“The Diplomat,” the hit Netflix drama starring Keri Russell as a career stateswoman, has an ever-shifting tone that keeps you on your toes. Creator Debora Cahn is an alumnus of “The West Wing” and “Homeland”; sure enough, “The Diplomat” has the latter’s international intrigue and the former’s zippy workplace patter. But there’s also a hint […]

The promotional materials for “Before” describe the Apple TV+ thriller as “atmospheric,” which is a euphemistic way of saying the 10-part season is a lot of vamping for precious little payoff. Even with half-hour episodes, several coming in under the 25-minute mark, this drama still manages to drag, endlessly repeating the same setups and visual […]

“I like laughin’ shows,” Georgie Cooper (Montana Jordan) declares in the opening scene of “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.” “Some shows you can hear people laughin’, and some you can’t. ‘The Wonder Years’ — no one’s laughin’. Is it funny? We’ll never know!” Georgie makes this observation while watching “Frasier,” a bit of ambient exposition that […]

The Apple TV+ dramedy “Shrinking” is — or at least, was — about a therapist, Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel), throwing professional ethics out the window in the wake of his wife’s tragic death. Whatever one thought of how the show portrayed therapy, and plenty were appalled by the idea that doctor-patient boundaries are more annoying […]

No one films the ocean as a proxy for emotional extremes like Alfonso Cuarón. In films like “Children of Men,” “Gravity” and “Roma,” the Mexican director — often in conjunction with Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki — makes roiling waves a metaphor for everything from rebirth to safety to cathartic rebirth. In this respect, the new Apple TV+ […]