How Does The Gentlemen Do It?A terrible movie becomes a surprisingly entertaining TV series thanks to its handling of Guy Ritchie’s favorite tropes.
ByRoxana Hadadi
tv review
Elsbeth Knows What to DoThe Kings’ Good Wife and Good Fight spinoff sets Carrie Preston’s character loose on NYC to remind us that procedural drama can still be fizzy fun.
Constellation Is a Mother of a Space StoryMove over, sad space dad. Noomi Rapace’s space mom is here to challenge assumptions about the galactic void as a place for self-discovery.
Masters of the Air Skims the SurfaceApple TV+’s WWII miniseries soars when it’s in flight but gets weighed down attempting to cover too much narrative ground.
ByNicholas Quah
tv review
True Detective Crawls Back From the VoidAlmost ten years after a tracking-shot episode set an impossible standard, the HBO show is reinventing itself for the better.
ByRoxana Hadadi
tv review
You Need to Watch All of EchoThe first Marvel series of the year is also the first one that can be binged right out of the gate. That’s a good thing.
Fargo Sees What the World Is Coming ToBy setting its new season in the waning days of 2019, the crime-thriller anthology series jars itself, and us, out of complacency.
The Curse Damns ItselfNathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s Showtime series will plunge you into doom-filled unease. Then it gets stuck there.
ByKathryn VanArendonk
tv review
Good Sex Can’t Save Fellow TravelersThe Showtime limited series spends too little time with its messy, fascinating characters and far too much time on Gay U.S. History 101.
ByJackson McHenry
close read
The Beckham BentFisher Stevens’s doc never questions the footballer’s choices. With its subject serving as executive producer, how could it?
ByNicholas Quah
tv review
Lessons in Chemistry Is Maddeningly InertApple TV+’s handsome adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’s best-selling novel is carefully considered and completely uninterested in challenging its audience.
ByJen Chaney
tv review
Mike Flanagan Brings the House DownWith The Fall of the House of Usher, the horror auteur slams the door on his Netflix era with giddy, gory delight.
ByRoxana Hadadi
finales
Wheel of Time Found Its GrooveIn its second season, Amazon’s other epic fantasy series figured out what kind of show it wants to be.
Telemarketers Calls It Like It Sees ItThe scrappy, compulsively watchable series upends a corrupt industry — and what we expect from documentaries in the first place.
ByRoxana Hadadi
tv review
Painkiller Wants This to HurtNetflix’s righteously angry opioid-epidemic miniseries refuses to humanize its villains.
Twisted Metal Runs on EmptyPeacock’s adaptation of the car-combat video-game series says “yes” to guns, wisecracks, and shit that looks dope, and “no” to thinking too hard.
ByKathryn VanArendonk
merkin at work
Minx Unleashes a Tantalizing PairNow on Starz, the erotica-mag workplace comedy gets a fluff from two standout secondary performances.
Last Call Sees What Most True Crime MissesLoving yet full of palpable fury, HBO’s docuseries will make you deeply sad, then even sadder that more true-crime stories aren’t told this way.
Siren Goes OffNetflix’s brutal new K-reality competition elevates strategic gameplay to an art form.
ByNicholas Quah
endings
Succession Made You Decide“Who will win?” is a question as appealing and empty as Tom and Shiv’s apartment. The much harder one has always been “What kind of show is this?”
Universes Collide in American Born ChineseThere’s a tender, vibrant coming-of-age story in Disney+’s new series, if you can find it beneath all the tiresome celestial conflict.