Veep

Veep is incomparable in comedy. Along with fellow regular Emmy-nominee "Louie," the HBO comedy has crafted a style so unique the series itself is entirely its own beast.

There also aren’t many words left to describe why Veep keeps working as well it does.

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.

Veep starts with four episodes as perfectly conceived and executed as ever.

The Emmy-winning show is still as funny as ever, if not moreso, but it also merits our attention for the care with which it is managing a long run on television.

The series reserves its most blistering humor for the universal narcissism on display, always distracting from the real work at hand. For all the brilliant, tossed-off insults and uniformly excellent performances, including Patton Oswalt as a "hands-on" aide to the vice president, the season's through line is its treatment of politics as a con artist's medium.

The dialogue is, as always, ribald and inspired. [10 Apr 2015, p.59]

Louis-Dreyfus is her usual Swiss-watch self, so confident that she seems to glide through her scenes.

Almost everyone speaks in the same rat-a-tat voice, which, as some discovered with Aaron Sorkin on “The Newsroom,” can begin to yield diminishing returns. The series also remains a bit too precious in sidestepping issues of partisanship, a conceit that has grown somewhat more tolerable over time. For all that, the Emmy-winning Louis-Dreyfus remains an inordinately gifted comedic actress.