Nandini Balial

Unfortunately, “Not Suitable for Work,” like creator Mindy Kaling’s previous sitcom offerings, offers too many cliches to result in anything other than mediocrity.

Though its narrative is hampered by a shorter run (season two only has six episodes versus season one’s 10) and a surprisingly sanitized Fred Armisen as a crime boss, the series is funnier than ever.

Often, the monologues feel better suited to a play than they do to television. But the density and layered nature of the writing win the day. “Half Man” makes one thing abundantly clear: Everyone else churning out scripts for TV is a writer. Richard Gadd is a bloody artist.

The audience has to manage at least four different, weakly written subplots over the course of eight episodes, and the stories are shot to serve the action set-pieces, rather than the other way round. It does not help that the lead actors have not yet honed their talents well enough to expand the meager material, causing their performances to feel like impressions of the characters rather than fully realized portrayals.

Almost every element of “The Museum of Innocence,” from the acting, background score, tone, and direction, is so saccharine and melodramatic that it makes the average tear-jerker Hindi film look restrained in comparison. And worst of all, the melodrama appears to empathize with, if not fully rationalize, the actions of the world’s most self-absorbed nincompoop.

The latest attempt to adapt the Queen of Crime’s work is a dismal failure: There’s no regard for Christie’s prose, no idea who the series’ audience is meant to be, and no goal except to further increase Netflix’s intellectual property resources.

Forget Paramount+, this is a series barely fit for the Lifetime Network.

Danes and Rhys do a bang-up job, no doubt, of bringing two incredibly damaged people to life in very different ways. But the series could have taken more risks in blurring the lines between good and evil; after all, few of us are all good or all bad all the time. ‘Tis a mere quibble; this November, set aside your second screens and your laundry basket to give thanks for this artistic bounty.

There is an overriding chipper tone to the writing thanks to Lear’s momentous sitcom background, which doesn’t fit the subject. .... An oversimplification of what military life was and is actually like for queer service members, despite the creators’ best intentions.

FX’s “The Lowdown” proves that in addition to being a master storyteller, Harjo is just as skilled at assembling an equally dynamite cast and crew who, together, have delivered one of 2025’s best new series.