Big Mouth Is Still Going Through ChangesBoth the series and its eighth-grade protagonists display a growing sense of self-awareness in a season that aims to hold itself to higher standards.
The Crown Has Finally Gotten to the Good StuffThe fascinating trio of Elizabeth (Olivia Colman), Thatcher (Gillian Anderson), and Diana (Emma Corrin) make the series’ fourth season its best yet.
The Queen’s Gambit Makes Chess Kind of SexyThe Netflix limited series starring Anya Taylor-Joy serves up satisfying chess action, and chases it with a painful addiction story.
Thank God Social Distance Is SadNetflix’s new coronavirus anthology series doesn’t offer any answers, but unlike so much COVID-era entertainment, it does offer honesty.
The Right Stuff Has the Halfway Decent StuffDisney+ and Nat Geo’s glossy new series is a traditionally presented space drama that chips away at our traditional notions about the space program.
Emily in Paris Is Going to Seduce YouYou will binge Darren Star’s latest in an entire evening, and any shame you feel about that will disappear when you binge it again.
Fargo Disappears Into Its Own NavelEvery season of Noah Hawley’s crime anthology series is a veritable monologuefest, but season four seems especially top-heavy.
ByMatt Zoller Seitz
tv review
The 2020 Emmys ParadoxNormalcy was invited to this year’s Emmys, but its plus-one was a pervasive sense of abnormality.
PEN15 Goes Deeper in Season 2Maya Erskine’s and Anna Konkle’s adolescent alter egos are still hilarious, but this time around they’re also going to break your heart.
Away Is on a Low-Key Mission to MarsHilary Swank and Josh Charles lead this new Netflix drama, in which the stakes are low and the threat of space schmaltz is high.
At the DNC, Nostalgia Went Backward and ForwardThe four-night virtual political event sought to take us, in the words of Don Draper, “back home again to a place where we know we are loved.”
Hoops Is a @#%ing MissThe Netflix animated comedy starring Jake Johnson as a disgruntled coach hits the same note over and over, and that note is “gleeful profanity.”
ByJen Chaney
tv review
Ted Lasso Fails Upward, CheerfullyAn improbably pleasant continuation of a 2013 marketing gimmick, the new Apple TV+ series nonetheless feels like a time warp to the recent past.
Little Voice Wears Its Heart on Its SleeveThe new Apple TV+ series, featuring original songs by Sara Bareilles, is achingly, sometimes cloyingly earnest, but also inviting in its own way.
ByJen Chaney
tv review
Kingdom Feels Like a Nightmare of NowThe South Korean zombie series is set in the 16th century and was filmed in 2017, but seems to be riffing on headlines from five minutes ago.
