While I already loved the core trio from Season 1, they’re even better here, feeling truly like a group of good friends now that they’ve had some time to settle in.
The tension one normally feels reading a King novel is almost entirely absent, with the rest laid on the backs of teenagers who are forced to carry the entire story on their own.
With a leading man you can’t take your eyes off of and an adventure that’ll leave you hovering on the edge of your seat, Nautilus is comfort food at its finest and a classic in the making, one you should force everyone you know to sit down and watch.
There’s little to be said about how much of the series is taken up by a plot that doesn’t quite mesh with its overarching themes of grief and familial love. The series’ real juice comes when it focuses on Hawes as the elder Cassandra.
It's really Ludwig's overall format that does it for me, setting it apart from even some of the best procedurals out there. Framing each murder as a puzzle scratches a particular itch for me.
A Thousand Blows does manage to stand out as a mostly competent period piece in a sea of Bridgertons filled with anachronistic eyeshadow and an unwillingness to commit to the bit.
The one exception to The Pitt's characterization struggles is Taylor Dearden’s Dr. King. .... Unfortunately, Dearden's Long is a light in an otherwise very dark, mostly mind-numbing trudge through fifteen episodes. The Pitt isn’t necessarily a show you want to watch going into the new year — it’s brutal and unkind, with very little going for it in the emergency department.
The Devil's Hour never doubts itself for an instant, and even when it’s hard to keep things straight — which, I won’t lie, happened more than once for me — you’re never in doubt that it knows what it’s doing, that it’ll come to some kind of conclusion that feels right, even if it might not be totally satisfying.
It feels less like a sequel to the original, continuing its ideas in a new format, and more like a cheap remake; change a few names, and it could be a completely different project, with almost no throughline to the original beyond Kira’s name.
Manzoor created a unique voice for the show when it premiered in 2021, and it’s a delight to see that it’s just as loud and proud in Season 2, without any hint of the usual sophomore slump.
