts out as a barrage of one-liners, most of them admittedly funny, but not necessarily suggesting a solid structure for a continuing show. Yet somehow during all the raucous punchlines, some engaging characters start to show up.

It is a chillingly enjoyable whodunnit for a lazy summer evening. The biggest danger is that the ratings are good and CBS tries to extend it past the 13 episodes scheduled for this summer. There's a reason Agatha Christie never tried to turn Murder on the Orient Express into a TV series.

If you prefer your crime dramas from the To Catch a Thief corner of the genre, The Catch has much to recommend it, including clever plotting and an elegant, witty cast. Enos, a long way from the bipolar ragamuffin detective she played in The Killing, shows that she can rock an evening gown.

If you can't find something in here to enjoy, you're just not trying very hard.

An elegant suspense tale in which memory and identity are both the heroes and the villains.

The 2000s does a reasonably good job of weaving a tapestry of the decade's highlights.

The scripts, mostly written by L&O veteran Rene Balcer, do a nifty job of carving a clean narrative trail through the usual true-crime cloud of ephemera.

Though Evil manages some truly unnerving moments, particularly the scenes with the lascivious demon, it's more about ideas than the pea-soup-vomiting stuff audiences usually expect from stories about demons and exorcism. In post-Kardashian America, it may be too late to convince viewers that evil is more than a matter of table manners.

Mixed-ish has a much fresher feel than the other shows.

The most interesting thing of all about The Exorcist is that it shares the hardball theology of Fox's Lucifer, AMC's Preacher and Cinemax's exorcism show Outcast. One renegade priest in The Exorcist even resolves his doctrinal disputes with Rome not with an encyclical but a .38. It seems television's era of amiable pseudo-Unitarian clergymen of the Touched by an Angel and Highway to Heaven stripe is officially dead.

A rambunctious sci-fi/fantasy slice-and-dice of theology, myth, and hot-button sociology, with a generous dollop of pure depravity thrown in just for fun and Nielsen points, American Gods is a dizzying journey through humanity's obsession with theism and dogma. It doesn't always make sense--maybe it never makes sense--and its pace is dreadfully uneven. But a show in which a religious pilgrim trekking through the wilderness of a big-box electronic store is tempted by a goddess disguised as Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy, murmuring from a TV screen, "Hey, you ever wanted to see Lucy's tits?" is not easily dismissed.

As the show unveils multiple conspiracies, all at cross-purposes, Limitless seems less like an exploitation of its movie namesake and more like a well-made and well-thought-out TV series of its own.

Like Gasteyer, the rest of American Auto's cast—including Harriet Dyer (The Invisible Man) as a promiscuous publicist, Jon Barinholtz (Superstore) as a corporate heirhead and Tye White (NCIS: Los Angeles) as a bemused assembly-line worker yanked up into management so there will be at least one person there who knows something about cars—is uniformly hilarious.

Call it 30 Rock Lite, a slightly less subversive television-workplace comedy peopled by loopy eccentrics too goofy to be mean for long.

Always weird, sometimes annoying, but frequently fascinating, Outer Range has Yellowstone's same sense of a cowboy family unaware that it has lived out its time—but in this case, the encroachment is not being done by modernity, but something antediluvian that's returned for a possession it left behind.

If The Simpsons and Futurama are PG-13 shows, Disenchantment is maybe PG-14, ever-so-slightly sexier and bloodier. Like the other shows, its jokes are more suggestive than bawdy.

As end-of-summer video junk food, you could do a lot worse. One Dollar's cast of scruffy characters is an interesting bunch, even when under lethal assault by their own writers. I wound up watching them for four hours, about three more than I planned, and each one was more enjoyable than the last.

Intended as a modern comic spin on Ibsen's A Doll's House, Dollface is funny enough, though it mostly misses the feminist boat. It more closely resembles a little-watched FXX surrealist comedy of sexual manners called Man Seeking Woman, in which clueless characters conversed regularly with their own ids as they plotted blundering romantic strategy.

Briskly paced, it sacrifices nuance for impact, and it makes the most of the trade.

The characters are so isolated and, often, alienated, from one another that the early hours of the show have an almost surreal sense of aimlessness, like a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing. But as they start to fill in, and the story starts to reach backwards, Possessions turns from weirdly fascinating to just plain fascinating.

Whiskey Cavalier has an appealingly daft streak of sophomoric loopiness.

Cloaking hardboiled fiction, cynical characters, and somber existential heroes not just in midnight-blurred alleys but in the very climate implied a darkness without escape, a perpetual state of moral ambiguity.

The profligate murders are pleasingly imaginative, the plot twists unpredictable enough to stay interesting, and Rittenhouse the cutest sociopath since Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. What's not to like?

A lot of Telenovela's humor will stretch across any cultural divide.... But what distinguishes Telenovela from any other sitcom--its relentless lampooning of every convention of its own genre, from the pistolero mustaches of the villains to the ever-escalating décolletage wars of the heroines--may fall flat with an audience that's largely unfamiliar with real novelas.

American Housewife may be a knockoff rather than a tapestry, but it includes threads of wistfulness, paranoia and willful social deviance that will make you look twice. Or even thrice.

The show, based on a 2013 documentary about a real Los Angeles ER trauma bay, rings with crisp dialogue and authoritatively shouted medical jargon in sufficient quantities that you'll never be more than halfway through an episode before you're completely immersed in hypochondriac terror of what your miscreant organs are plotting against you.

Nash, Preston, and Reyes play their roles with such gusto that your profound, debilitating shame at enjoying Claws will fade quickly.

I Love Dick doesn't have a safe bone in its body, salacious allusion definitely intended.

Oh, by the way, the Devil keeps an autographed photo of Justin Bieber in his office. Go ahead, tell me you're surprised.

Could the show be launching a slyly subversive attack on planned economies? I thought about that for a moment, then went back to wondering what they do with all the poop. But with a smile.

Watching The Plot Against America often feels like being locked in a closet with a fanatical #NeverTrumper: It'll give you a headache even if you agree with him.

No Tomorrow nonetheless has some quirky laughs, and Anderson is an appealingly inept protagonist. You could do worse with your time.

The camp elements have given away to a gloriously lurid trashiness.

The punchlines fly thick, fast and pointed in Kevin Can Wait, and enough of them land to make it a diverting, if unenlightening, experience.

However derivative Containment may be, it attains a certain creepy power as it rolls along its yuckily apocalyptic way.

The conflict between idealism and reality runs through Doubt like a bright thread, sometimes restated in explicitly political terms. Sometimes the firm's lawyers seem to be giving their clients short shrift in deference to dubious leftist shibboleths about community. Is "snitching" really the word for testifying against a gang-banger murderer? That piquant political dilemma, coupled with the increasingly jagged story line of Sadie's dubious romance, keep Doubt more watchable than it probably has a right to be.