Boiled down to its essential elements, Hanna is a bland fish-out-of water tale punctuated by short bursts of sudden violence.

BrainDead manages to be intermittently intriguing just through the sheer strangeness of its premise not to mention the sparkling chemistry Winstead exhibits both with Tveit and Semine. And in a different series, Pino’s cheerful, adulterous, win-at-all-costs politico could’ve been downright fascinating. Ultimately, though, like the inside-the-beltway white matter that gets consumed by those little alien critters and winds up turning to pink goo, BrainDead goes splat under the weight of its outsized aspirations.

There’s a good TV show to be made about a sitcom wife’s secret double life. (WandaVision explored similar ideas with much greater success.) But here, the concept turns sour and curdled, and we end up as miserable as Allison is.

Aniston infuses Alex’s story with genuine emotion, and reminds us what a gifted dramatic actor she is. But the rest of the show lets her down. It’s a solid performance lost in a sea of jumbled ideas and missed opportunities.

Even if you’re not a Buffy buff, there’s enough retread here to give déjà vu to viewers of Whedon’s other series. ... Perhaps the show’s premium cable berth ultimately will allow the show to flower in a way different from that of Whedon’s other series, all of which aired on broadcast networks. Sadly, though, the most noticeable indicator so far of The Nevers‘ more permissive network standards are the proliferation of boobs for boobs’ sake.

A gaudy and campy docudrama sung in the key of Ryan Murphy (though Murphy isn’t involved in this production), Clipped bites off far more than it can chew. It’s part underdog sports drama, part overheated soap opera and part overly broad cultural satire… none of which are entirely successful.

In lieu of an actual story, we’re treated to a constant stream of wink-wink references to jokes from past seasons. ... We do get more Bluth family interaction this season, but the cast members mostly look older and worn down... and not in a funny way.

Those of us who tune in to the other two shows in the franchise have already been here, seen this — and we’ve seen it done with greater artfulness, efficacy and urgency. Adding this third series to the rotation, even temporarily, feels more than a little bit like beating an undead horse.

It’s a lot of money spent in service of a show that’s not very good. It’s well-intentioned, but Mad Men already chronicled this era with much more skill and subtlety.

Netflix's "Vladimir" promises a steamy forbidden romance, but it fails to deliver, bogged down by curdled cynicism and tired clichés.

By the second episode, Mr. Mayor is already resorting to bad toupee jokes and the aforementioned “PPPORN” debacle. (Really, no one at City Hall raised a red flag about that one?) Even a sure-fire winner like getting Ted Danson stoned on weed gummy bears somehow falls flat. (He ends up fighting a hockey mascot, for some reason.) The actors seem almost resigned here, too.

Trouble is, there’s not a single surprising twist on any of the threadbare inside-showbiz tropes, and even worse, every single zinger feels like it’s from a hastily assembled first draft.

They need a strong villain to play off of, though, and generically mean rich girl Alexandra Cabot (Camille Hyde) doesn’t quite cut it. I found myself wishing for more screentime for The Other Two‘s Heléne York, who plays Katy’s bitchy coworker Amanda. She’s sharp enough to provide a worthy foil for Katy, at least… but in the world of Katy Keene, it seems, any and all sharp edges have been rounded off to a safe dullness.

The only redeeming factor here is Cohen, who does an admirable job making all of this as fun as possible.

Despite a top-notch cast, Apple TV+’s Palm Royale is a middling soap that lacks laughs and emotional depth.

It all makes for an uncomfortable mix of gentle small-town shenanigans and gritty crime twists, and neither of the two are sharp enough to really hook you. Ultimately, Ginny & Georgia feels like it was made to fill a space in the “Because You Watched” row on Netflix… and for a streamer intent on keeping you binge-watching no matter what, maybe that’s enough.

It’s an instantly gripping premise (previously mined by Battlestar Galactica), but a tricky one to pull off, and Designated Survivor stumbles a bit in the execution.

A disappointingly mediocre follow-up that lacks the unique spark of the original and isn’t interesting enough to justify how convoluted it is.

It all unfolds along predictably miserable lines, and confirms that there’s not really ten episodes’ worth of story here to tell. A Teacher is just an uncomfortable, frustrating viewing experience, and not in the ways it’s meant to be.

The first hour didn’t grab me hard enough that I want to stick around to find out.

Murphy has done great, daring work elsewhere, and that’s why actors will follow him anywhere. But 9-1-1 is neither great, nor daring--and these actors deserve far, far better.

USA’s The Rainmaker is a tepid, muddled retelling of the classic John Grisham legal thriller that falls short, despite John Slattery’s charms.

The fatal flaw here may actually be the hour-long format: Get Shorty could maybe work as a rapid-fire half-hour comedy, but at 60 minutes each, the episodes feel bloated and sluggish as they drag their feet getting to the good stuff.

Iron Fist Season 2 marks an improvement over its well-derided freshman run, but still lacks punch.

Despite an all-star cast and a promising premise, Netflix’s No Good Deed falls victim to thin characterization and an inconsistent tone.

Unfortunately, you won’t need to get past the second commercial break of the pilot episode to realize you’re watching the most banal type of procedural, dressed up in garish period costumes and clogged with faith-versus-science questions that get explored with all the depth and nuance of a political debate on The View.

Graphically violent and morose, it rubs our noses in the ugly side of humanity for no good reason, and for a legal thriller, it’s remarkably dumb, with its characters making unforgivably boneheaded decisions at every turn.

Mostly, any flicker of emotional complexity gets trampled by the plot as it barrels forward in five different directions at once. A whole lot happens in Zero Day, it’s true… but I can’t say I cared much about any of it.