A parade of rape enactments threatens to drag and a halo hangs dangerously over McNamara’s head at times. But “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” always rights itself and ends up both engrossing and enlightening. It doesn’t have all the answers — no one does — but it asks the right questions in the right way.

Strained at times, wandering at others, “Perry Mason” finds its footing eventually and by its end you may want to watch a second season even as you hope it’s better than the first.

“I May Destroy You” is fascinating TV, taking a dark subject and turning it every which way. It can be shocking, it can be fun (which is also somewhat shocking), it can hurt and maybe even heal. No matter what, it’s an unsettling revelation.

A lot of humor ends up left behind and most of it stops short. This is a show that cuts with a butter knife instead of a razor blade. And it cuts every which way instead of one direction. The result is, not surprisingly, a mess.

This isn’t the brash, acid-tongued nerdy Patton Oswalt of the past, this is instead a more domesticated and content creature. Maybe he does indeed love everything. More power to him. Because apparently happiness does not preclude humor.

It’s all technically impressive. And it’s all a monumental bummer.

Gervais mostly finds a balance between humor and deep darkness, though he sometimes falters (far too much time is spent on an obnoxious therapist). And, like many comic actors, he seamlessly transitions to drama; even better, he poignantly walks the tightrope between despair and laughter.

“Tales from the Loop” is so low-key it stands out simply by not standing out. There are no mega-explosions apparent, no eye-popping special effects or gore celebrations. It offers meditations on man in a modern world beyond easy control. Which hardly seems like science fiction.

By the time you hit the fifth of its eight episodes you may find yourself yelling at the screen in amazed delight.

Created and written by David Simon (“The Wire,” “The Deuce”), “The Plot Against America” isn’t some garish exploitation of goose-stepping Nazi nastiness. It’s far too wise for that.

“Hunters” works in black-and-white and stereotypes, hiding in the bygone, but today anti-Semitism is on the rise and American Nazis apparently include “very fine people” according to one prominent source. Perhaps now wasn’t the time for a wildly uneven, superficial, comic book-type treatment of this particularly sick and unfortunately still-relevant dynamic.

It knows it’s walking familiar ground — spooky but never scary, occasionally violent but never gory, magical but hardly wondrous. Watchable but nowhere near fascinating.

“Avenue 5” seems more likely to just drift off into the void. There are, of course, good people at work here. Hugh Laurie stars as the spaceship’s clueless commander, Josh Gad is the clueless zillionaire funding the spaceship, Suzy Nakamura plays the tycoon’s clueless assistant. You get the drift.

The infectious nature of evil is an underlying theme here. This is one case where an infection doesn’t move quickly enough. Is it watchable? Sure. Is it memorable? Nah.

Even though it has a continuous story arc the show goes through tonal shifts, moving from Indiana Jones to grindhouse to bump-in-the-night scares, so that it almost feels like an anthology. But the dark, disturbing cloud of racism is ever present and seeps into every corner of the show like a wraith. Except this monster’s real.

“Teenage Bounty Hunters” is pretty much as good and bad as you’d expect it to be. Well, maybe a bit more bad. Which is unfortunate because the show’s young leads — Maddie Phillips and Anjelica Bette Fellini — have wonderful chemistry, batting teen nonsense, emotional eruptions and giddy observations back and forth with crisp timing.

Flint is a timebomb, and Flint Town is an impressively crafted tick-tock of things going wrong with a place, one after another.

Big issues of body, mind, identity and technology shuffle around the Altered Carbon universe, but the show often drags its feet in order to fill its individual episodes’ running times.

Glover has conceptualized Atlanta so that he can do with it whatever he wants; he’s not bound by traditional sitcom rules or limitations. That’s the fun of it. It’s his ride, and where he goes is anyone’s guess. But it will be worth the trip.

You end up identifying more with the people from outside the group, looking on as these people force friendships with folks from their past they’ve clearly outgrown. As viewers, we know how they feel.

[It] sounds pretty dark, and it is, but the wonder of both Atwood’s novel and the series is that it actually manages to be playful and witty at times.

Harlots, on Hulu, is certainly audacious. And ambitious. But whether it will be able to pull off it’s fine-line feminist balancing act remains to be seen; this show may end up groundbreaking or it may end up a train wreck. In the meantime it’s hard to look away.

She’s absolutely as funny as she was two years ago, which was pretty darn funny. But the humor--most of it revolving around sex, body issues and relationships--feels dated.

There are slight miscues--Kimara’s attempts to become pregnant seem a distraction--but this very busy boat stays upright and moves forward, shifting just enough to stay interesting.

It’s all very silly, but there’s bite beneath some of the yuks.

Feud: Bette and Joan is delicious fare, a mix of catty gossip and vile manipulation, a look at the dark underbelly of celebrity culture and the desperation that comes with aging out of the limelight.

A sprawling look at the gay liberation movement in the U.S. during the past five decades, spread over eight hours, featuring an abundance of talent, occasionally too earnest, at times heartbreaking, and pretty much always eminently watchable.

Just because it’s well-acted doesn’t mean Big Little Lies is worth enduring.