Apple TV+

"How Did We Become These People?" is, like the previous episode of Your Friends & Neighbors, something of a slow chapter.

Based on everything we’ve seen from The Studio thus far, it was hard to imagine that even its ending would give Matt a break. And all throughout...

Murderbot is a comedy, first and foremost, and one of its key jokes is how little murder is in it, given the title.

On the one hand, Episode 7 of Your Friends & Neighbors contains by far the most significant developments yet, with the long arm of the law finally catching Coop by the scruff of his neck.

The fact that Las Vegas is nicknamed “Sin City” should probably be a clue that hosting anything important there is a bad idea, especially if that important thing needs a lot of egoists to sell it.

If we're being frank, Your Friends & Neighbors hasn't been an especially contemplative show, which is perhaps why Episode 6 is such a standout installment.

It has taken Your Friends & Neighbors five weeks to circle back to the brutal crime scene it began with, but Episode 5 finally gets us there with a little more context.

The Studio is a show about Hollywood that clearly enjoys an impressive amount of access to its stars and executives, but it has rarely felt quite as insider-y as it does in Episode 8, aptly titled “The Golden Globes”.

Is the Kool-Aid Man a Black dude? This is the question at the core of The Studio Episode 7, and it's a funny one to ask, since it raises the impossibly circuitous minefield of contemporary identity politics.

All good criminals need a partner in crime, and it looks like Coop has found his in Episode 4 of Your Friends and Neighbors. But having an accomplice doesn’t seem to be doing him any favours.

I didn’t like Episode 6 of The Studio as much as I’ve liked some of the others.

If you can’t eat the rich, you might as well steal from them. This is the point that Your Friends & Neighbors is making, more or less.

With every episode of The Studio, it finds a new way to impress. In the two-part premiere it was a very funny ensemble piece and then a tight, isolated riff on the microcosmic art of the oner.

The White Lotus has only just wrapped up its third season, and yet it’s back in all but name on Apple TV+ in the form of Your Friends & Neighbors, Episode 1 & 2 of which debuted together to give a good sense of all the key ingredients.

Surface has had a very strange trajectory in Season 2, hasn’t it? It started out feeling very inert, then it gradually whipped up some steam...

There's simply no reason for The Studio to be this good. If it were just a satire on the movie industry, it'd be funny and fine, and nobody would be upset about that.

Finally! Just like that, a meandering Season 2 of Surface starts to feel a lot more like a proper thriller with Episode 7, and it’s about time.

I was a little mixed on the two-part premiere of The Studio. You can’t blame me, though. Those were two very different episodes, with the first feeling scatty and overstuffed and the second feeling a bit too insular.