Nick, Ronald and Izzy--she’s the real brains behind GenCoin, although she’s poor and working out of her parents’ garage--are a highly unlikely collaborative trio. I didn’t buy their unity for a second.

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.

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

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.

Falk and company--they really go for it, whatever “it” it is they intend.

Even the third episode, which is loaded with a lot of backstory origin material about Quinlan’s past, doesn’t get bogged down. When it’s good, The Strain moves as quickly as those long, creepy tongues that burst out of the strigoi’s mouths to suck your blood.

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.

Halt and Catch Fire doesn’t seem to trust that the viewer will know what it’s talking about.

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.

If I rarely find Horseman more than mildly amusing, I certainly recognize the careful craft behind it, as well as the excellent vocal performances by regulars including Amy Sedaris, Alison Brie, Paul F. Thompkins, and Aaron Paul.

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 stakes in this show are very low; so is the humor, sometimes delightfully so.

Mr. Robot and creator Esmail have earned this quirky, almost mild and studious, way to commence the second season; for fans, trust in the show has been established.

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.

The exhilarating thing about Difficult People is that it consists of aggressive insult humor that’s rooted in a friendship that’s all heart.

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.

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

The problem with the series isn’t the casting or its philosophical underpinnings, though--its chief flaw remains one of pacing. Long scenes of dialogue and debate become wearisome.

Marcella starts off well, but pretty soon its pace is impeded by a number of subplots and the abrupt introductions of characters whose role in the overall plot is either unclear or irrelevant. The series has a familiar enough cop-show structure, so if you like Friel’s performance, you’ll be carried pretty far along into the season.

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

SDRR places itself in the awkward position of having created--when you fold in John Corbett’s Flash--some likable characters (well, maybe not Johnny, but that’s the way Leary likes it; he’s a preening antihero to the end) who remain in search of the right vehicle to take them to another level of excellence.

After watching a mere two episodes, I felt as though I’d squandered an entire summer watching Dead of Summer, a supernatural/horror/YA drama/soap opera, which starts moldering on Freeform Tuesday night.

One reason the new Match Game was so much fun was that it remained essentially true to the original.

I like Donovan best when it’s more of a crime show, but I’ll take this version for the intermittent rewards it yields regularly.

It’s better than Vinyl--Crowe has a better, fresher idea in following the earnest people behind the scenes rather than the exploited stars and venal executives. But it still doesn’t feel like a satisfying hit.

His interview style is an effective one--opinionated without being overbearing, with just enough smugness to give some of his questions a provocative edge.

The show sells us on the idea that pretty, wide-smiling Teresa can become a capable, even vicious, defender of her own hide when threatened, and that Queen of the South might be able to tell a familiar story in a fresh way. The first hour has been beautifully directed by Charlotte Sieling, with lots of lulling silences between action scenes, creating an atmosphere in which anything--any deal, any conversation, any room--can explode at any moment.