Glen Weldon

The great Alan Tudyk gets a role he can sink his sharp pointy alien teeth into on a darkly funny series boasting an ensemble cast of characters with surprisingly nuanced interpersonal histories.

Watching musician/actor John Lurie paint and grumbly pontificate in an unnamed tropical locale is sometimes puzzling, often intriguing and always soothing.

The latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been downsized to fit the television screen — and pay loving, sharply observed homage to TV sitcoms of different eras in the process.

The sequel to 2017's Wonder Woman is bright, entertaining, frequently funny — and overstuffed with villain backstories that crowd out the action.

If you could watch it at home in 2020, it's here — four NPR critics give their picks for the best in streaming or broadcast TV in a year when current events turned the industry upside down.

The story is simple, the themes surprisingly complex, and the hand-drawn animation is stunning in this stylish tale of a young girl yearning for freedom.

Riz Ahmed gives a quiet, intense and profoundly unsentimental performance as a rock drummer who suddenly loses his hearing and stubbornly refuses to accept it.

Linda Holmes and Glen Weldon from NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour talk about their favorite 2020 holiday TV specials.

A great cast and good intentions can't overcome Alan Ball's rushed, thin story about a closeted gay man returning to his South Carolina hometown in 1974.

The new LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special gently satirizes the franchise, but the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special nearly killed it.

The Showtime comedy series about three NASA astronauts-in-training at a mock moonbase in the desert vibrates on its own singular wavelength, but never generates laughs.

Nothing's as it seems in this Amazon series, which (sort of) re-teams Nick Frost and Simon Pegg for a gently funny and sometimes scary tale about a team of paranormal investigators.

Netflix's adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's swooning gothic novel strips it of subtext — and sex — and tacks on a ending that misunderstands the "romance" at its center.

A surfeit of subplots and secondary characters — and a complicated production history — take a minor Marvel occult hero on a journey that turns out to be a dead end.

The follow-up to Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House series may not be as spooky, but it does manage to wrap up its story in a more satisfying manner.

A tech CEO (John Slattery) blows the whistle on his own in A.I., which has gained sentience and set out to destroy the human race in FOX's agreeably cheesy techno-thriller.

Netflix's adaptation of Mart Crowley's 1968 play about a gay birthday party that goes off the rails features hard liquor, sharp tongues and broad types.

It feels like a minor miracle that there are so many high-quality shows coming to the small screen this season. Four NPR critics share their picks to keep you entertained during a challenging year.

The US adaptation of a 2013-14 British series about comic book nerds attempting to save the world from a viral pandemic dials back the humor and cranks up the violence.

This bright and breezy Netflix adaptation of a YA novel finds Millie Bobby Brown starring as the brilliant, fourth-wall-busting little sister of Sherlock Holmes.