Ten Shows Our Critics Have Recently Reviewed

The New Yorker’s television critic, Inkoo Kang, seemed pretty pessimistic the last time we spoke. It was December, and she’d just released her list of the top TV shows of 2025. Kang told me that she thought that it had probably been the worst year for television in all her time working as a critic.

Fast-forward three months. We still don’t know whether this year will mark an improvement, or whether TV’s golden age is over for good. But Kang, and the rest of the critics at The New Yorker, have been busy taking in new releases, chronicling the surprising hits and the absolute misses. To help you figure out what to watch this weekend (and what not to watch), here are ten shows our critics have recently reviewed. (And let’s hope that, by the year’s end, Kang is feeling a little less despairing about the future of the small screen.)

“Vladimir”
Netflix

An adaptation of the saucy novel by Julia May Jonas premièred this week, starring Rachel Weisz as an English professor who crushes hard—perhaps to a dangerous degree—on a young colleague in her department, played by Leo Woodall. The show starts off slow, but then “proves strangely compelling,” Inkoo Kang writes. Read the review »

“Chris Fleming: Live at the Palace”
HBO

In a comedy special released last week, the thirty-nine-year-old comedian prances around the stage in a purple jumpsuit and sparkly red shoes, riffing on millennial-friendly topics such as Lin-Manuel Miranda and Fleet Foxes. What sets Fleming’s comedy apart, Rachel Syme writes, is “the oddball physicality that he brings to his act.” Read the review »

“Industry”
HBO

This week marked the Season 4 finale of the intense drama about young London bankers. “Industry,” Kang writes, “crackles with anything-can-happen energy,” even when delivering what may be its most conventional season yet. Read the review »

(And, if you’re already caught up, read Kang on Sunday night’s shocking finale.)

“The Pitt”
HBO

This past Sunday, the cast of “The Pitt” won an Actor Award for Best Ensemble, for Season 1; Season 2 wraps up next week. Dhruv Khullar, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a practicing physician, notes that the series not only accurately captures the intensity of an E.R. but the reality of the health-care system over all—with all its dysfunction, even as medical workers try their best to function within it. Read the review »

“Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette”
FX

The latest project from Ryan Murphy, of “Glee” and “Nip/Tuck” fame, is a forgettable elegy for Gen X, in Doreen St. Félix’s opinion. It relies on a “Wikipedia-page-like narrowness on the doomed romance,” she writes. “One can’t subsist on the restaging of fights in the park alone!” Read the review »

“The Beauty”
FX

Speaking of not-so-great Ryan Murphy efforts: “The Beauty,” which stars Ashton Kutcher as the C.E.O. of a company that sells a medical treatment that can make a person unbelievably attractive, is a hot mess—“pastiche held together by proud vulgarity and a sadistic streak,” Kang writes. Read the review »

“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”
HBO

The latest “Game of Thrones” spinoff is basically “a gentle buddy dramedy,” Sarah Larson writes. Set a century before the original series, it follows an aspiring knight named Dunk and his squire, a young bald child named Egg. Read the review »

“Vanderpump Rules”
Bravo

In its twelfth season, the reality series is starting from scratch, including an almost entirely new cast (the previous players having weathered the cheating uproar known as Scandoval). Naomi Fry says that this iteration brings with it a fresh sense of authenticity and vulnerability. Read the review »

“How to Get to Heaven from Belfast”
Netflix

This murder mystery, from the creator of “Derry Girls,” focusses on a group of thirtysomethings that, long ago, “did something one dark night in the woods.” The show offers a “bleakly funny portrait of middle-aged friendship,” Anna Russell writes. Read the review »

“Riot Women”
BBC, now available in America on BritBox

This British drama has a heartwarming premise: “a bunch of broads, mostly at or near retirement age, start a band.” Kang praises the show’s finely observed characters and the savvy way it connects the women’s stories to broader societal failures. She found the show irresistible. Read the review »

Coming later this spring: a second season of “Beef,” a third season of “Euphoria,” and a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Read about these, and the other shows that Kang is looking forward to, in our spring preview.