Yes, it gets a little soapy at times, but it's still a satisfying watch because there's an emotional authenticity at its core.

Those seeking a fast-paced Western akin to Taylor Sheridan's previous offerings might prefer to fly over "The Madison," but those willing to wade through the show's slow-moving waters will come out the other side with few regrets — and an even deeper appreciation for Michelle Pfeiffer.

Die-hard "30 Rock" fanatics — like me — will find a lot to love about the show right away.

A visual treat with genuine heart, "Marshals" is enough of a crime procedural to appeal to viewers who enjoy a complete story told in 60 minutes, while also remaining prestigious enough to satisfy "Yellowstone" fans who might not typically watch a show like, say, "S.W.A.T." or "NCIS."

This is a revival with real purpose — and, for the most part, the one fans have been hoping for ever since Lazlo Bane's "Superman" last kicked off an episode of "Scrubs." Yes, the original theme song is back. But more importantly, so is the heart.

"A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" offers a refreshing antidote to "Game of Thrones" fatigue, with crude humor and humble humanity.

Despite the darkness, "Will Trent" remains one of television's funniest hours, anchored in the premiere by welcome bursts of levity involving desk-bound Ormewood and Det. Franklin, with newly promoted series regular Kevin Daniels once again proving what an asset he is to the ensemble.

Though it sometimes clings a little too tightly to sensibilities of seasons past, "Stranger Things" Season 5A is a rewarding, tightly paced showing that's worth the extra-long wait.

Vince Gilligan aims high with his sci-fi series "Pluribus," and it mostly works, anchored by Rhea Seehorn's dazzling performance.

The Lowdown, I should note, does threaten to disappear into its own quirk at times. It moseys along at a deliberate pace, and the meandering narrative tends to wander around like Lee after one too many hits of his vape pen. But that’s OK: This show dances to its own beat. It’s not trying too hard to impress us, and that’s endearing, in a way. It’s worth checking out just to bask in Hawke’s greatness.

Jude Law and Jason Bateman make Netflix’s grim crime drama Black Rabbit worth watching, even when the story crumbles around them.

Mare of Easttown’s creator has crafted another riveting HBO crime drama in Task, packed with emotional complexity and powerhouse performances.

Alien: Earth still feels at times like an eight-hour movie, slowly building to a chaotic climax, and it’s hard to see at this point how the story could continue for multiple seasons. Hawley has earned our trust by now, though… and once again, with a seemingly unadaptable franchise, he has delivered.

Hulu’s King of the Hill revival brings back the comfortingly low-key vibe of the original, along with a few smart updates.

Lena Dunham’s Netflix rom-com Too Much has a certain charm and a great lead performance, but its central romance is too shaky to sustain it.

If The Bear’s previous season was a letdown, Season 4 is a triumphant return to form, with raw emotion and beautiful performances.

FX’s Gen Z sitcom Adults is a welcome shot in the arm to TV comedy, with a cast of talented newcomers and a bold style that delivers huge laughs.

Tina Fey’s The Four Seasons is less zany than her previous TV work, but still delivers solid laughs, beautiful locations and a fantastic cast.

It’s commendable how Season 2 of The Last of Us tries to advance the narrative in a fresh way, but it’s not entirely successful. And the deep sadness that permeates the entire show stubbornly remains. I can say I admire a lot of the craftsmanship that goes into making The Last of Us.

Apple TV+’s Dope Thief puts a refreshing twist on the crime drama genre with top-notch performances and a wicked sense of humor.

Seth Rogen’s showbiz satire The Studio has lots of cool cameos, but gets too caught up in Hollywood lore to be consistently entertaining.

With its engaging cast and steady stream of titillating twists, CBS’ Beyond the Gates is more than just a historic moment in daytime. It’s also a drink-tossing, face-slapping, golf club-swinging good time.

Season 3 of The White Lotus covers familiar territory, but it still delivers top-notch performances and some wild twists.

Hulu’s wildly ambitious Paradise might bite off more than it can chew, but it’s an entertaining thriller with serious emotional heft.

Severance soars to new heights with its long-anticipated Season 2, exceeding our expectations by digging deeper and hitting harder than before.

No, The Pitt is not an ER reboot, but it may just be TV’s best, most authentic medical drama since the one that made Noah Wyle a star.

Dune: Prophecy boasts stunning visuals and strong performances, but the story falls short of the high bar set by the Dune movies.

It’s nice to spend more time with Apple TV+’s Bad Sisters, but Season 2 stretches their story well beyond its natural limits.

Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal is a top-notch thriller, with dazzling action sequences and smart storytelling.

The Zoe Saldaña-led spy thriller’s sophomore run is fantastic, and stands as one of the year’s best TV shows.

Both young Gibbs and NCIS: Origins take a minute to find their bearings, but once they do, this latest NCIS offshoot shows promise.

Anyone who felt that Young Sheldon ended too soon will be pleased to see that story continue (and be told so well) in Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.

There are a few genuinely poignant moments scattered through Disclaimer’s run, but taken as a whole, it’s a rough watch, putting its characters through the wringer and wallowing in overheated melodrama with lots of wailing and crying.

Netflix’s caustically funny romantic comedy Nobody Wants This is a charming showcase for Kristen Bell and Adam Brody.

Brammall and Dyer both rise to the occasion as actors, lending Gordon and Ashley’s relationship a poignant complexity. A show like Colin From Accounts really is something to be treasured. It’s one of those small, lovely gems that almost feels too good to be true in today’s TV landscape.

High Potential works on the strength of Olson’s joyful performance. It’s still a network procedural, at the end of the day, but it’s smart and funny

The Penguin is a fairly straightforward yet involving mobster story powered by Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti’s terrific performances.

FX’s sharp, savage English Teacher takes a refreshingly unsentimental look at public schools — and is one of the year’s funniest new shows.

Vince Vaughn is in his element as a fast-talking detective in Apple TV+’s engagingly weird mystery comedy Bad Monkey.

Apple TV+’s Presumed Innocent is a sleek and riveting legal thriller, thanks to great performances and writer David E. Kelley’s courtroom expertise.

I would not go so far as to say that Criminal Minds: Evolution is the product of “What if Criminal Minds and a prestige cable drama had a baby?” But that wouldn’t be too far off. It’s just wonderfully different, in assorted ways that longtime viewers may not have realized they wanted.

Elisabeth Moss’ spy thriller The Veil is effectively tense and provocative, but it gets derailed by unnecessary subplots.

The show takes the right risk in affording Lucy specificity as a character, and therefore a defined personality that can measure up to the wacky mayhem of the other weirdos she meets. The show’s clearly committed to being the definitive Fallout adaptation, a love letter to fans, no question, while still opening the vault door to welcome in just about everyone else brave enough to step inside.

Apple TV+’s Sugar is a stylish throwback to classic film noir, with a compelling turn from star Colin Farrell.

X-Men ’97 goes all-in on the requisite campiness, high-stakes action, and potent parallels that made the original, as well as the comics that inspired it, so much fun.

BET+’s Diarra from Detroit is an edgy and interesting mystery dramedy that is engrossing to watch but could benefit from fewer stereotypes.

FX’s Shōgun adaptation is a feast for the eyes with dazzling action sequences, but the muddled story falls short.

Stylishly shot and cleverly conceived, this Mr. & Mrs. Smith ultimately works so well because the two leads work together so well. In a show like this, it’s essential that Glover and Erskine have chemistry — and thankfully, they have lots of it. .... we’d be happy to watch John and Jane play spy games for years to come.

True Detective boldly hits the reset button in Season 4, but runs into the same problems that plagued previous seasons.

Monarch’s story does get a little dense at times with lots of scientific lingo being thrown around, leaving us lost in the weeds. Plus, I have to admit my eyes glazed over with all the talk about the shadowy corporation called Monarch that secretly monitors the beasts. But Russell’s natural charm and sly sense of humor go a long way towards cutting through all that and making the whole thing work.

Fargo is back with a throwback season packed with excellent performances and jaw-dropping action scenes.

Swann makes for a solid (and tall) team leader, though it takes at least one episode too many to shine any light on the past trauma that defines Mackey/has her “shields” up, while Lasance has great fun with Dempsey’s comparatively laid-back persona. Narkle, I want to say, is the big standout as Evie — winningly sassy and arguably the “most Australian” of the bunch — while Sagar was a runner-up until his character started acting a little too free-spirited in later episodes.

To be fair, the revival does begin to find its stride in later episodes, especially when it leans into the proudly pretentious tone of the original. (We even get a conversation spoken entirely in Latin!) But beyond the superficial similarities — the pithy title cards between scenes, Grammer crooning “Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs” over the end credits — this just isn’t Frasier.

Through its first three episodes, Krapopolis provides enough giggles to put it right at the top of Fox’s recent animation efforts, a cut above the likes of Bless the Harts and Duncanville.

Daryl Dixon is by no means perfect. There are some murky motivations, eyebrow-raising coincidences, and here and there dialogue that is more mystifying than it can possibly have been intended to be. .... Despite my quibbles, I never got to an installment that made me reluctant to watch the one after it.

Ahsoka avoids the excessive cameos and contrived dot-connecting of other, lesser Star Wars shows, focusing instead on what makes this franchise so much fun — its characters.

Justified: City Primeval may at times leave you longing for the dingy folksiness and familiar faces of Harlan County. But it’s a welcome, tightly wound, eight-episode reunion with Raylan Givens nonetheless.

The real star here is the tension that gradually builds from episode to episode, finding genuine human drama in a confined space. Sometimes when you’re making great TV, less space is more.

In the wake of CGI-saturated, cosmic movies like Ant-Man 3 and Guardians 3, Disney+’s Secret Invasion is a welcome blast of serious, grounded MCU fare.

Donald Glover proves he can do horror too with Swarm, anchored by a dazzling lead performance from Dominique Fishback.

Amazon’s Daisy Jones & the Six is hampered by rock star clichés, but it captures a vibrant creative spark that’s hard to resist.

Starz’s Party Down revival isn’t quite as fun as the original run, but it still has a great cast and plenty of satirical bite.

Picard‘s final season brings back Next Generation favorites and introduces new wrinkles in what is easily the best season yet.

Poker Face is a loving throwback to ’70s detective shows that works, thanks to a winning lead performance from Natasha Lyonne.

It requires a strong stomach, for one thing. (I can’t imagine binge-watching more than one episode at a time.) But for those who are up for it, it’s a highly compelling and artfully crafted step forward for the zombie genre — and for television in general.

The final product is something that stands as well on its own as it does as a continuation of Ron Howard’s classic film.

Season 2 of The White Lotus hits on a lot of the same themes as last season, but it still offers a terrific cast and insightful social satire.

The Peripheral is a cut above everyday sci-fi with cool futuristic effects, but it starts meandering after a stellar pilot.

AMC’s beautiful new take on Interview With the Vampire is certainly bold and seductive, but it too often tips over into camp.

This is the Star Wars series you’re looking for. Don’t sleep on it.

It never goes as hard or gets as dark as, say, BoJack did… but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, either. The lighter touch makes it an easier watch, and it does deliver more laughs per minute than most anything out there these days. A TV comedy that’s actually funny — what will they think of next?

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series The Rings of Power is worth the wait: a grandly ambitious epic with stunning visuals.

No matter how you watch it, The Patient is high-level drama told with admirable efficiency — all killer, no filler.

Despite a deliberate pace and narrow scope, HBO’s House of the Dragon proves itself a worthy successor to Game of Thrones.

Jen’s She-Hulk origin story, which unspools in the first episode, gets a bit repetitive — another case of an unwitting someone not wanting the gift of superpowers — but Maslany and Ruffalo enjoy a wonderful sibling-like banter that transcends the VFX they’re often hidden under. Once Jen accepts her duality, things get much more zippy and She-Hulk transforms into “Lawyer Show!”

It’s closer in tone to the later seasons of Sex and the City, when it ventured into dramedy territory, but that was earned by years of great writing and careful character building. Uncoupled could get there — and it’s a solid vehicle for Harris’ talents regardless — but it’s not quite there yet.

There were times I wanted The Rehearsal to be more conventionally structured or even more conventionally funny; it gets weirdly poignant at times — or poignantly weird, I’m not sure which — as it walks a fine line between inspired and demented. (One participant’s comparison of Fielder to Willy Wonka isn’t all that far off.) But I can honestly say I’ve seen nothing like it on television before.

It’s tough, because there’s so much about this show that I like, but I can’t shake the feeling that I wanted to see something more ambitious and boundary-breaking (and funny!) from a creative team of this caliber. Though there’s still time for Loot to find its footing and take a harder look at its main character, so far it goes down as a missed opportunity.

In short, unless you’re for some reason dying for a reinvention of the wheel, you’re gonna love this. It’s suspenseful, exciting, funny and scary as hell.

Hulu’s intriguing but frustrating book adaptation Conversations With Friends can’t quite match the heights of Normal People.

[Star Trek: Strange New Worlds] gets back to basics, closely hewing to classic Trek with an old-school vibe and an episodic alien-of-the-week format. (It even brings back the traditional uniforms and opening narration from the original series.) It’s a throwback, to be sure… and a welcome one.

Gaslit is a wickedly entertaining and irreverent look at an infamous slice of American history that none of these characters are particularly proud to be a part of.

This show is truly a gift, and if Season 2 is any indication, it can keep on reinventing itself for years and years to come.

Moon Knight remains wonderfully unpredictable every step of the way.

It bites off more than it can chew by taking on too many characters. We follow more than a dozen characters through a flurry of flashbacks and strange psychological detours, explaining how this parade of damaged men came to be so damaged. (It’s ten episodes, but it could’ve easily be six, or even four.) Its dynamic style and the intriguing personalities involved help it rise above all of that, though.

Any time Garner’s Anna is off screen, the series loses a bit of steam. I suppose it’s inevitable that a story about a phony heiress feels a little hollow… but it’s a fun ride while it lasts.

he show allows these women to be substantially flawed and messy, and it resists the urge to get too mopey and maudlin. Plus, their banter is fun and snappy, in the vein of Coupe’s Happy Endings. ... The three leads have excellent chemistry right off the bat, too.

Peacemaker, if you can stomach the title character’s lunkheaded views (and temporarily forgive if not forget his actions in The Suicide Squad), is a lot of James Gunn fun.

No, this is not the classic Sex and the City we first fell in love with… but what it is now isn’t bad, either.

The Wheel of Time has enough potential to ride past these initial frustrations thanks to a high budget and deep commitment from the actors to faithfully bring the magic of this story to life.

As creepy as Ike’s obsession is, it never gets creepy enough to be truly unsettling. All in all, though, it’s worthwhile just to see Ferrell and Rudd expand their acting ranges a bit and delve deep into a story that’s so strange, it has to be true.

The result is an inspired mix of Beetlejuice and The Money Pit, with a spooky, goofy energy that isn’t remotely like anything else on broadcast TV...The chorus of ghosts is a comedic masterstroke.

It’s hard to judge an entire series off of just one episode, of course, and this reboot does get a lot of things right.

The premiere is an inspired weaving together of creeping dread and disaster movie spectacle, laced with a quirky sense of humor. The subsequent episodes don’t quite live up to that promise, though. ... There’s a really good show somewhere in here, but it keeps getting bogged down by the weight of its own ambitions.

It’s a little bit Rear Window, a little bit Manhattan Murder Mystery — and a lot of fun, actually.

Heels is an entertaining and worthwhile watch for wrestling fans and non-wrestling fans alike. While the show’s in-ring segments are pretty cool, the show’s biggest sell is the prickly but tight-knit relationship between the Spade brothers, who have very different dreams but remain entwined because of the family business.

Rich with intriguing characters and armed with a breezy comedic tone, the campus comedy from first-time showrunner Amanda Peet is a smart, low-key charmer that sneaks up on you.

The plucky, can-do spirit that made last season so special still endure.