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Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticMuch in the vein of “The Girl on the Train” or “The Woman in the Window,” HBO Max’s new limited series “The Girl Before” depicts the aftereffects of trauma taking place within the mind of a troubled woman. Also like those projects, it’s neither as acute as it thinks it is or as fun as viewers may want it to be. This British show — which is adapted by J.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticOn the first day of the Olympic Games, the “Today” show had an unenviable task.The flagship NBC morning show is a key engine for goosing excitement over the Olympics, and its Friday-morning broadcast recapping the just-concluded opening ceremony in Beijing was intended, in part, to boost the Games. But the show’s flagship talent, Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie, were stuck stateside in light of COVID-19, and the happy chatter about athletes’ prospects in the days ahead was balanced with an unusual volume of conversation about geopolitics.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticSPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of “And Just Like That,” which premiered Feb. 3 on HBO Max.In a TV landscape defined of late by its predictability, the “Sex and the City” update “And Just Like That” is utterly strange: It’s a show that in many particulars does not work, and that got off to a terrible start, and yet this viewer awaited each week’s episode drop with increasing zeal and relish.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticPerhaps the most welcome thing about David Letterman’s Tuesday night return to “Late Night” — the NBC franchise he launched as host 40 years ago — was how perfectly low-key it was.Interviewed by the current “Late Night” host Seth Meyers to mark the anniversary, Letterman was fondly nostalgic about his time as a nightly talk-show emcee. After “Late Night,” Letterman went on to launch “The Late Show” on CBS and even today has an occasional interview series on Netflix, but it was “Late Night” that introduced the host’s relentless ingenuity and sparking creativity.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticAmerica is no longer leading on the world stage in one crucial metric.We’ve lost game-show-host supremacy.On “Jeopardy!,” the standard-bearer for American quiz shows, star power has been outsourced to the contestants. And recent long-running champions Amy Schneider and Matt Amodio lent energy that had otherwise been missing. The recent endless cycling through “Jeopardy!” guest hosts having ended in a fiasco and then a compromise has left Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik, dividing the role, adrift.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “You Who Cannot See, Think of Those Who Can,” the Jan. 30 episode of “Euphoria.”At the risk of writing too personally about a show that’s all about personal upheaval, I had wondered whether parenthood might turn me off “Euphoria.”I was an admirer of the show’s first season, which aired in 2019, but after becoming a parent in 2020 I suspected that the show’s depiction of American teenagerhood as a broken-down garden of temptation might not intrigue me as it had once before.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe real crime story at the heart of “Suspicion” is brutal underuse of the show’s biggest star.Uma Thurman is close to the center of the action on Apple TV’s new mystery series. She plays a high-flying businesswoman whose son is kidnapped from a New York hotel.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIn the first two of its four parts, the doc depicts a rising star whose decision to take her career by the reins represented a split from her famous family, through old footage as well as interviews with Jackson closer to the present day. Those interview segments, though, struggle to reveal much about a figure whose poise, and whose commitment to privacy, makes “Janet Jackson” a challenge.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticA comedy mystery should, ideally, be both comic and mysterious.Unfortunately, the new Netflix series “The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window” drops one of its most successful jokes in its title — and doesn’t have much to recommend it as a whodunit, either. A parody of book-club thrillers like “The Girl on the Train” and “The Woman in the Window,” this series stars Kristen Bell as a grieving mother who has descended into substance abuse and who becomes obsessed with a crime she believes she’s seen.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticDeep into W. Kamau Bell’s new four-part documentary, “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” panelists are asked to describe who Bill Cosby is, as if to a person who had never heard of him before. Does one lead with his phenomenal career successes as a comedian and actor? Or the crimes of which he’s been credibly accused — and for which he was convicted in 2018, before that conviction was overturned on a technicality in 2021?It’s a familiar question, one of separating the art from the artist — so familiar, indeed, that Bell literally asking, in voice-over, “Can you separate the art from the artist?” five minutes before the documentary ends feels a little trite.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIn the long tail of Netflix’s “Cheer” comes the CW’s “March” — a documentary series about a group of collegiate athlete-performers in Texas. And this series, set at the historically Black university Prairie View A&M, makes a strong case for itself as a doc filled with heart and spirit, and one with a deep curiosity about what goes into the work of a marching band at every level.As we open, Prairie View’s troupe is licking their wounds after having placed lower on a national ranking of HBCU marching bands — they’re No.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThere’s a scene on HBO’s new series “The Gilded Age” in which Carrie Coon, playing the aspirant socialite Bertha Russell, lectures one of her rivals. Bertha has the money to break into the whirl of New York City life in 1882, but lacks the intangible social class that would allow her to truly fit in.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorVariety has earned its fifth GLAAD Media Award nomination for outstanding magazine overall coverage. The publication won the honor in 2019.This year’s nomination submission included the magazine’s annual Pride issue featuring a cover story on Jazz Jennings written by Caroline Framke, a story about trans actor Josie Totah, also by Caroline Framke, and the Power of Pride List.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticNetflix allows you to control not just what you watch, but how rapidly you do. You can stream their shows 1.25 or 1.5 times more rapidly than their creators meant them to be seen; an hourlong show becomes 45 minutes. (You can also slow Netflix down, should you desire.) It was only in watching the new batch of “Ozark” episodes — the first half of the drama’s last season, with a final set to arrive at a date to be named later — that I understood why someone might use them.That’s not to say that watching “Ozark” is a misery to be sped through: The series, a perennial zeitgeist hit and Emmys presence, is all about delivering pleasure.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticComparisons between “The Silent Sea” — Netflix’s latest Korean-language drama — and this fall’s streaming phenom “Squid Game” extend well beyond their common tongue.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIt can be hard to write critically about “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” For one thing, after 20 years the show is a bit critic-proof. The audience for “Curb”  is locked in at this point; one is on board for the periodic ten-episode journey through well-meaning gripes and grudges, or one is avowedly not.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic“Emily in Paris” has a way of driving viewers crazy.There were groans when the Netflix series’ first season was nominated for best comedy at the Golden Globes and at the Emmys. And it occasioned a widely-circulated New Yorker piece that described it as part of a rising trend of “ambient TV,” describing it as “an artifact of contemporary dystopia.”Sure, nominating “Emily in Paris” as one of the very best shows on TV seems a little overblown.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticHBO is currently airing a superlative show about the serendipity and possibility of life, and the unexpected discoveries that can emerge through conversation and openness.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticMuch like the character at its center, “MacGruber” has a surprising ability to withstand bombs.In the late-aughts series of sketches on “Saturday Night Live,” Will Forte’s character, a riff on MacGyver, would inevitably get caught up in his own neuroses while attempting to dismantle an explosive, resulting in detonation before he came back, unscathed, for the next installment.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticYears into the COVID-19 pandemic, “Station Eleven” suggests we got off easy.Both the 2014 novel by Emily St. John Mandel and its limited-series adaptation on HBO Max tell the story of a viral plague that decimates the world’s population too quickly for any response.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticAna Gasteyer — a shrewd, funny comedian adept at puncturing her characters’ pretensions — has long deserved a showcase.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThis article contains spoilers for the first four episodes of “And Just Like That.”The most striking homage to the legacy of “Sex and the City” in the new series “And Just Like That” lands like a bit of bitter irony, or a joke too caustic by half.“Sex and the City” ended, in 2004, with a montage of its characters having found fulfillment through romance and, crucially, self-acceptance, all set to the 1980s single “You Got the Love.” Two movies complicated but

Variety’s chief TV critics Caroline Framke and Daniel D’Addario considered buzzy new shows (“Squid Game,” “WandaVision”), shows that snuck up on them (“Starstruck,” “Love Life”), and shows that took their final bow (“Shrill,” “Pose”).

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe omnipresence of Olivia Colman has been a truly happy development in recent years.Since her shock Oscar win for “The Favourite” in early 2019, Colman has appeared in films including “The Father” and “The Lost Daughter” and, among several other TV projects, one season of “Fleabag” and two of “The Crown.” And while at times in that latter series she seemed to be withholding her broad-ranging abilities towards the absurd, her willingness to go anywhere for a

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticNBC’s holiday-season live-musical franchise is so proudly square that it’s surprising it took this long for them to get to “Annie.”The recent tradition, launched by the producers Neil Meron and the late Craig Zadan, of ceding a night of network primetime to a scrappy, let’s-put-on-a-show broadcast seems to have found its perfect match in “Annie.” The family-oriented musical has never had the remotest claim on coolness.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticChristmas is big business for TV; the content mill of light romantic comedies set around the holidays and celebrity-driven specials has come to make December feel, at moments, like a forced march of glee.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticIn April, Colton Underwood, a former professional athlete who’d been the lead of the reality franchise “The Bachelor” just two years prior, came out of the closet on “Good Morning America.” When considered in the most forgiving of lights, it seemed in the moment like a positive, potentially helpful thing.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticMany of our greatest comedians have something hard and unrelenting under the surface. The pursuit of laughs can be mercenary; there’s a reason that standups, on a good night, will say that they “killed.”

Kevin Hart, never shy about his ambition, now brings the subtext of a comedy career to the surface.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticEarly in the new season of Netflix’s unscripted series “Selling Sunset,” launching Nov. 24, an employee at a realty firm offers to give a newly hired colleague some advice.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticEven admirers of the movie “Showgirls” can concede that it was not a movie with its star’s best interests in mind.The 1995 box-office bomb was, in its moment, pilloried for its indulgent taste for sleaze; with some distance, it’s possible to see it as director Paul Verhoeven’s lovingly manic embrace of American trash culture.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThere’s something refreshing about the New York John Wilson inhabits. Among other things, it seems as boundless as Wilson’s own curiosity.Wilson, the host and executive producer of HBO’s series “How to With John Wilson,” returning for its second season Nov.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticEarlier this year, The New York Times’ documentary unit had its greatest achievement yet in clarity and impact. “Framing Britney Spears,” the Times’ doc on the pop singer’s figurative captivity within her image and her literal one within her family and legal conservatorship, brought a complex and granular awareness of the issues at play in the story to a mass audience.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticAmazon Prime Video’s new television series “The Wheel of Time,” based on the series of novels by Robert Jordan, draws upon a rich, deep history. Or so this viewer, unfamiliar with Jordan’s work, was left to presume when the show began with Rosamund Pike explaining the backstory and the stakes in rushed voice-over.There’s nothing wrong with voice-over in principle: It can be used well or poorly.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticOn Sunday, “60 Minutes” aired an interview that looked a lot like handing someone a megaphone.Correspondent Scott Pelley aired a profile of the conservative author Andrew Sullivan, one that ran with no clearer time peg than that, as Pelley put it in his introduction, Sullivan is “anxious about the future of the republic.” At some length, Sullivan, who currently publishes his newsletter “The Weekly Dish” via Substack, was allowed to expand upon his thoughts at

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic“Did you ever, when you were a little kid, used to think that maybe you could do something in life that makes you happy?,” Jeremy Renner’s Mike McLusky asks a friend. Mike’s staring into the middle distance and holding a beer.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticSpoiler alert: This column contains light spoilers about the Nov.