"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" was a pretty good but flawed show, and one of its weirder flaws was making Luke Kirby's depiction of Lenny Bruce into this kindly dreamboat that just felt totally wrong for the real life figure he was playing, even as it was a great and magnetic performance that justifiably got him nominated for an Emmy. So it feels inevitable and overdue that Amy Sherman-Palladino built her next show around Kirby, and it's really just wonderfully entertaining, whipsmart dialogue in English and in French, I like the whole ensemble but Lou de Laage is the standout, she's just so entertainingly chaotic. 

Most Tina Fey shows are absurdly packed with jokes in the style of "30 Rock," so it almost feels like a waste of her talent to do a more measured adult dramedy about people in trouble marriages. But it's got a great cast with Steve Carrell and Colman Domingo and Will Forte, and I kinda like it more when it's going for small character moments than big laughs. I've never seen the Alan Alda movie this is based on, but it was nice to see Alda get a little cameo appearance in this. 

The new Netflix series created by Simon Barry ("Warrior Nun," "Continuum") is a really entertaining little show about a Japanese transfter student at a boarding school who's obsessed with gambling. I feel like this should be a career-making role for Miku Martineau, her manic, mischievous performance really drives the show. 

"Forever" is adapted from a Judy Blume book from the '70s. modernized by "Girlfriends" creator Mara Brock Akil so it's now about two Black teenagers from L.A. in 2018. A period piece about 7 years ago is odd, but I feel like we'll be getting more and more shows about that "just before COVID" period of time in the future. It's a really sweet and involving story about two teens who are both experiencing their first love, but it also has all this complicated social media era stuff running through it as well, and Wood Harris makes a surprisingly great TV dad. 

Jane Austen wrote thousands of letters in her lifetime, and shortly after her death, her sister famously burned most of them. And it's kind of funny that this act to protect the personal life of a beloved author has made people more curious, and now inspired a TV series about Cassandra Austen that speculates upon her motives for burning Jane's letters. As lurid as the impulse behind the show is, though, it at least feels like an empathetic attempt to imagine the inner lives of the Austen sisters, moreso Cassandra than the novelist. 

This Amazon Prime show about college freshmen is very broad and full of cliches, but it's still reasonably charming. Wally Baram has written for shows I love like "Shrinking" and "What We Do In The Shadows" but this is her first major onscreen role and I absolutely adore her. 

This Australian miniseries is based on a novel and takes place, at least in the beginning, during WWII. I'm only one episode in but it seems pretty promising. I realized while watching this that two of the stars are Jacob Elordi, who played Elvis Presley in Priscilla (2022), and Olivia DeJonge, who played Priscilla Presley in Elvis (2022). 

Paul Hunter is one of the greatest music video directors of all time, but "Government Cheese" is only his second major longform project after the 2003 action flick Bulletproof Monk. And it really feels like he's having a ball making a very colorful, stylized period piece, with lots of creative framing and angles, I kind of wish more great video directors got let loose on features and series. I'm not really sure where this tale of a burglar/convict-turned inventor is going, but David Oyelowo and Simone Missick are great leads, I'm enjoying watching the story unfold. 

This Freeform miniseries about a kidnapped child is very tense but I'm only one episode in. Nice to see Jim Sturgess and Holliday Grainger, hadn't seen either of them in anything in a minute. 

This Netflix series is based on romance novels about Texas ranchers and feels kind of "Yellowstone"-lite in a good way. Mina Kimes and Marianly Tejada are insanely good-looking, which is important for this kind of show, and Josh Duhamel is better at playing a grizzled rancher than I would've expected. 

I didn't really know who Tom Segura is, but I guess he's a comedian who's more famous for a podcast than his standup, which is never a good sign. And Netflix gave him a show that's probably the worst sketch comedy show I've seen since "Mind of Mencia," just so much empty raunch and blood and feces haphazardly inserted into different premises. It's embarrassing that people like Shea Whigham and Dan Stevens have cameos in this. 

Season 4 was really good, I feel like they've gotten the number of celebrity cameos down to a sane amount after going overboard for a while, and even as an "It's Always Sunny" agnostic I enjoyed the crossover episode. 

This show has started to get a little stale, but they have a pretty strong bench of guest stars and recurring characters, the episodes with Taylor Ortega or Odessa A'zion are always good. 

I'm glad this is slowly becoming more of an ensemble show with more characters and subplots. The monster apocalypse stuff doesn't draw me in as much as the human drama, I don't know if that means the action scenes aren't done well or if I just think the mushroom zombies look stupid. 

I haven't really heard much of anything about the final season of "You" or any finale spoilers, which really shows you how much this show lost the juice. I'm only a few episodes in and it's still pretty entertaining, a plotline with Anna Camp playing twins was such a good idea. But they definitely dragged this thing on for a season or two too long and stretched credulity too much so people lost interest. I'll still finish this at some point to see what happens to Joe, though. 

The second and final season of "Andor" seems to have just intensified the general feeling that it's one of the best things to come out of the entire Star Wars franchise. I'm still a bunch of episodes behind but it's good stuff, it's oddly refreshing to see something with a more realistic adult edge in this world and the cast is great. 

"Ramy" was one of my favorite shows on television, and while I'm happy Ramy Youssef seems to have  a lot of other projects going on, I'm a little bummed that he seems to have ended "Ramy" in part to focus on another autobiographical show, "#1 Happy Family USA," that's animated and a lot more broad and snarky. It's funny, but often in that provocative 'ain't I a stinker' "South Park" was that I find annoying. 

Pretty good Argentine sci-fi show, one of the rare foreign language shows on Netflix that seems to have gotten a big following in America. 

This Apple TV+ series about one of the first celebrity chefs in 19th century France is one of the horniest shows I've ever seen, it's great. 

Armie Hammer's ex-wife is the host of this HBO Max true crime series about toxic relationships, and man, that first episode is just terrifying, I don't know if I could handle watching another one if they're all this intense. 

A fun Netflix doc about the Triple Crown, unsurprisingly there are a lot of big personalities and interesting stories in this world.