They play like an old-school Law & Order episode elongated well past the point of interest, without any of the nuance or larger sociological implications that justified Murphy and friends devoting so much time to the O.J. Simpson trial.

Chicago Justice feels like comfort food in the same way the other Chicago series have when I’ve sampled them, with all the narrative and ethical complexity smoothed out just enough that you won’t miss anything if a sock-sorting problem becomes surprisingly difficult while you watch.

It’s often predictable and to the grimdark end of the Quality Drama tonal spectrum, but the period itself is fairly novel (Carnivale was over a decade ago), and it plays its familiar tunes with brisk competence.

It’s a good cast--Hudgens is energetic and likable in the straight woman role, Tudyk can play this kind of obnoxious bro in his sleep, and Pudi and the others (including Christina Kirk as Van’s beleaguered assistant, Jackie) already have a solid handle on what differentiates each nerdy character from the others--and every now and then comes a scene or joke that lives up to the promise of showing an extraordinary world from the most ordinary point of view.

AMC’s version of The Son (it debuts Saturday night at 9; I’ve seen the first two episodes) is a glum, lifelessly condensed take on the material that in the early going doesn’t even rise to the passable standard of Hell on Wheels.

The suits, hats, gowns, and sets all look smashing, and the actors are strong, particularly Bomer ratcheting up his boyish charm to its most potent in order to convey how justly beloved Monroe is in an otherwise-cutthroat town. But the characters all feel like stock types borrowed from other series, even if many of them were created by Fitzgerald back in his final days, and the whole thing feels a bit dull. I have all the love in the world for tales of pre-WWII Hollywood, but ran out of patience with this one by the end of the fourth episode.

Though Netflix provided critics with the whole first season in advance, I ran out of patience after six episodes; they featured maybe enough material to justify three episodes, and probably two.

Shaun improvising surgical procedures with whatever he can find on a TSA conveyer belt, or flashbacks to Shaun’s very difficult childhood, are effective, and promise a solid, if familiar, show to come. But boy oh boy do the scenes where his colleagues debate Shaun’s fitness for the job labor, while also feeling like artifacts from around when Big Bang Theory debuted, if not earlier.

Yet even with Momoa and McClarnon being more central to the action, it’s middling historical drama at best, like the early days of AMC’s Turn or Hell on Wheels.

There are a lot of moving parts, some of which work quite well (Mel Harris as a wealthy but naive client who thinks the Haverfords are saving her from a short con when they’re really setting her up for a long one), others of which grind the show to a halt (Dylan Schmid as the inevitable troublemaking teenage son).

No story, or joke, goes as far as it needs to in order to really extract the necessary laughs. The FX version of this could be a scream; the Fox version feels watered down and largely forgettable.

This material has seen better days, and 24: Legacy makes clearer than ever how much Kiefer Sutherland was needed to sell it.

With each new revelation, each new flashback that adds additional context to one of last season’s flashbacks, it begins to feel less like a sensitive teen drama than like one of those forgettable Lost rip-offs that thought the key to success was introducing five new questions for every old one that gets answered. ... And each additional reason, each additional season, dilutes the impact of when we first heard [Hannah’s story].

It’s plenty ambitious, but an ambitious failure, where the more you make like Greg and try to think about what the characters are thinking, the more unbearable most of it becomes.

Friends From College is a shrill and unpleasant dramedy about the dangers of maintaining youthful friendships deep into adulthood.

These early episodes have some of the usual growing pains first-year comedies go through as the creative team figures out what’s funny about each actor and character; they’ve already solved McDermott/Dave, so you have to wait to see if the others can catch up.

We got a show that’s so lifeless that I have no interest in finishing out the season.

Virtually every joke in The Orville is out on an island. At times, it’s not even clear what the joke is meant to be, but simply that there is one. And while it’s a relief that Palicki isn’t playing the disapproving woman who rolls her eyes at the naughty dude at the center of the story, none of the writers seem to know what to do with her, either.

With each passing minute, Inhumans feels slower, dumber, and emptier.

The whole gang finally knows everything about Liv, brains, and the undead as a whole, and man oh man is iZombie soooo much better as a result. ... There’s still arguably too much going on, though, even if the pieces are more unified.

The second season and now the third aren’t exact translations of the books--nor should they be, since what works in one medium doesn’t automatically in another--but they feel to me both like the Harry Bosch from the page and like a very solid TV cop drama.

I’ve seen the first three episodes, and they are delightful.

Based on the six episodes Cinemax sent out for review in advance of Friday night’s premiere, it’s in many ways the Strike Back fans knew and loved the first time out. ... At the same time, the whole thing feels a bit thinner and more formulaic than the previous incarnation. ... It so far feels only as good as it needs to be, which is a step down from what the prior incarnation showed it could do.

The start of the new season hits a lot of bumps as it tries to simultaneously show how everything has changed and nothing has, as if the show is having second thoughts about the new Seattle--or at least wants to very carefully ease the audience into it. The dialogue’s still sharp, and the performers appealing, but the tug of war between what the show was and what it probably needs to be now is palpable, and at times distracting.

It’s the same show, but better, which is the sort of sophomore year jump you’d expect from a pair of veteran showrunners like Kripke (Supernatural) and Ryan (The Shield).

One of the best things the show figured out how to do was to draw lots of stories from lots of different Bosch novels, keeping Bosch, Edgar, and company so busy that there are never the dead spots you get in most shows that use the “It’s a 10-hour movie” narrative approach. This season, though, felt like it had too much on its plate in both quantity and quality of cases.