Making the Cut

Entertaining and emotional, escapist and inspirational, Making the Cut is first-rate quarantine TV.

With its global backdrop, imaginative designs, and two of the friendliest faces you’ve ever seen reunited on TV, Making the Cut is exactly the show we need right now.

There is a good deal of flaunting going on, but the designers rise to the occasion. ... We’ve seen these beats before, just not in this swank new setting. It’s comforting and fresh, a zhuzing up of a tried and true formula. The same is true of the judges.

It all feels very lavish. But there’s no escaping the Tim-and-Heidi of it all, and it can be like watching people who claim to get along better now that they’re divorced. ... The show sometimes feels unsure about its own commitments. The best designer and the most lucrative designer are not necessarily the same person. That hasn’t made “Making The Cut” less enjoyable. In fact, the show is a very successful recapitulation of the “Project Runway” theme.

The good news is the fashion competition at the heart of “Making the Cut,” as in “Project Runway,” remains strong. The competitors are mostly serious designers. They’re not gimmicky distractions to be laughed off stage (except maybe one). ... Despite episodes with long-ish running times, “Making the Cut” doesn’t show the judges offering post-runway critiques to every designer, just the top two and bottom two.

For fashion junkies, and for people who find Naomi Campbell's shade as life-giving as chlorophyll, Making the Cut is catnip. Just don't look for anything revolutionary. It sticks to a formula, and that's fine. The formula works for a reason.

Making the Cut and Next in Fashion aren’t exact clones, but their differences from Runway do seem reverse-engineered to avoid too much overlap. ... The show tries to make the most of Tim and Heidi, who couldn’t have come cheap, with silly but inoffensive skits where they visit local tourist destinations.

Mass consumption doesn’t make for the most eye-catching fashion, and it doesn’t even make for particularly engaging reality television. Not that “Making the Cut” isn’t enjoyable enough, if only because its rules and paces are readily digestible to an audience that’s long familiar with the formulas that drive the genre. It’s easy to watch.

Klum and Gunn remain eager guides for a show whose ambition is laudable. But, too often, from its premise to its lost and confusing judging process, “Making the Cut” feels — ironically enough for a show focused on design within reach — inaccessible.