Solo Leveling
The weakest hunter in the world gets a game like system that lets him level up without limit, and the power fantasy is executed with total commitment. Sung Jinwoo starts as prey and becomes something the world has never seen,…
Tag what to watch tonight
The Traitors
Reality television’s perfect machine: twenty contestants in a Scottish castle, a few secretly designated as Traitors, and the Faithful trying to vote them out before being murdered one by one. Alan Cumming hosts like a Bond villain in tartan, and…
For All Mankind
The space race never ends in this alternate history where the Soviets land on the moon first and America refuses to lose. Each season jumps a decade: moon bases, Mars, asteroid mining, with the engineers and astronauts aging through it…
Shrinking
A grieving therapist starts breaking every rule and telling his patients exactly what he thinks, and the result is the warmest show on television. Jason Segel, Harrison Ford, and Jessica Williams are a trio with actual chemistry, and the Bill…
The Wheel of Time
Amazon’s adaptation of Robert Jordan’s fourteen novel epic follows Moiraine, an Aes Sedai witch, gathering young villagers who might be the prophesied Dragon Reborn. Rosamund Pike gives it movie star gravity, and the world building is genuinely huge: cities, armies,…
Euphoria
Sam Levinson’s portrait of teenagers navigating addiction, love, and identity is the most visually daring show HBO has aired: makeup as armor, drug sequences as horror, and Zendaya delivering one of the great young performances as Rue, whose relapses the…
Hacks
A legendary Vegas comedian past her prime hires a young writer canceled for a bad joke, and the war between them becomes the best written friendship on television. Jean Smart is operating at a level no one else touches, and…
Barry
A hitman takes an acting class and discovers he wants to be a different person, which is the funniest and darkest premise HBO has aired. Bill Hader and Henry Winger play the contradiction beautifully, a man committing murder while sincerely…
Elsbeth
The Good Wife’s oddball lawyer moves to New York as a consent decree watchdog and starts outthinking NYPD homicide detectives while wearing joyfully deranged outfits. Carrie Preston has been stealing scenes for fifteen years and this is her victory lap:…
Matlock
Kathy Bates as a septuagenarian lawyer who joins a big firm and turns out to be playing a much longer game than anyone suspects. The title is a bait and switch: this is not a reboot, it is a stealth…