Issa Rae’s very funny, great-looking HBO sitcom Insecure is back for a second season on Sunday night, and it’s even better--more assured and finely detailed--than its excellent first season.

Atlanta continues to be unlike anything else on television.

Depending on the situation, Louis-Dreyfus brings various combinations of excessive zeal, profane rage, piteous desperation, and unwarranted arrogance, all of it never less than beguiling.

This Fargo has a different idea of evil, based on something just as insidious as Malvo: The grinding amorality of capitalism, which demands more profit no matter what the human cost. In the new Fargo, this is placed in a context that is frequently witty, and balanced with scenes of great family love. The large cast is superb.

Moss’s performance is perfect: at once contained and open, withdrawn and bristlingly aware. ... The Handmaid’s Tale can stand on its own as a gripping drama; you don’t need to apply overlays about Trump-era conservatism or, say, parallels to the Duggar family to find its portrait of a women under duress moving.

It’s a completely hypnotic enterprise--a nightmare you are compelled to remain within, to see what happens.

Rare is the movie adaptation that is not just excellent, but which becomes its own radiant achievement. It doesn’t seem too early to bestow that praise upon Bates Motel.

None of these characters is particularly happy or remotely satisfied with his or her station in life, and in a lesser show, they’d be depressing downers. But thanks to the writing of show creator Ray McKinnon, these are people who strike you as folks you know, or whom you may be yourself.

A disarming, completely absorbing piece of work.

When I say The Leftovers is awesome, this is what I mean: It fills me with awe.

Any fears that the departure of series creator Armando Iannucci would result in a diminishment of quality are immediately allayed. New showrunner David Mandel demonstrates a firm command and light touch in keeping the new episodes centered around Louis-Dreyfus and Selina’s bursts of anger, her deflations of despair, and her reactions to both the stupidity and shrewd mendacity of her staff.

One of the most difficult things a sitcom can do is to monkey with its basic premise, scattering characters here and there, while retaining its quality (and its audience). This usually happens with shows whose casts are aging--when a series set during high school must graduate its class to college, for example--and the results are frequently dire, or at the least, second-rate. Not so with Veep.

If Legion can maintain the balance of thriller-tautness and hallucinatory chaos that is done so well in the show’s opening hours, this will truly be a unique and superb superhero series.

The footage here is truly extraordinary and gorgeous, and, for the most part, artfully edited.

Superbly edited and paced, Made in America is one of the best rise-and-fall sagas you’ll ever see on TV.

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.

To write out episode-themes like this makes Catastrophe sound potentially dreary about marriage equality and parental strain. Trust me, it’s the exact opposite: so exhilarating, so gaspingly funny, you’ll burn through the episodes as fast as you can.

One of the smartest, most charming and funny shows you’re likely to see all year is Catastrophe.

This so-called “limited series” takes the facts of the Simpson case and, by bending and shaping the emphases of those facts, turns it into a startlingly stirring critique of racism, sexism, and the judicial system that still resonates today. To be sure, the series also contains its share of laughs and excess.

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

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

A marvelously acted piece. If the subject matter sounds grim, it is, but the production is exciting: well-acted, suspenseful, and moving.

Season 5 doesn’t feel like more of the same; it feels like a Game of Thrones played at a new, more intense level.

UnREAL is as hard-boiled and adventuresome as any male-dominated, gritty, “dark” premium-cable show you’d care to throw an Emmy at. The performances by Zimmer and Appleby are amazingly nuanced and layered, especially for a show whose gimmick, Everlasting, insists upon the superficiality of women’s images of themselves.

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.

The whole production is a beautiful machine, with strong supporting performances.

The cast here is exceptional.... There are times when the pace of Show Me A Hero becomes predictably metronomic.

As always, however, the pleasures of Fargo derive from the variety of the characters and the clever wordplay they indulge in. ... Coon and Hawley quickly establish the distinctiveness of Gloria’s character: she’s not as polite as Allison Tolman’s Deputy Molly Solverson in season one, nor as tight-lipped serene as Patrick Wilson’s Trooper Lou Solverson in season two.

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.

I’m happy to report that this cartoon created by Genndy Tartakovsky is as exciting, beautiful, and multilayered as it ever was.

Better Things gets better--truer and deeper--when Sam is taken by surprise (as when her ex-husband shows up unexpectedly for dinner, or when a pet dies) or when she’s jolted out of her self-absorption by a parental obligation that yields a small revelation for her. Adlon is very good at depicting Sam in mid-mixed-emotions.

The series hits the ground running, letting the viewer fill in the narrative gaps. In other words, Empire is that rare nighttime soap opera that credits its audience with understanding without a lot of tiresome explanation, and whose purpose is to entertain, to surprise, and to confuse.

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.

Atlanta, the new half-hour FX series from Donald Glover (Community), is satisfying and exciting on every level.

Back for a third season, Catastrophe continues to be one of the most incisive and funny portraits of a marriage on television. Or streaming services.

Morgan and director-producer Stephen Daldry make the show engrossing both as history and as a drama about family ties.

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.

Wolf Hall makes for wonderful television in part by resisting the current trends in wonderful television.... It’s every bit as good as Downton Abbey, and when it comes to moody shrewdness, Wolf has it all over Mad Men.

A completely engrossing murder mystery, courtroom drama, and family saga.

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.”

The pace is deliberate, and there aren’t the kind of laughs that other dramas employ as comic relief. But there’s real wit and propulsiveness in the storytelling Ray McKinnon does in this show.

These scenes [flashbacks to Weimar Germany], which feature Michaela Watkins doing the best with a tritely anxious, angry character, are the weakest elements of the new season, at once too pat and too melodramatic. But the show benefits from terrific casting in its supporting roles this season, with great turns by Cherry Jones, Richard Masur, Anjelica Huston, and the poet Eileen Myles.

A tremendously moving documentary.

The stories gain richness when Dev moves outside his comfort zone.... There is no level on which Master Of None does not bring pleasure.

Harron has found an original cinematic language to convey Grace’s memories, a dream-like narrative propulsion that carries us along. ... Levi is Alias Grace’s only false note: he seems to have walked right off the set of Chuck without adjusting for the time-period here. Sarah Gadon’s performance is transfixing.

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

Insecure is a show with great confidence--Rae immediately sweeps you up and carries you along on her journey of false starts, little triumphs, and big disappointments.

The new Roots excels in the naturalism of its performances to make the horror of slavery vividly painful--and the resistance to it uplifting--in a way that deepens the tale.

A delightful surprise, Great News immediately becomes one of network television’s best sitcoms.

[Elizabeth is] coming to terms with her own strict upbringing, her longing for her homeland, and her profoundly ambivalent feelings about American permissiveness on the one hand, and the strict discipline of turning her own daughter over to become a tool of the Soviet state. These are the elements that come together in the fine new season of The Americans, giving it more emotional power than ever.

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

Jessica Jones proves, as its hours proceed, to be one of the more thoughtful meditations on what it means to be a super-hero, and how Stan Lee’s “great responsibility” mantra can prove to be a deadly curse.

The precision of the details--the way Broad City lets you think it’s meandering while remaining laser-focused on the timing of the gags and hitting a hilarious crescendo--is a wonder to behold.

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.

Quarry is a startlingly good, absorbing new show to sink down into, deeply.

The Americans does an awfully good job of juggling its numerous subplots.... If there’s a weak spot in the series, it’s that the subplot involving Nina (Annet Mahendru), the Russian KGB agent now in a Soviet prison, seems increasingly extraneous to the show.

Back and as impressively irritating as ever.

Girls is (at this point almost surprisingly) good.

For the most part, this is the Playing House you’ve either come to love or ought to be catching up with as soon as possible.

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.

You’re the Worst proved to be one of the most amusing and unusual sitcoms to premiere last season, and Wednesday night’s second-season premiere lives up to its promise.

The Good Place is very well written, full of good jokes about bees and clowns and clam chowder. But it’s got another layer: it’s also about power dynamics and morality systems--how they shift and mutate depending on how people interact.

The main subplots of Bosch gather power as they proceed.

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.

Sir resembles the Shakespeare character he’s playing, and that’s the chief flaw in Harwood’s play--a too-easy irony. But Harwood makes up for it with the crackling dialogue that pushes The Dresser along at a terrific pace.

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.

I’ve watched four episodes, and every one of them is hugely entertaining and frequently surprising.

World has some terrific set pieces, such as the duo’s sloppy robbery of a gas station, and some dull patches, such as a meeting with Alyssa’s father late in the series that almost drags the story to a halt. But overall, James and Alyssa are ultimately two people we care about, and Lawther and Barden give exceptional, subtle performances.

Every time the show switches to an Oleg moment--watching him trudge through dirty slush to the gloomy home of his parents--I find my mind wandering. More invigorating is the season’s further development of Paige as a possible future spy.

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.

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

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

C.K. doesn’t even seem to be placing much value on eliciting guffaws during the stand-up segments that used to give his show a jolly lift at the beginning and end of each half-hour. Interestingly, over the course of the first four episodes I’ve seen, the warmest vibes emanate from Pamela.

This season of Archer has a great look: this cartoon version of film noir features richly dark blues, greens, and black, and the pacing has the hypnotic pull of a dream turning into a nightmare. Of course, this being Archer, it’s also loaded with lots of double- and single-entendres, and energetic vulgarity.

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.

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.

This is the kind of show that’s not going to make the big pop-culture impact of the series that precedes it--Girls--but it’s a worthy dispenser of pleasure.

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.

Corden did a terrific job of showcasing all his talents, including singing a ballad at the end of this first night. He’s well on his way to being a nightly crowd-pleaser whom you may be talking about the next day.

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.

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.

Most of the time, Girls remains impressive.

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.

The achievement of The Returned is that it creates its frights chiefly from an atmosphere of the quietly uncanny. Indeed, the show is at its best when it’s impossible to tell who is more dead: the returned population, or the living whose souls have expired from despair.

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.

I didn’t laugh very frequently watching Lady Dynamite, but I was never less than absorbed by it.

There are subplots about Plum’s job in a Brooklyn coffee shop and a police detective investigating the militant group’s crimes that, two episodes in, don’t seem particularly promising. But Nash’s performance is awfully good, and Margulies manages to bring her own stamp to a role that seems inspired by Meryl Streep’s in The Devil Wears Prada.

Julie and Billy are enthusiastically mean, sarcastic, and lovable--all at once.

As it is, writer-showrunner David Hollander has certainly crafted, last season and this one, an absorbing melodrama, aided a great deal by directors including John Dahl, who does terrific work in the second and third episodes.

The latest version of The Tick is very enjoyable; it’s smart and visually imaginative.

Too Funny to Fail succeeds in being funny about failure.

It’s frequently witty, vulgarly funny, sexy, and suspenseful. It makes you want to see its next scene the instant a new episode ends.

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.

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

George, Luhrmann, and the show’s many collaborators have given us a grand, sometimes overwrought, precise show that captures a specific time in pop history better than it’s ever been shown on television.

The pastoral nostalgia that this TV-movie taps into is powerful, if maudlin, stuff. This is the time of year when sentimentality can be a warming thing, and Parton’s Coat will keep an awful lot of people warm this winter.

The return of Will & Grace on Thursday after an absence of 11 years is pretty much a success. If you liked it before, you’ll probably be pleased with the new episodes, which are well-executed and excellently performed.

The degree to which you can be moved and involved by American Crime depends on the degree to which the importance of its message and the fine performances of its stars outweigh the show’s often crushing heaviness.