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

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.

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.

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.

Stylish, charming and thoroughly engaging.

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.

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

Structurally, the whole thing feels fresh again, and even if I have doubts about how the writers will wring two worthy seasons out of the new dynamics (Showtime has committed to airing at least one more season), the three 2012 episodes I've seen efficiently pulled me back in.

Luther, the story of an impulsive, very intelligent London cop, manages to be an excellent showcase for Idris Elba (The Wire) and an increasingly impressive character drama that goes to some dark and absorbing places.

Like 'Breaking Bad,' 'Mad Men' and 'The Walking Dead,' The Killing uses savvy aesthetic choices and minimalist but effective acting to create a vibe and tell a story with an irresistible undertow of forward momentum.

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

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

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.

Damages isn't on the level of 'The Sopranos,' but, like Ellen Parsons, it knows what it's about these days. And if you want to see some prime, grade-A Acting, well, you could do a lot worse.

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.

Fifteen minutes into A Gifted Man, the performance of Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Ehle and Margo Martindale had completely won me over, and of all the pilots I've screened for fall, this is the one I most want to see more of.

Tactical wins, taut storytelling and zombies munching tasty, tasty braaaaains: All that plus the addition of Michonne and David Morrissey as the Governor in upcoming episodes make me pretty damned happy that The Walking Dead is back.

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.

Episodes isn't a weighty series at all, but these actors elevate every scene they are in with spot-on comic timing and a graceful ability to play a range of conflicting emotions at once.

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.

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

The Defenders which, like those other shows, is a pretty straightforward legal procedural, has a surprising amount of fun with its familiar building blocks.

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.

Some aspects of this show work better than others, but, in its generally excellent second season, the drama has cohered into a compelling, if sprawling, portrait of the Crescent City.

What's especially impressive in Season 3 is how cogently and clearly events in the two different universes are handled. It's not hard to tell which is which and it's not hard to follow how the two worlds are connected, and those connections have only deepened the mythology in pleasing ways.

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.

Political Animals hews fairly closely to the USA tone and smartly employs any number of light-drama conventions, thus it can likely be enjoyed simply as an entertainment

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.