It’s a measure of how confident this underrated-in-every-way show has become that it can confidently separate the two lovers and let Danny carry a completely independent subplot with such comic success.

The show works as a comedy, as a satire of the way certain people live now and of the true-crime genre in its search for Chantal. Search Party’s half-hour episodes zip by so quickly, you’ll probably binge on them sometime during the upcoming holiday.

How much you enjoy these Series of Unfortunate Events depends on your appetite for the TV equivalent of consuming bowlsful of meringue--there’s a lot of excessively rich, fluffy, eggy humor here. The show is, over the long haul of near-hour-long episodes, rather too precious and campy for my taste, but I can certainly imagine a large audience for such well-written joking.

It makes a smooth transition to pay cable, one that retains all of the original’s charm and distinctiveness while adding some bigger-name stars into the series’ heady mix.

The new season of The Leftovers is an exhilarating experience in trying to understand that certain fundamental things cannot be understood.

Turns out, Camberbatch and company have done quite well. ... Patrick Melrose gives you the star at his Cumberbatchiest, while also exposing an audience that might otherwise never know them to the superlative St. Aubyn books.

The Judd Apatow-produced comedy-with-drama is even stronger this time around, featuring a great, complex performance by Gillian Jacobs.

TV Flash continues to be the most satisfying of all the broadcast network adaptations of comic-book superheroes.

In a TV world with so many choices, Manhattan is at least worth seeking out, to see if its kind of tense smartness appeals to you.

The Good Fight has been assembled in such a way that you don’t need to have seen so much as one episode of The Good Wife to follow what’s going on. The new chapter in Diane’s life is also a new chapter in the genre of first-rate lawyer shows.

Once I accepted Project Greenlight’s cynical choice, I have to admit the show became immediately transfixing: It’s always fascinating to watch people who dislike each other in stressful workplace situations.

It’s obvious from the four episodes I’ve watched that Brosnahan is giving a superb performance and that Amy Sherman-Palladino knows exactly where she’s going with the stories she and Dan want to tell. ... Gilmore Girls can wait--wait for Mrs. Maisel to burrow its own distinctive blend of comedy, drama, and romance into your heart and mind.

Adlon’s performance is so good, you get--and want--her in nearly every scene, just to see how she’s going to react: to this kid’s temper tantrum, to that rude producer’s snarky comment. It’s a star vehicle that feels like it’s introducing you to an entire family--and an entire universe you want to inhabit.

Speechless, created by Scott Silveri, wants to avoids mawkishness and pity so much, it goes way overboard in the other direction, making the audience feel like the cop who declines to chase after Driver when she’s speeding: he finds her so hostile and obnoxious, he says it’s just not worth confronting her.

In the season premiere, the primary story line involves Nina, as a babysitter, trying to get Elmo and Abby to calm down enough to be put to bed. “You’re too excited,” she says. “You need to do something relaxing.” This is already a better premise for a half-hour show than 98 percent of the frenetic sitcoms on the air.... The Sesame Street touchstones remain in place: There is the letter (“B”) and number (“10”) of the day, for example.

When Brockmire is in the broadcast booth, Azaria’s arias of baseball lore are mesmerizing and witty, but the show also relies too frequently on jokes about Brockmire leaving the microphone open during embarrassing moments.

It’s warm, it’s goodhearted, it sends out positive messages. What it isn’t is funny.

A completely successful attempt to re-position Michael Jackson as a profoundly self-aware artist, as opposed to the freakish and tragic celebrity that he became, Spike Lee’s Michael Jackson’s Journey From Motown To Off The Wall is both thrilling and instructional.

Lightning is distinguished by its instantly distinctive blend of social realism and sense of humor--it is simultaneously the most relevant and the funniest of The CW/DC Comics shows.

There are times when Luke Cage strains at the confinement of the genres it uses, when its superhero, gangster, and crime fiction subplots seem too familiar, too flimsy, to contain all the drama Coker and his writers want to pour into this show.

In the three new episodes I’ve see, the show too often makes the laughs secondary to its progressive messaging.

Most of the time, Girls remains impressive.

For all its cynicism about the elites who run the finances of the country, Mr. Robot is almost genially high-spirited: It excites you to keep following Elliot, Mr. Robot, and their improbable plan of revenge.

Well-acted and ponderously paced, The Haunting of Hill House would have benefited from less straining for the artistic and more of a desire to jolt its viewers.

The show manages to juggle suspense with light moments without spoiling either mood.

Anne with an E both stands apart from the 1985 Anne and connects to it in its openhearted eagerness. McNulty gives an exceptionally deft, nuanced performance that is the equal of any adult performance I’ve seen on television this year. Beautifully shot, and full of marvelous supporting performances, Anne with an E is a fresh version of Anne of Green Gables that newcomers and cult fans can enjoy equally.

There’s not much suspense or any thrill of discovery as we watch Holden and Bill slowly tumble to the patterns in serial-killer methodology. ... That said, Mindhunter is engrossing, and the central performances by Groff and McCallany are highly distinctive and complementary. The whole production has an assurance that’s comforting in the midst of all the unsettling time we spend with depraved law-breakers.

There is so much quick-fire dialogue and subtle physical comedy in Togetherness, the four stars sometimes seem like a full-functioning comedy machine.

A vivid character study, a tense law-firm drama, and an educational deep-dive for any viewer who’d like to learn the ins and outs of what we researchers call “transactional sex.”

Too Funny to Fail succeeds in being funny about failure.

The pilot episode is pretty much a non-stop pleasure, packed with funny scenes and big, billowy musical numbers.

Three seasons in, Kemper’s performance has become remarkably nuanced for such a slapsticky, cartoonish creation, and Kimmy Schmidt herself is starting to look like the indomitable figure that the title’s “unbreakable” was always meant to signify.

The material about being a black American is Tamborine’s gold mine, which is probably why it leads off the special, to get you hooked. To be sure, it’s heavy-duty stuff. ... When he starts to discuss the divorce, the roaring energy of his performance ebbs and slows.

Better Call Saul has its own tone--it's a different, unique creation.

Thankfully, those voice-overs seem fewer this season, the better to concentrate on the show’s action, which is frequently startling and absorbing.

At his best, as is frequently on display here, Harmon knows how to overload a scene with references to everything from dinosaurs to Lawnmower Man, and still keep the action moving.

The Emmy-nominated Archer is one of the most satisfying comedies of any sort, its densely packed jokes contrasting with the airy, assured confidence a show achieves when its characters seem so three-dimensionally real to their audience.

The sad thing--but also the thing that makes this show so compelling--is that the contestants care so much about winning this hideous, spirit-killing show. It’s that paradox that gives UnREAL its true soul.

Sharp Objects turns out to be everything you might have wanted. And also some things you didn’t know you wanted: This eight-part HBO miniseries is a scary thriller, a Southern gothic melodrama, a serial-killer murder mystery, and a dual portrait of motherhood and sisterhood--all of it combined with a sleek ease that rarely lets any effort show.

Two hour-plus stand-up specials premiere on Netflix today, and they’re both very good, one better than the other. ... The Age of Spin is a brilliantly organized concert that’s structured around O.J. Simpson.

The documentary does a good job of filling you in on the Slenderman mythos and how it has spread.

Meyers delivered a carefully crafted monologue that took well-phrased shots at Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Woody Allen, while also making room for Poehler, talking from her seat, to deliver the biggest laughs of the segment with a couple of raucous, mansplaining jabs. ...Sure, some of the chatter was a little bit tedious because of sheer repetition, but it was a higher class of tedium — nobler and more heartfelt, and effective in its fervor and sincerity. Later in the evening, Oprah Winfrey turned her acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award into a stirring talk about race and class and history. It was a world-class speech.

Last Kingdom is imaginative and amusing, and Uhtred makes for a smart, tough, randy central character.

It affirms all the reasons you liked the first Stranger Things, and deepens your knowledge and affection for its storytelling and characters.

Okay, I’ll buy into it for the sake of the wonderful acting being done here. Then too, Jeffrey Reiner’s direction is superb, the rhythm of his framing and the cameras’ points of view underscoring without intruding upon the drama.

It makes for a funny pilot, but the exact quality that made Parks and Recreation such a novel, engrossing series--its exploration of goodness and decency; its rejection of cynicism--is what weighs down The Good Place somewhat. Its punchlines, after a while, seem based on the same set-up: Eleanor bad, Good Place good.

Cranston carries the movie past its occasional biopic clichés and leaves you feeling appropriately ambivalent about Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is super-clever, features a winning performance by The Office’s Ellie Kemper, and moves like a well-oiled joke machine.

There’s a lot of speechifying, some of it is moving and fascinating, some of it sounding like penny-ante Eugene O’Neill. It’s also completely fascinating, and full of really wonderful performances.

Many individual scenes are excellent, but the whole thing, based on the half-season Starz made available for review, doesn’t knit together.

It seems hell-bent on not failing us for one single second.

Funny and suspenseful, Sneaky Pete is an excellent idea for this weekend’s streaming TV viewing.

Beautifully crafted and excellently acted, Casual is well worth checking out, to see if its mood and rhythms fall in sync with yours.

Diana, Our Mother is a very touching and forthright hour spent with the sons and other people who knew Diana.

The season premiere had a lot of table-setting storytelling--at once self-recapping the saga and pointing it toward its future--but it did so with a satisfying forthrightness.

Show creators Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard, and Doug Miro want to tell two parallel tales: The DEA investigation and hunt for Escobar, and Escobar’s point of view in his ever-increasing ambition, power, and ruthlessness. Narcos is superb at delineating the latter: You really get an understanding of how a poor, not especially charismatic man rose from the rabble to become one of the richest, most feared men in the world.... In contrast to this, the efforts of Murphy and Pena to defeat Escobar are, of necessity, more hit-or-miss.

Tucked away on Cinemax and by now almost doggedly proud of both its cult status and its utter unpredictability, Banshee remains a pure pleasure machine, at once vulnerable and sturdy, and determined to go out on its own terms, whatever the hell those may be.

Notaro keeps the show moving along with a lot of low-key funny observations while always allowing for moments of seriousness and even sadness to enter into the mix.

If Daniels, Strong, and showrunner Ilene Chaiken are feeling pressure to maintain the show’s massive-hit status, it doesn’t show in the enjoyably scattered yet propulsive season premiere.

It’s both binge-able yet also easy to consume one bite at a time. How involved you become in the show depends on how much you’re beguiled by Wise’s charming performance and her character’s informative dialogue.

Jacobs has found a way to play that character in such a way that Mickey is endlessly surprising rather than easily irritating. ... Gus has always been just as deeply screwed up as Mickey is. In this final season of the show, there’s a reckoning with his own neurotic behavior, and Rust shows himself fully up to this challenge as an actor. Love also delves more deeply into its supporting cast.

It’s the way third-episode writers Meredith Stiehm and Alex Gansa set up and execute this latest Carrie psychodrama that gives it the import and narrative propulsion that makes it well worth investing in the Mathison Mental Health Project once again.

W/ Bob & David is, pretty much, an of-its-time sketch show following the same format as Mr. Show--one sketch leads into the next, in a funny, often tenuous, manner.

Bosch is a fine piece of TV work, one of the best examples of how to take what works on tightly-formatted network crime shows and supplement it with some of the looser freedoms of pay-cable crime series.

All the acting is equally good, something you can’t say about most ensemble-cast shows. Basically, This Is Us is a well-designed emotion machine that, by the end (for the record, I freely admit I didn’t see the end-twist coming--you might, because you’re smarter than me), had me eager to see how this is all going to shake down in Episode 2.

On Italian television, a second, equally popular season of Gomorrah has aired. Clearly there is meat on these bones that people enjoy picking at. Your appetite for it, however, may vary.

The Defiant Ones works on almost every level: as a primer on the music industry, as gossip, as biography, as a time capsule of the 1980s, the 1990s, and the beginning of the 21st century. Neither Iovine nor Dre is particularly eloquent about their own achievements, but The Defiant Ones does that work for them, excitingly.

As the series progresses, Loudermilk’s sobriety and his pessimistic attitude toward life are tested, making the character more three-dimensional. He and the show named after him start off interesting and get better as they proceed.

Westworld, with its florid dialogue and languid self-seriousness, isn’t as much fun as Twin Peaks was. But it’s also easy to see why Westworld is the much more popular show. It’s tapping in to currents in our culture, our feelings that the world has become a far more confusing place, with power struggles that threaten any possible unity or peace. We can’t saddle up and shoot-’em-up, but we can escape and watch others do it for us on Sunday nights.

If you keep watching, The A Word gathers its own quiet power as a succession of portraits of people under stress (to add to the tension, money is tight for every member of the family) without becoming unbearably morose, thanks to regular bits of dotty British eccentricity and a few comic misunderstandings. The show is at its best, however, when it centers around sweet, solemn little Joe, who’s shutting out the world by singing along to Human League, subconsciously seeking human connection.

While the upcoming season is uneven--there are a few awfully wobbly moments in the saggy middle hours--the series is well on its way to going out in a manner that will have its fans sweetening their cups of tea with salty tears.

[Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner's] collision in this sitcom they’ve created for themselves is a black mushroom cloud that some viewers are going to find too strong to take.... Klausner and Eichner are such intelligent performers in every medium they’ve chosen, you have to root for the success of Difficult People. And I say that while still not entirely convinced that this is the best vehicle for those talents.

The filmmakers grant Durst his humanity, allowing us to see the charm, and occasional flashes of humor, that animate the man when he sometimes emerges from the fog of good fortune. In the two episodes I’ve seen, The Jinx makes good, sparing use of dramatizing some of the moments Durst describes.

The New Edition Story is an exceptionally well-made, fast-paced, warts-and-all biopic.

The Missing is one compelling piece of work, full of what the anguish of having an abducted child does to a family over the years. It’s also a prickly mystery story that occasionally relies on a few too-neat coincidences to pull off its startling conclusion. The performance that ties everything together is Karyo’s.

House of Cards has opted to diminish its central figure to allow others to emerge, even if that is done strategically, in the hope of consolidating his personal power. Whether that’s a winning strategy remains to be seen when all of the episodes are available to be binged.

Your engagement with Narcos is going to depend on how much you can become concerned about Escobar and his fate, how much you can look past the series’ easy melodrama to savor its more subtle and moving moments of political intrigue, and the small, vivid subplots about the Escobar gang’s individual lives.

Things spends too much repetitious time trying to convince us that Mike, Dustin, and Lucas are cute kids, and the show’s sense of foreshadowing when it comes to revealing something that’s supposed to scare the daylights out of us becomes an exercise in tedium.

The Underwoods--usually robots of ambition, subsisting only on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches--engage in sex at a moment that would not inspire lustful feelings in more ordinary folk. It’s touches like this that keep the viewer of House of Cards off-balance, eager to fire up the next episode in the Netflix queue. The third season of House of Cards comes up with some formidable foes for Frank Underwood.

Too much of the show consists of simmering, of waiting for things to happen--kind of like Fear The Walking Dead, come to think of it. Except Preacher is prettier to look at (it’s very well art-directed), and it’s more dry and dusty.

If you’re looking for a winter-time mystery that will show you people even colder than you may be these days, Fortitude is an absorbing one.

F Is For Family is an engaging portrait of a suburban family in the 1970s.

Girls is (at this point almost surprisingly) good.

Ultimately, the sheer pleasure of Godless defeats any reservations you may have about it. Daniels is both hilarious and scary, and he’s clearly having a great time pulling on his scraggly beard as this project’s ultimate villain. And there’s a long, well-staged shootout at the end that is both very-traditional-western and something totally new, because more than half the shooters are women, with guns blazing.

It’s a great-looking show, and one that doles out its drama at a stately pace that is unusual at a time when Shonda Rhimes and Lee Daniels have amped up the pace of family-strife storytelling in shows such as Scandal and Empire.

While we get an origin story, it’s not drawn out, and right from the start, Murdock is fighting crime. The fighting is particularly well-staged.... The dialogue, however, could use some of that snap. The exchanges between Matt, Foggy, and Karen aim for the sort of brisk funniness that was a hallmark of shows these producers have worked on, including Buffy and Angel, but it’s mostly strained stuff. Actually, the purely plot-driven lines are more amusing.

Fresh Off The Boat, when it has flashes of energy and well-written jokes, easily transcends ethnic stereotypes, but it’s these sitcom stereotypes that are the ones the show needs to defeat if it wants to be both long-running and distinctive.

Show creator Julian Fellowes has defeated jaded skepticism again.

The writing as overseen by veteran Roseanne producer Bruce Helford is sharp--the tone is very similar to the 10 years of the original Roseanne you may have watched and enjoyed.

It’s as though this show wants to set up hurdles for itself to overcome. Happily, it does. Much of this is due to Foster, who radiates so much eager energy, you have no trouble buying the premise of the sitcom.

Some of the best aspects of A Year In The Life are the ways the four episodes continue, and deepen, the show’s richest themes.

There’s a lot of melodramatic threatening. There are heated parent-teacher conferences so baldly unbelievable, you’ll have a hard time deciding which side deserves to be disciplined more. Still, the damn thing is irresistible. The performances crackle, and each of the lead women forges her own brand of indelible unhappiness.

It’s got the sunny colors and optimistic energy of The Flash, a bright streak of feminism coursing through its storyline, and charming, star-making performance by Melissa Benoist as Kara Jor-El, aka Kara Danvers, aka Supergirl.

Bloodline is well worth your time.

A rare new sitcom with as much heart and soul as jokes and wackiness, Detroiters is a welcome surprise premiering on Comedy Central Tuesday night.

Thanks to the presence of star Bruce Campbell, original Evil Dead director Sam Raimi and master producer of enjoyable junk Robert Tapert, Ash Vs. Evil Dead is a blood-squirting, wisecracking success as a half-hour TV series.

At its best, the show does a good job of portraying each slave as an individual with his or her own strengths and flaws, while, on the other side, the whites are also placed in the social context of the times.... There are some jarring touches in Underground. One of them is good: the use of contemporary music by artists such as Kanye West to underscore bristling discontent. But another contemporary trope occasionally takes a viewer out of the drama, as when one character or another sometimes uses phrases that no 19th-century person would have uttered.

Michael Strahan has clearly studied his Dick Clark tapes--he’s smooth and relaxing to watch, very good at reminding players of the no-hand-gesture rules and in settling the nerves of any rattled contestant.