With all the true crime stories on TV these days, it's not surprising that we'd end up with two shows about Watergate coming out in the space of a year. But HBO's "White House Plumbers" definitely suffers from being pretty similar to "Gaslit," which aired on Starz last year, but not better. The main difference between the two series is that "Gaslit" centered on John and Martha Mitchell, who are barely present or not at all in "White House Plumbers," respectively (hilariously, the latter's John Mitchell is played by John Carroll Lynch, who played someone else in "Gaslit"). But it's still a lot of the same story with the same people depicted with the same lightly comic tone, and in both shows Nixon is only shown briefly on television screens (the real Nixon, not an actor). "Plumbers" is perfectly fine, though, if the other show hadn't aired first I wouldn't be thinking about how much better Shea Wigham was as G. Gordon Liddy than Justin Theroux's Liddy. And I'm always happy to see Toby Huss in anything. 

I thought Cronenberg's Dead Ringers was a pretty good movie, with a great Jeremy Irons performance, but I'm really finding this series version starring Rachel Weisz a lot more impressive. Changing the gender of the main characters takes the story a little further away from its real life inspiration, and it feels like very much its own thing with sharper dialogue and a lot of plot points and characters that were not in the movie at all. Showrunner Alice Birch, who's written for "Succession," brings a bit more contemporary social satire edge to it, and I really love Jennifer Ehle's performance. 

A few years ago in "Castle Rock," Lizzy Caplan played Annie Wilkes, the role that won Kathy Bates an Oscar, and now she's revisiting another iconic Oscar-nominated role as an obsessive and unhinged woman, Glenn Close's Alex Forrest from Fatal Attraction. I like seeing Caplan really get to show her range in a role where she turns from charming and funny to intense and sinister, but Fatal Attraction has not aged especially well as a story and this version feels a little unnecessary, especially with Joshua Jackson's dull, whiny performance. And this reboot is eerily similar to last year's "American Gigolo" reboot -- they moved the original events from the '80s to the mid-2000s, with the main character going to prison for 15 years and getting out in the present day. Toby Huss pops up saying folksy things like "later, tater," though, that instantly makes the show better. 

The Netflix miniseries "Obsession" is in some ways more of a hackneyed old-fashioned "erotic thriller" than the "Fatal Attraction" series, I just hated it. The female lead is very beautiful, a white British woman hilariously named Charlie Murphy. But the storyline, where she as an affair with her fiance's father, is just so gross, and the sex scenes all feel kind of absurd and clinically unsexy, these intense, athletic scenes where they're screwing on a hardwood floor or standing up against a wall, it just lends a ridiculous edge to the somber melodrama. 

I really enjoy "The Diplomat," a smartly written series about a newly appointed US ambassador to the UK who's being groomed to replace the Vice President, good mix of personal and political storylines. I feel like "The West Wing" is pretty uncool now and creator Deborah Cahn was one of the people who wrote for it in those underwhelming post-Sorkin seasons, so that's a strike against "The Diplomat" for some people, but I think it's great and sort of its own thing within the same genre, one of the best performances of Keri Russell's career and all of her scenes with Ato Essandoh are so much fun to watch. 

Pete Davidson's unique vibe -- looks like a 19-year-old snowboarder, sounds like a Catskills comic who's been chainsmoking for 50 years -- has charmed and fascinated several of the most famous women in the world as well as comedy kingmakers like Lorne Michaels and Judd Apatow. But if you've ever seen Davidson's standup, you know he's not really funny at all without a team of writers working very hard on his behalf, and his autobiographical series "Bupkis" feels a lot more broad and crude than his fairly enjoyable autobiographical film vehicle, "The King Of Staten Island." "Bupkis" wants to be "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and makes tongue-in-cheek references to "Entourage," but it's much closer to "Entourage" than "Curb," if anything it's sub-"Californication." 

The first episode of "Rabbit Hole" and the whole world of corporate espionage it revealed was pretty intriguing, but I've lost interest in it with each subsequent episode. And Kiefer Sutherland's increasingly stiff, puffy face is kind of hard to watch, did he way overdo it with Botox or something? I like Meta Golding, though, I hope she ends up in a better show after this. 

"Tiny Beautiful Things" is from the same production company as "Big Little Lies" and "Little Fires Everywhere" so I feel like everyone is kind of groaning at all these repetitive tiny little 3-word titles. "Tiny Beautiful Things" is pretty good, though, Kathryn Hahn is always fun to watch and I like the premise of the true story of someone becoming a successful advice columnist at a time when their life was a total mess. 

In "The Last Thing He Told Me," Jennifer Garner plays a woman whose husband disappears under mysterious circumstances -- I feel like they could have leaned into the Affleck/Garner meta aspect and called it "Gone Guy." It's an interesting story but I don't tink Garner has the acting chops for something like this, it just feels like she just frowns and looks concerned through the whole thing without ever bringing the character to life. The actress who plays her stepdaughter, Angourie Rice, is good, though. 

A very odd sort of British 'comedy/thriller' that opens with kind of a grisly death and the main character harboring a dark secret, interesting show, but I haven't caught up with all the episodes yet. 

This kind of light crime drama on Netflix reminds me of another show about a disgraced cop who moves to Florida that nobody else remembers, the early 2010s A&E series "The Glades." It's probably better than "The Glades," though, or at least has a better cast. 

"Barry" has always been a pretty dark comedy by any standard, but by the end of the third season I have to admit that I wondered if they'd painted themselves into a corner with how bleak things had gotten and felt a little relieved to hear that season 4 would be the last. And if you told me the final season involved a time jump several years into the future, a pretty trendy way for shows to end in the last decade, I would've rolled my eyes. But the show has really regained my attention lately. The time jump completely works, Bill Hader has directed every episode this year and man, his first feature is going to be amazing. He's operating on a Coen brothers level in terms of how well he puts together scenes, builds tension, upends expectations, and spikes the dramatic moments with comedy and vice versa. Barry's arc is so awful, but even the characters that have given the show its silliest moments like Hank, Gene, and Sally have all been put through completely brutal transformations. Sarah Goldberg in particular has just put together an amazing, fearless performance over the course of the series. 

As "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" goes into its 5th and final season, they're finally allowing some flash fowards that confirm that Midge becomes the big successful star the show has always primed you to expect she would be. And that's kind of boring, but I still enjoy watching these characters patter and bicker with each other. And I've really appreciated the addition of Chris Eigeman to the ensemble, it was depressing to realize this and his appearance on the last season of "Billions" are his only screen roles in the past 5 years, that guy deserves a comeback. 

Ever since "Ted Lasso" debuted, Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence have been pretty consistent about their plan to tell a story in 3 seasons and then end it. But once the show became a massive hit, people started to assume they wouldn't be able to resist milking it, and Sudeikis has remained coy about whether this is the last season, whether there'll be a spinoff, etc. The first season was by far the best, so I wouldn't be totally heartbroken if it ends, but I have enjoyed this season, probably more than the second. The Amsterdam episode in particular was great, probably a top 3 episode for the series, I've enjoyed how these hourlong episodes have allowed the whole ensemble to shine, and giving Trent Crimm a larger role was definitely deserved. 

The first season of "Yellowjackets" was great television, and it feels like there's a little bit of a sophomore slump vibe lurking around the second season. I definitely rolled my eyes pretty hard when a character who died in season 1 appeared to another character as a ghost/hallucination, reminded me of my least favorite parts of "The Leftovers" season 2. Thankfully, that stopped after a couple episodes and this season has started to get better and more interesting, finding out than Van is still alive (played in present day by Lauren Ambrose) was an exciting new twist in the story. 

I like this Freeform show and am glad it returned for a second season, but it feels like they kinda shoehorned Jon Glaser's character back into the story to lean on him for comic relief, feels a little forced and unnecessary to me. 

Adult Swim's "Royal Crackers" is such an ugly, boring animated sitcom that it could be on Comedy Central, a show about a wealthy family that owns a cracker company, lots of stale jokes about rich people with a side of stale jokes about nu-metal. 

This Greek series on Netflix is decent, but the writer/director/creator/star is a 40-something guy playing a character who has an affair with a 19-year-old, it's all a little offputting.  

I kind of like the idea that so many movies and shows about World War II can be made in different countries that focus on that place's role in the war, like this Norwegian miniseries on Netflix about Germany's invasion of Norway. It's pretty good, I was going to say it felt more like a feature, but apparently it was released theatrically in Norway and Netflix just split it into 3 episodes here, which is kind of dumb. 

I've only watched one episode of the second season so far, but it was a good one, Padma Lakshmi went to Puerto Rico and got into how people eating their pasteles with or without ketchup is kind of a microcosm for Puerto Rico's relationship with mainland American culture.