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

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

The Expanse has enough well-wrought plot to keep things moving swiftly without confusing those of us who aren’t hardcore sci-fi fans.

The opening night of this three-part miniseries sets up a standard genre premise: Aliens contact Earth.... These productions [The Expanse and Childhood’s End] suggest there’s now more to Syfy than Sharknado sequels, so that’s encouraging.

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.

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.

Likable but not especially funny.

All in all, there was a lot of talent laboring heroically in The Wiz Live! to enliven material that just didn’t come to life very often.

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.

Padded with kids including an unborn child in medical danger, its corridors filled to capacity with the most attractive doctors this side of an afternoon soap opera, Chicago Med is not a subtle enterprise.

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.

The new AMC show is packed with rigorously choreographed and slicingly edited action scenes, and it builds a mythology that combines elements of Asian martial-arts movies, American Westerns, film noir, horror, biker flicks, and nighttime soap operas.... One big problem with Badlands is its punishingly dour tone, utterly devoid of humor or any fleeting moments of lightness.... I just wish Into The Badlands was more fun.

At one point, a character scribbles "Donny Douche" on a pad for no reason other than, perhaps, an attempt by the producers to forestall some critic from using that phrase in a review.

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

It’s usually the case that television procedurals that start concentrating on the heroes’ private lives make the rest of the show go soft--sentimentality creeps in. So far, thanks to the crisp, dry performances of Noble, Miller, and Liu, Elementary avoids that danger quite nicely.

Mom is back for a third season on Thursday night, and the sitcom has really found its comic groove. Also its tragic groove. Because that’s the way Mom works--its present-day laughs are always threatened by fragile futures and haunted pasts.

The Leisure Class is every bit as pinched and humorless its director.... It’s a piece of predictable hackwork.

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.

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.

[A] sordid enterprise.

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.

For its combination of silliness revved up to a furious pace, The Player is, as I said at the start, watchable--the kind of visual junk food that you find yourself consuming for an hour before you realize 60 minutes have passed.

Truth Be Told, is one of the lamest of the year, making bad jokes about current issues ranging from racially-charged language to whether John Mayer appeals only to white people.

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

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

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.

Iit might sound a bit seen-it-all-before, but it’s what Red Oaks does with this material that makes the series worth watching.