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.