Gleeson does a first-rate job with a character we’ve seen before, the tormented cop who plunges into a battle where he’s seemingly outflanked and outgunned. Treadaway is suitably troubling as a kid who represses such waves of rage and frustration that we don’t doubt it could explode somewhere. That the causes of his rage play as clichés doesn’t make him less menacing, though it makes the larger story less than subtle. Call it a solid campfire yarn.

Thought-provoking and melancholy, like all good F. Scott Fitzgerald stories, The Last Tycoon delivers a good summer watch. ... All this said, The Last Tycoon has taken some critical heat, and not without cause. It has several unsparkling passages and weak spots.

The Defiant Ones sends you away admiring the two guys who made the big score.

Happily, in spite of the plot labyrinth that any conspiracy theory naturally creates, Salvation keeps its story understandable and makes us keep wanting to know what happens next.

Power has turned into a stronger show as it’s gone along because it knows how to accelerate the action and keep the characters compelling without taking the seductive path of becoming a lavish soap. ... Besides Sikura, Naughton and Loren also shine in the opener.

GLOW is not to be confused with a lecture on sociology and female empowerment in the workplace. It’s sprinkled with soap and isn’t above focusing on some of those body parts itself. But even if professional wrestling bores you to tears, GLOW spins some stories that ring true.

Created by John Singleton with Eric Amadio and Dave Andron, Snowfall is a good-looking production. It gets its music from turntables and boomboxes and it reminds us that South Central Los Angeles, for all its notoriety, has a lot of tree-lined streets and perfectly decent houses with front yards. It also reminds us that crack cocaine was not so much a brand new problem as the consequence of several larger and longer-simmering problems.

Calling Blood Drive a rom-com would be stretching things, but it is refreshing to see that love can still bloom in a world where, if you softly whispered, “I would die for you,” most of the population would take you up on the offer.

The good news is that it can be better understood even by raw rookies. More to the point, it’s worth the effort, because Tatiana Maslany gives one of the finest performances on contemporary television.

It’s amusing at times, provocative at times, because I Love Dick often explores the practice of contemporary navel-gazing by satirizing it.

There’s still plenty of humor, always bending toward the absurd, and Archer’s time travel has not stripped him of his signature phrases, attitude or fondness for bourbon and wordplay.

Even more in the second season than the first, Home Fires is an ensemble piece. ... It’s precisely this approach, telling lots of little stories whose war connections differ widely, that gives Home Fires a ring of truth.

There’s a fair amount of darkness in this story, because the lives it chronicles were not easy. There’s also a fair amount of humor. Mostly there’s admiration for three women who in a very short time accomplished things their world saw no reason to think they could.

Hap and Leonard is also a case where six episodes feels just about right. There’s time to have fun, meet some people, tell a story and leave while everyone’s still enjoying the party. As they should.

It’s not feel-good television. In the first two seasons it was very good television, and the third season has the elements to become just as compelling.

It’s not quick or easy to watch. It’s also not easy to forget.

When We Rise doesn’t pick up a story at its beginning and doesn’t leave a story with an ending. What it delivers is a game-changing saga from the middle.

Blacklist: Redemption is a sturdy show built on a smart premise.

Full of fast-paced banter and pop culture lines, Riverdale starts this road trip as a fine ride.

One of the best shows on television. Just as long as you realize it has moments that will make you feel really really sad.

Sad as the coda to Bright Lights became, it’s a story with a whole lot of heart.

Stylish, charming and thoroughly engaging.

The best reason to watch, however, is the music and the group’s on-stage performance. Whether or not you were a boy band fan in the 1980s, this is top-quality stuff.

There are few soft landings in Christie stories, and in Witness for the Prosecution several are exceptionally hard. The whole shadowy, troubling tale also feels more powerful because the cast plays it at a deliberate, ominous pace.

Hawkins does a solid job filling Jack’s familiar shoes.

While this is hardly the first complicated sibling relationship in a TV series, this one has the overlay of unspoken things both men apparently felt extraordinary circumstances had forced them to do.

It isn’t afraid to spend time in critical and somewhat obscure areas. It also enlivens the drama with sharply drawn non-musical characters.

While a tale of restless discontent in a rich California coastal town offers an intriguing ride, it’s also a deliberate one. Think of it as a Sunday drive, at a leisurely pace that enables the passengers to absorb every detail of the scenery.

The Good Fight, a spinoff from CBS’s acclaimed The Good Wife, turns out to be a really good show.

In its second season, Empire’s stilettos are sharper, its gloss is glossier and its enjoyably soapy turns are even larger than life, if that’s possible.

There are some bumps in the road as the show lays out its premise, but Supergirl has a number of things going for it: Melissa Benoist is convincing and charming in the lead role; the supporting cast, which features the likes of Calista Flockhart, Chyler Leigh, Mehcad Brooks and David Harewood, is very good; and the leaders of the writing team behind it.

This show knows what it wants to do and it churns through its story with efficiency and the gloss that comes from executing the ABC house style with energy and a bit of flair.

It’s by no means the deepest thing you’ll watch this year, but you’d have to search far and wide to find a program that hits its chosen target with such concentrated glee.

Though Between doesn’t belong among the most ambitious shows on that roster, it knows what it wants to do and sets about doing it efficiently, effectively and with a minimum of fuss.

The achievement of Penny Dreadful is that within its highly stylized, delightfully elaborate and occasionally batsh-t world, it has created complex, fascinating characters--or rather, it has begun to.

The good news is, Sarah, Cosima and the other clones retain most of the real estate in this gorgeously grimy biothriller, and watching the established characters relate to each other is still a lot of fun.

The fantastic Wolf Hall is ultra-English is so many ways.... This may be a restrained, morally complex drama, but it is far from inert and stodgy in its execution.

The good news is that this show's building blocks are very strong. The dialogue, the world and the cast are all enjoyable, and the show simply exudes potential.

Once Duhamel and Winters settle into a rhythm and begin showing more nuanced aspects of their characters, I began to enjoy "Battle Creek" for the light, reasonably well-constructed crime drama that it is, and as the season develops, Shore is able to do a few interesting things with the question of whether people can truly change.

This is a show that knows exactly what viewers expect of it, and over the course of its three seasons, the saga of reticent raider Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel) has shown increasing assuredness and has unpretentiously and reliably supplied exciting and bloody adventures.

Fresh Off the Boat is good--at times, very good. Without question, it's one of the best new shows of the broadcast network season: funny, well-acted and promising on a number of levels.

Fortitude reminds me of "Borgen" because neither show is loud; nothing about this kind of drama is bombastic or outsized. Fortitude takes its time as it builds up its icy, workaday world and depicts the day to day lives of its residents.

The first four episodes of Season 3 are every bit as taut and finely crafted as the stellar prior season of the show.

The first few episodes of the final season of Justified are about as pleasurable as TV gets.

It's light and diverting yet respectful of its characters and their histories, thus it can serve as a pleasant, earnest counterbalance to some of TV's darker dramas.

It's worth noting that Looking is one of the sweetest and most romantic shows on television, and one the best at depicting the complexity and curiosity that drives many sexual encounters.

It remains invigoratingly itself and it continues to land in Hannah in a series of situations in which layers of thematic complexity stack up like delayed planes circling a busy airport.

Togetherness can be hard to watch at times, given that it looks unflinchingly at the difficulties of marriage and friendship as middle age approaches, but the show is absolutely worth sticking with, if only for the virtuoso performance from Zissis, whose failed-actor character is one of the finest new creations to arrive on television in some time.

The drama is every bit as brisk and engaging as its lead character, and I can only list one real objection to the show: its brevity.

Its somewhat opaque characters never quite moved me on that level [of "Broadchurch," "Happy Valley" or "Top of the Lake"]. Though it's well made and respectful of its subject matter, something about this show keeps it not at the surface but more or less reliably near it.

McDormand is clearly and rightfully the star of the show, but Bill Murray and Richard Jenkins provide additional reasons to tune in; both bring a warmth and dry wit to a drama whose domestic scenes occasionally veer from awkward to (intentionally) taxing.

It's rare to come across a comedy that displays such admirable focus and delivers such smartly packaged slices of diverting escapism. More, please.

A pleasingly executed diversion featuring capable and textured performances from actors in key roles.

The Affair is subtle, smart and an intelligent examination of the way in which we are all the unreliable narrators of our own lives.

It's a delightful comedy-drama about a young woman faced with a completely unexpected dilemma, and it's so inherently endearing that I'm very eager to see how the story of Jane and her fractious but loving family unfolds.

Its sprightly first hour is one of the most solidly entertaining pilots of the fall season, and it did the most important thing that first episodes must do: It made me eager to see what comes next.

[A] solid and confident show.

What a lovely heart this show has, and what supple skills Transparent uses to explore the questions of identity and connection rolling around inside that wounded, hopeful heart. This is simply a great show.

The pilot (which is ABC has released to the media) is a polished, entertaining and promising half-hour of comedy about a well-to-do American family.

Catherine's "patch" in Happy Valley may be more limited than the big chunks of Baltimore covered by Bunk and McNulty, but morally and emotionally, this fantastic drama goes deep.

Gretchen and Jimmy's story, which acquires surprising emotional weight as the season progresses, is highly addictive on its own merits.

There is a welcome weighty quality to this week's adventure tale, but its sense of substance comes from embracing the rich potential of the character's depth, not from overstuffing the hour with an excess of "clever" meta-commentary.

This British import is weird, slight and lovingly made, and perhaps most importantly, it's smart enough not to overstay its welcome.

The results of Soderbergh's latest foray into series television are frequently terrific.

It moves along with purpose and energy, but it's often at its best when finding colorful details and or allowing small, telling moments to breathe.

The Leftovers is interesting television, even if, in the early going, it's not quite sure of what it wants to be or where it wants to go.

This wonderful, resonant show clearly has a deep belief in the power of redemption and connection.

Syfy's Defiance doesn't just cement its place as a well-made and enjoyable show, it continues to serve as a welcome corrective to some recent trends in TV sci-fi.

Even if not every storyline sings and if Season 2 occasionally lacks the forward momentum that Pipex gave it, I still marvel at the urgency that underpins much of OITNB.

There's a tentativeness to Halt's first hour--it doesn't end especially strongly--but overall, the drama has a mostly credible pilot and lead actors who will probably be able take the show in compelling directions.

Undateable, a show that does not set out to reinvent the multi-camera hangout comedy but execute that format reasonably well, turned out to be a generally pleasant surprise.

Penny Dreadful's gory moments are deployed strategically, and the adjective that best describes this show is not "bloody" but "soulful."

There's still nothing like it on TV, because there aren't too many people out there capable of excavating their brains with this much rigor, wit and insight.

Going by the first two hours, this new incarnation of the show exactly as 24-ish as you'd want it to be.

The weight of expectations on this new season were great, and if this plucky show staggers a little under that weight, that's understandable. I'm fully on board for Season 2, and I have every reason to believe Orphan Black will keep evolving in the direction of perfection. Science demands it.

Fargo develops into a solid pleasure; it's studded with telling details, excellent performances and satisfying subplots Fargo" develops into a solid pleasure; it's studded with telling details, excellent performances and satisfying subplots.

It's not as ambitious as Mad Men, of course, but it has its own very real pleasures.

Even when the show is scene-setting mode (as it is in these early episodes), GoT now excels at slipping exposition into meaty character moments, and the cast is terrific at nailing what's in the scripts and much more beyond that.

It arrives fully formed and packed with smart observations that will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest technology, modern capitalism and geek culture. Even if you don't care about those things, Silicon Valley works as a well-crafted ensemble comedy about a particularly eccentric workplace.

The good news is this modest show already has a number of things in its favor: Its pace is bracing, the choices are difficult and the danger the characters face is real.

There are a lot of shows on TV that are fun, many that are educational and a number that are beautiful to look at, but it's rare for a show to have all of those qualities in abundance.

Very few shows are able to combine pleasurable episodic storytelling so deftly with solid character building and delicious suspense, but the first five episodes of the new season do that with style, not to mention period-perfect wigs.

The cast is very good and if the central relationships are beefed up, it could be a keeper.

As it did last season, the show thoughtfully explores ideas about how belief systems spread and what people do when confronted with gods--or a God--that makes little sense to them.

The performances are nuanced and subtle.... Bakula's presence and air of experience add weight and depth to a show that occasionally seems too slight for its ambitions.

Helix doesn't reinvent the virus thriller, but it's a solid slice of genre entertainment that offers some creepy visuals and believable scares.

A taut, enjoyable second season.

[Novelist Joe Pizzolatto and director Cary Joji Fukunaga's] cohesive viewpoint helped me to forgive True Detective for some of its rougher spots, and the poetic visuals undoubtedly strengthened the most effective aspects of the drama.

All in all, the terrific Enlisted is one of the most pleasing network comedies to come along in quite some time.

Bradley brings a great deal of subtle pathos and doughty courage Hartnell's predicament, and ultimately, An Adventure becomes much more than a fun swing through TARDIS trivia. It becomes a story about hard work, ingenuity and a classy passing of the torch.

[A] low-key but thoughtfully realized gem.

The show may be for niche tastes, but it doesn't overstay its welcome and it manages to go to some demented and surprisingly emotionally places. And then it's done.

[Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan] are simply tremendous throughout, and they are the main reason to stick with the show, even when some of the supporting characters grate and parts of it feel like exposition-heavy excerpts from Thomas Maier's book of the same name.

Trophy Wife is charming and buoyant, and it has fun with tasks that feel like homework on many other new shows: It creates specific characters, establishes a consistent tone and sets up a host of relationships that are full of potential.

The Blacklist is never going to be anyone's idea of great art, but at least it has a pulpy kind of momentum that may well be worth watching for a while; I will stick around to see whether Spader's performance really is the only dish on the menu.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine has a genial, pleasing loopiness and very solid work from an intelligently assembled cast.

In its pilot, it achieved its modest goals without leaning too far into pompousness (as is the case with "Almost Human") or slicing off too much ham (hello "The Blacklist").

As was the case with the second season, Season 3 of Luther is only four hours long, and the drama would probably be more satisfying if it didn't try to cover so many bases in that limited running time.