Alison Herman

The detail “The Season” brings to its portrait of Hong Kong’s quasi-aristocracy complements the comforting predictability of its twisty plot to make an ideal kickoff for summer TV.

Whether they provide surprise and distraction or anchoring ballast, it’s the people who make “House of the Dragon” worth enduring the predetermined devastation. The dragons are just the CGI flying lizards on top.

Perhaps the cast will, given enough time to bond on and off camera, start feeling like people who voluntarily interact and form genuine relationships. Until then, there’s a forced atmosphere to every group hang and date, with an ensemble so large that famous relatives and sprawling floor plans have to substitute for a center of gravity.

If the project of “Interview With the Vampire” was to make these interactions legible for those of us with finite lifespans, “The Vampire Lestat” adds a new weapon to that arsenal, one that lands with all the force of a stake through the heart.

As fuzzy as “Alice and Steve” can feel at its margins, it sees its central characters with all the focused clarity that comes with a certain level of loathing. Like an old friend who’s made a major faux pas, there’s enough tangible history for the audience to look past the flaws.

“Not Suitable for Work” is a bland take on a well-trodden setup. The glimmers of a more biting, memorable take on young people juggling jobs and love in New York City throughout the nine-episode season end up being just that: glimmers.

Broadly relatable, and inventively illustrated. .... “Mating Season” retains enough profanity and playfulness to create a distinct family resemblance with its predecessor, if not deliver a one-to-one subs[t]itute.

Her [Tatiana Maslany's] performance alone can’t fully obscure the gaps that peek through whenever “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” pauses its headlong sprint through the New York underworld long enough to catch its breath.

“DTF St. Louis” isn’t exactly cringe comedy, but it is idiosyncratic enough that I expect some will find the show a tough sell; it certainly took me a few episodes to acclimate to Conrad’s stilted, precisely crafted world. That the performances are all so calibrated to each other’s wavelengths, if not a bewildered viewer’s, is an indication that “DTF St. Louis” is achieving its own goals, however inscrutable they are to an outsider.

These Marshals are here to get the job done with minimal fuss, and so is their namesake show.