TV Recaps

The Night Manager has spent most of Season 2 trying to redo the events of Season 1, albeit with some key exceptions. One of those exceptions is Teddy, and Episode 5, which is largely a showpiece for actor Diego Calva, shows how valuable that exception is.

It’s always daddy issues, isn’t it? Since The Hunting Party deals with the psychology of killers, it’s kind of unavoidable that parental problems will frequently come to the fore, but the titular Zack Lang, who’s the focus of Season 2, Episode 3, almost feels like he has been assembled from a nutcase bingo card.

Spartacus: House of Ashur, after a week off, returns to the sands of the arena and, of course, provides a mandatory late-game character death to...

The secret to The Pitt – or, more accurately, one of several secrets, but arguably the most important – is realism. Case in point: There’s...

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy comes into its own in Episode 3. Granted, I was among those – apparently few – people who thought the two-part premiere was pretty good, but “Vitus Reflux” is a bit of a step up, since it really embraces the young-adult vibe in a way that both makes sense and feel suitably Trek-y, and also begins fleshing out the individual characters so that they feel like more than just a single race or gimmick.

How many people can you see explode before it starts to get tedious? I do worry that The Beauty might be leaning a little too heavily against this gimmick, since Episode 3, “Beautiful Christopher Cross”, opens in much the same way as the premiere, with a woman getting very thirsty and violent before eventually combusting in the middle of a crowded restaurant.

In Episode 2, “Beautiful Jordan”, The Beauty gives us our first glimpse of the villain of the piece, played by Ashton Kutcher. It also turns into John Wick for a good chunk of the very clipped 25-minute runtime, which is an interesting stylistic choice.

The Beauty might have the most Ryan Murphy opening ever. Here’s a supermodel on the runway, looking great. But also looking a little off-kilter. It’s a believable model performance because it’s Bella Hadid, a casting coup a bit like Kim Kardashian starring in a legal drama.

High Potential is an above-average procedural at the best of times, and that has been evident pretty regularly in Season 2. But only rarely does it come together in quite the way it does in Episode 10, “Grounded”, a really excellent hour that neatly embodies all of the interesting and unique things this show does well.

I’m not sure about “The Other Player”, truth be told. One has to wonder whether Fallout Season 2 really needs an episode like this so late in its run, one that takes a notable present-day pacing hit to better flesh out some wider world-building details.

Just in case you thought Drops of God might have lost a step in the almost three years it has been away, just peep the opening scene of the Season 2 premiere. Name me another show that can deliver such a beautiful-looking sequence with almost no light and sound, and I'll give you a cookie.

If you were worried about Hijack Season 2, and there was reason to be given its relatively tame premiere, then Episode 2, "Control", should hopefully provide a nice corrective.

Tell Me Lies Season 3 is already darker and more thoughtful than previous seasons, but it still works in more or less the same way. It's about awful people doing awful things to each other.

Blimey, where to start? Industry doesn't do episodes like "The Commander and the Grey Lady" very often, since it's usually too firmly rooted in the real world -- albeit the grimmest corners of it -- to indulge in visions and metaphor.

Let's be totally clear here -- despite being set in the same brutal universe, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms really is nothing like Game of Thrones. And that's a good thing!

After three episodes of The Night Manager’s second season gradually morphing back into its first, Episode 4 makes that cycle of renewal feel complete.

I’ve always said that The Hunting Party does a good job of coming up with eerie concepts for its killers, and I’m glad to see this hasn’t diminished in Season 2.

If there’s anything The Pitt consistently makes me think about – and, to be clear, it generally makes me think about a lot of different things, not least “is that a prosthesis?!” – it’s how hospitals are even able to run at all. The intake is never-ending.