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

Atlanta continues to be unlike anything else on television.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Every one of the three episodes made available for review hums along at a swift pace, dropping revelations right and left--no political pun intended.

[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.

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.

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.

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

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

Ansari clearly wants to explore a wider bandwidth of emotion in the new season of Master of None. His far-reaching efforts to achieve this are admirable, if not always effective.

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

Back and as impressively irritating as ever.

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

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

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.

Valley turns into the story of a young company fighting for a soul its founders never realized it had. As a result, it gives Silicon Valley a bigger heart than it’s ever had before.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.