Fortunately, The Americans’ fifth season succeeds in addressing our current world by being its assiduously careful self. This is still a show about how, beyond politics, beyond economics, beyond nationalism, people are people. How beautiful, and how terrifying.

Maybe it seems like a stretch to call a show about dick jokes and poop one of the most well-crafted and self-aware works to come out of the last few years, but in season two, American Vandal has only continued to surpass expectations.

Book fans may be at a slight advantage, since if you’ve forgotten who someone is in a book, you can always go back a few pages. That is a minor complaint in the face of a series that gripped me from frame one, despite telling a very small, intimate story that occasionally amounts to two girls learning lessons about how the world works and little else.

Fleabag is so wonderfully messy, funny, and deeply human that these seemingly chaotic collisions feel natural.

What FXX has bet on isn't the usual cheery, good-time sitcom. It's a show that unleashes the dark heart of the romantic comedy.

Fosse/Verdon can never quite escape its deteriorating orbit, plunging closer and closer to the black hole that is its central subject, because it knows, deep down, how essential he is to American art. That could have tanked the whole project. And yet ... it doesn’t. Because, deep down, this is a fantastic show about a marriage.

Yes, all of this has been done before. But at every turn, Price’s writerly flourishes give The Night Of’s characters more depth than the usual stock figures. The result is surprisingly invigorating.

All that time spent on extreme exposition pays off in a flashier, more entertaining, tighter second chapter. Season one of Umbrella Academy set the board, and season two plays the game. There’s a lot more zapping and superpower-ing in season two, which should appease comic book fans who want to see superheroes do that kind of thing. But it also swings for something way more emotionally resonant.

A compliment, even if it might not sound like one: Deadwood: The Movie feels like the best TV episode of 1997. ... There is so much here that will be rich and meaningful to any TV fan, and its story is self-contained enough that you could use it as an entry point to the entire series. (That is, if you don’t mind being spoiled on several major events from all three seasons, which are depicted in flashbacks.)

Everything that was always good about Game of Thrones is still good. The ensemble cast remains one of TV's richest, from top to bottom, and even actors who seemed weak in the past (like Sophie Turner, who plays increasingly embittered Sansa Stark) continue to rise to the level of much better material.

It's a sprawling small-town saga that, nonetheless, feels lived-in and intimate. And even as it succumbs to some of true crime's greatest faults, it's always less interested in the gruesomeness of the crime than in the impossibility of finding the truth, something that serves it well. This is grim television, but it's also necessary television.

Its tropes are well-worn, and its narrative doesn’t go anywhere unexpected. And yet all these elements miraculously coalesce into a show that is still tremendously emotionally affecting. Ultimately, Homecoming has too many strengths — and is a story too strikingly told--for its flaws to find real purchase.

It’s impeccably acted, written, and directed, and no matter how ridiculous “a series about the 1970s porn industry with two James Francos” might sound to you, this is somehow not just the best possible execution of that idea, but the most thoughtful one, too. It’s the best show of the fall, by a wide, wide margin.

Appleby and Zimmer's chemistry isn't just electric, but acidic, burning through the camera lens so fast you almost forget their characters are doing truly terrible things in the name of ratings.

There are hundreds of family sitcoms out there, but with empathetic (and very funny) characters at its heart, Speechless is already a standout.

There's nothing revolutionary here, but man, what is here is some of the funniest, most soulful TV of the summer.

UnREAL is a great many things, including a dark satire of reality TV, a satisfyingly comedic soap opera, and the ultra-rare female antihero drama.

This season proves once again that this show’s success is thanks to its incredible visuals just as much as its writing.

Station Eleven takes Mandel’s book and amps up its sense of a cozy post-apocalypse, where humanity comes together, rather than drifting apart. I entered the series deeply skeptical, and I left it feeling at least semi-hopeful for what humanity might yet become, even after the end. ... The alternation between storytelling modes also gives the show a pleasant rhythm once you fall under its spell.

The show stands as a textbook example of how major filmmakers can and should adapt their work for television: by not trying to rewrite the rules of another medium, but by finding a way to make their signature style flow through those rules.

It’s a cliché in TV criticism to say that the real protagonist is the setting, but Corporate flips that idea on its ear: Here, the setting is the antagonist, and every day you can stay alive within it is another day when you might lose yourself completely. I realize that maybe doesn’t sound very funny, but trust me, at a certain point, you laugh because your numbing corporate job has sapped you of the ability to cry.

The series is so full of empathy for its characters, and its actors are so game to dive into any conversation or game, no matter how silly, that One Day at a Time becomes a joy to watch almost immediately.

What makes Atlanta special is the way it adds texture and flavor to a core you already know, and the reason the show is so compulsively watchable is that it perfectly executes that core.

And yet for all its mess, for all its sprawl, for all its shagginess, Transparent remains one of TV’s most vital shows and one of its most artful.

DuVernay’s series offers a different way into the story, one made for an age of true crime obsession — and not only is it compelling, but it’s desperately needed.

Perhaps the most exciting development in Big Little Lies’ second season is that there’s more depth to each of the characters, allowing Witherspoon, Dern, and Kravitz in particular to give even more impressive performances. ... The show appears to be exchanging an all-consuming, incendiary mystery for a tale that’s less mercurial but no less hearty, and it’s still an absolute pleasure to watch.

It's the most unusual new comedy of the year, and it's also one of the best.

The show draws you close physically and emotionally, letting you witness its characters’ most vulnerable moments--the better to help you understand exactly what’s going on in their heads even when they try desperately to keep their thoughts to themselves.