A new season that’s weirder and more vivid than before. ... The new season is at once more opaque and more direct than the first one. The premiere is so full of digressions that the plot eventually begins to feel like the real digression, yet by the end of it there’s a clear structure in place for how David will be dealing with the Shadow King.

It is still one of the very best shows on television. ... The first [episode] is more of a table-setter than some past Americans premieres have been, but the next two are outstanding, filled with the usual agonizing mix of spy thrills and family drama, and superb performances by Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, Noah Emmerich, and the rest of the gang.

Glover and friends seem to have hit on a new way to surprise the audience: by making Atlanta, at least for a while, into a more conventional TV show. The three episodes given to critics are by far the most consistent in terms of story and tone of any comparable stretch from season one. ... Atlanta can be great because you never expect what it might do next. But that’s far from the only reason it’s great, as the start of season two so potently demonstrates.

The new episodes deftly explore what happens next for June and everyone else in a way that feels true to the source material, while also feeling a bit looser and more sure of itself now that the story is wholly the series’ own. ... In many ways it was even better than The Handmaid's Tale's already impressive debut season.

The new episodes don’t represent another radical leap forward in style or quality the way season two was, but whatever’s lost from the shock of the new (nothing here is quite as weird or surprising as the cavewoman prologue or “International Assassin,” though a joke in the second episode and a party sequence in the fifth come close) is gained in how much more we know all the characters at this point, and how aware they are of their proximity to their story’s end.

The breadth of season two is much wider, as is the depth. Ansari and Yang are trying so many more things, and succeeding far more often than you might expect even after that wonderful debut.

It’s a stunning performance by Moss. ... The more we get to know Ofglen, the harder Bledel’s performance hits, until a pair of scenes late in the third episode will leave you a puddle on the floor from what she does in them. The cast is excellent overall, particularly Dowd and Strahovski. ... Riveting new drama.

Better Things makes its own leap by getting smaller, more intimate, and more focused. ... This was a great show in that first year. It’s even greater now.

It’s a delight, existing so far outside the mold of recent superhero adaptations in the 2010s that it couldn’t see the mold even with telescopic vision. It’s a comic book show likely to be as appealing to people who have no interest in comic books as to those who can name David’s famous relative without Googling, if not more, and it’s easily the most exciting new series this young year in TV has offered so far.

The new episodes deftly bring its many stories together with as much righteous anger as artistry, I felt a tingle in a part of my brain that has largely laid dormant since my days as a TV tourist in West Baltimore.

It’s a tough story. An honest story. And a story that beautifully connects its Baker’s dozen of tales and characters with each other, and the audience, even though there are some bumps and missteps along the way.

The good Good Place news: this is still a wonderful show--better, in many ways, now that creator Mike Schur has laid his cards on the table for us all to see. The new installments are livelier and funnier than before, particularly the third and fourth episodes.

This isn’t a story taking place in a parallel timeline to Breaking Bad, but one traveling down the same terrible track. And, like Saul Goodman’s most important client once said, nothing stops this train. All we can do is travel along it with these superb actors and the gifted writers, directors, and editors who keep the train moving, trusting that we’ll be wildly entertained even as it takes us someplace we keep hoping it won’t.

Halt and Catch Fire is almost over, yet these early episodes feel like it’s just getting warmed up. Enjoy it while you can.

The other half of what makes Brockmire special--raunchy and depraved, but also surprisingly tender and even romantic (imagine Catastrophe if most of it took place at a minor league ballpark)--is how Azaria and the show’s creator, Joel Church-Cooper, are able to find the vulnerable human being underneath the accent and his familiar plaid blazer, even as Brockmire never breaks character or stops talking like he’s doing play-by-play on his own life.

The first four episodes of which are even more self-assured and odd and tragic and ridiculous than anything Galifianakis and company tried a year ago.

It was slow and strange in ways that felt like Lynch was deliberately baiting his audience to see how much they would tolerate--and how much they actually remembered about the old show--after so much time away. ... And yet I loved every plodding, baffling minute of it. ... I went into the night terrified that all the usual TV revival problems would become exponentially worse when filtered through Lynch’s own storytelling eccentricities, and I came out of it exhilarated. Baffled at times, but exhilarated.

The world and its citizens are so rich that it’s a pleasure to spend time in it at all, as written by this team, as directed by the great Michelle MacLaren and others (including Franco for a couple of episodes), and as performed by this superb cast.

It feels even better that the new One Day is so good, and so vital--a throwback to an earlier era that also feels like it absolutely belongs in this one. ... Lydia winds up occupying a lot of the space that Schneider did in the original, which leaves the new hipster iteration a bit adrift. Grinnell is amiable and has his moments, but Schneider’s among the new version’s thinner characters.

The narrative’s not quite as propulsive early enough as a result, but the character work largely compensates for it. And even the various slow burns converge into a huge, thrilling flame for the season’s climactic hours.

It’s significantly better across the board [than season 3]. Brooker and company have a firmer handle on the proper architecture for each story (only one, “Crocodile,” really drags), and if the show is starting to repeat itself a bit (the last episode of this batch, “Black Museum,” is basically Black Mirror’s Greatest Hits), the execution tends to compensate for the spottiness or familiarity of the ideas.

7 Days in Hell was an out-of-nowhere delight. If Tour de Pharmacy isn’t quite as great, it’s still reassuring to know this band can come back together every few years for more hilarity that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

While there are definitely stretches where I had flashbacks to Downton Abbey--a show whose execution I admired, but whose substance I rarely enjoyed because I could never bring myself to care about the woes of the landed gentry--the work of the cast and Vallée are strong enough that I could mostly overcome my prejudice against the subject matter and enjoy the craft on display.

A weird, fascinating, alternately lovely and funny show.

Samurai Jack wasn’t a property I’d been dreaming of ever seeing again, but it’s emerged from its trip through time and space far better than most of the recent TV revivals.

Creatively, it’s a satisfying return to the world, freed of the Florrick baggage that made the final Good Wife days less exciting, even if her absence seems to limit the new show’s overall ceiling.

The show doesn’t always hit the very narrow tonal target it’s aiming for, but when it does, it’s both intensely satisfying and feels like nothing else on TV.

Trust has its own flaws, but it also has that blend of true crime, macabre comedy, the foibles of the rich and famous, and social issues that made The People v. O.J. so addictive.