In the 2025 episodes, “The Four Seasons” gave us a pretty damning portrayal of life in your fifties—the cast of long-time friends, consisting of three couples who go on regular vacations together, all seemed stuck. Unhappy marriages, poor communication, empty nests, and unfulfilling work/life were everywhere.

This season is still sad, but the show has given its protagonists specific things to be sad about, rather than just a broad moroseness of middle age. Now, they’re mourning the friend, Steve Carell’s Nick, who died at the end of season one. They’re still traumatized by COVID and what living through the pandemic really looked like. And they’re making hard decisions about how they want to spend their remaining years, realizing that life and energy are time-bound.

Part of what they come to appreciate is the role of friendship in their lives. Fey’s Kate and Colman Domingo’s Dannt get a particularly sweet arc on this front, testing and reaffirming their connection. It turns out old friends are really like no other. And their chemistry—as friends, as actors, and as comedians—gives the whole thing lots of weight and laughs (see Fey’s physical comedy sequence in the penultimate episode with Domingo playing the straight man).

Domingo’s partner, Claude (Marco Calvani), finally gets some justice this season, freed from his ditzy characterization in season one. We get to some in his native Italy, oozing confidence and strength in a way immigrant Claude, speaking in a foreign language, just isn’t able to. He’s clearly right in many of his arguments with Danny. And what he brings to their relationship has never been clearer. The evolution is palatable but not overwrought as Calvani hits his comedic and dramatic beats with equal ease.

Unfortunately, Fey’s fictional husband Jack (Will Forte) doesn’t fare so well, stuck in the downer role. Forte does what he can with this sad sack, but the show just keeps hurling more fuel for his depression at him. It’s hard to watch, but even as the couple tries various strategies to pull through, it’s hard to figure out what we should make of Jack’s arc. Sometimes people go through dark times, I guess, and there’s nothing to do but stick around.

Of them all, though, Anne (a mischievous Kerri Kenney-Silver) has the best story. The widow and ex of Carell’s Nick, she starts the season needing to sort her emotions about how she feels both about Ginny (Erika Henningsen), the woman Nick left her for, and, of course, the baby she’s carrying. In response, Anne tries on a variety of different identities, effectively creating her own coming-of-(middle)-age story. She’s free to be whoever she wants now, and her attempts at exploration are hilarious, echoing the fierce young woman she once was and the more experienced widow and mom she is now, even if she gets frustrated about her own lack of “executive functioning.”

In this iteration of “The Four Seasons,” the characters grow in compelling, hilarious ways. Anne gets to share prescient truths of early motherhood in one episode, while making a sexting mistake in another. Danny must face his limitations even as he protests that somehow, the little Italian car he’s attempting to move just doesn’t understand that he’s “good at everything.” And the list goes on.

These juxtapositions make your fifties seem, if not something to aspire to, not something to dread either. We can laugh at the vagaries of getting older without positing that they’re the only thing there is. And getting to do that with Kenney-Silver, Fey, and Domingo is a real joy, delivering on the promise of this series in its second outing. Some things really do get better with age.

Whole season screened for review. Currently streaming on Netflix.

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A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

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By and large, the most interesting “Untold” films have lived up to the meaning of that word. Too often, especially from the third series on, it felt like the producers were sacrificing insight for access, telling stories that had been very, very told. For example, 2023’s “Swamp Kings” about the Florida Gators was so clearly vetted by Urban Meyer’s lawyers that it had all of its potential edge completely sanded away. (This year’s “Jail Blazers” falls victim to a similar sanitizing that drains its possible impact.) Chapters about Brett Favre, Connor Stalions, Victor Conte, and even Hope Solo suffered because they felt so very told.

These are the eight that have avoided that trap, and with two from the most recent series, there’s reason for hope for the future of this Netflix team.

8. “Operation Flagrant Foul” (2022)

David Terry Fine’s unpacking of the story of Tim Donaghy arguably lets its subject off the hook a bit more than it should (and some who know the story well have illuminated what it excludes), but the reason this one justifies inclusion on this list is simple: It feels prescient. As gambling becomes more and more a part of the sports landscape and headlines are made about NBA players getting caught in its net, it’s feeling more and more like Donaghy was the canary in the coal mine. Gambling is too profitable at this point to be eliminated from professional sports; it is undermining the integrity of professional sports more every day. How we reconcile these two things will shape so much of what “Untold” fans love going forward.

7. “Johnny Football” (2023)

Right around here is when “Untold” started to feel a bit too sanitized and “told,” but this chapter from season three features such a captivating subject that his personality overcomes the sense that we’re only getting a specific version of the story. Johnny Manziel was the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy, someone who seemed like a generational player, but off-field behavior and on-field inconsistency ended his career before it began. In “Johnny Football,” Manziel is a fascinating interview subject, someone who is unapologetically himself but also seems increasingly aware that he fumbled the ball.

6. “The Death & Life of Lamar Odom” (2026)

Yes, our esteemed critic Richard Roeper is right that this one ends with kind of an incomplete shrug, ignoring the problems that its subject has continued to battle since filming concluded, but it’s captivating before then in a way that recent chapters of “Untold” have failed to be largely because it actually digs its nails underneath a story that had been so superficially told. Everyone thinks they know the story of Lamar Odom, especially the drug-fueled chapters he wrote while married to Khloe Kardashian, but the titular subject, his ex-wife and even a brothel owner who was there when Odom almost died are surprisingly open about the details of exactly how bad things got when Odom’s addiction overtook everything else in his life.

5. Chess Mates (2026)

The best installment in the “Untold” series since season two is this unforgettable unpacking of the saga of Hans Niemann, an American chess grandmaster accused of cheating by both Chess.com and World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. This is one of those stories that sped through the social sphere when it unfolded in 2022, but enough time has passed that it’s a perfect fit for “Untold.” Niemann, Carlsen, and the Chess.com guys sit down to take the story beyond the anal beads that made headlines, highlighting the larger-than-life personality at the center of this film without really letting him off the hook. Did Hans Niemann cheat? The film argues there’s significant evidence that he did it regularly online, but you’ll have to watch to decide for yourself if he did it at a table. And how.

4. Crimes & Penalties (2021)

It’s time for a run of the first and easily best series of “Untold” films, this one ranking high on the list because it felt like a story that had never been told at all. Outside of the people in its region, who had heard of the United Hockey League team, the Danbury Trashers, before “Untold”? Directed by Chapman and Maclain Way (“Wild Wild Country”), this film is so out there that it’s surprising no one has tried to do a narrative version of it yet. Paul Walter Hauser seems like a good fit for James Galante, a Genovese crime family figure who bought the Danbury Trashers and gave them to his 17-year-old son A.J., who, well, didn’t do a great job.

3. Breaking Point (2021)

Also directed by the Ways, this is arguably the most important episode of “Untold” because it casts a spotlight on an issue in professional sports that often gets swept under the rug: mental health. Mardy Fish was one of the rising stars of tennis in the 2000s before his severe anxiety derailed a career that once seemed more promising than his old friend Andy Roddick. In 2011, Fish was ranked as the best American tennis player in the world. In 2012, his anxiety impacted his play so much that he had a catheter ablation because he felt like his heart was going to burst out of his chest. By 2015, he left tennis entirely. For generations, pro sports haven’t addressed mental illness, depression, or anxiety enough, and Mardy Fish’s courageous interviews in this film helped correct that.  

2. Malice at the Palace (2021)

The first film in the “Untold” series laid the foundation for what this franchise could be by taking a story most sports fans knew in some capacity and digging into the headlines. Anyone old enough to watch TV in 2004 probably heard about the Malice at the Palace, a brawl between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons that spilled into the stands. Director Floyd Russ doesn’t just replay the salacious footage of the unexpected violence; he digs into how it was reported and the impact it had on the people involved. It’s a great documentary, “Untold” or otherwise.

1. The Girlfriend Who Doesn’t Exist (2022)

The same thing that worked about the first episode of “Untold” is at the core of why the premiere of the second series tops this list: A story you think you know told with more insight and new depth that you hadn’t considered. In 2012, everyone was captivated by the story of Manti Te’o’s girlfriend, which turned out to be an elaborate catfishing by someone named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. Catfishing as a concept was such a timely one that how Te’o was fooled became all anyone talked about after Deadspin broke the story, especially given how the death of his imaginary girlfriend had become such a talking point the year before. To this day, there are people who still believe Te’o played a role in the hoax. This film not only corrects so many of the bad headlines, but it also humanizes Te’o in a way that likely helped facilitate his comeback as a current NFL Network analyst.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

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If you’re looking forward to spending more time with the characters in “Nobody Wants This” without worrying whether Joanne (Kristen Bell) will convert or whether Noah (Adam Brody) will love her regardless, I have bad news for you. The will-she-or-won’t-she become Jewish question powers season two, and as in the first season, it’s a stagnant problem that’s not particularly engrossing.

And if you’re hoping for more of that electric connection the two shared in their pre-get-together episodes, I have more bad news for you. There’s nothing quite like that first dinner party or their first kiss in season two of “Nobody Wants This” (the closest we get is a flashback montage). There’s a reason so many love stories are about the initial courtship—it makes for good drama in a way the work of making relationships function just doesn’t.

But the show can carry on without that initial heat, giving us a look into the (mostly) grown-up lives of two beautiful people, while tweaking its formula for the better. This season, there’s less of Joanne asking inane questions about Judaism, like she’s never so much as heard of it before (even though she grew up in Los Angeles, and as we learn this season, had Jewish girls in her circle as a kid). Instead, she’s more immersed in the culture, so we get a more in-depth look at Jewish holidays and rituals like Purim, with less explanation around them.

In the first season, it was clear why Joanne wants to be with Noah—she’s not just tired of dating, but also of having no guiding moral force. He invites her into a more purposeful existence, and she eats it up. Now in season two, we finally get to see some of why he values their relationship so much. Part of it is certainly her freedom; opposites do attract after all. But it’s more than that.

Noah is stuck performing goodness—good manors, adherence to customs, and respectability. In season two, we see how that’s not serving him, how his act misled his past romantic partners, and how it’s now keeping him from dealing with the problems at hand. Joanne, with her lack of shame and lack of the ensuing need to hide or bury emotions, offers Noah a meaningful alternative. And this window into how she helps him grow is a very satisfying aspect of season two.

The show also gives us plenty of Justine Lupe’s Morgan, who continues to crackle on screen, a bolt of chaos and humor. This season, she’s tired of being jealous of Joanne’s relationship, so the taller sister goes and starts her own (with a slyly funny Arian Moayed as Dr. Andy). Their arc is both hilarious and insightful, reminding us that “Nobody Wants This” is at its best when it’s using humor to nudge its wonderfully flawed characters towards growth.

Fans of loser siblings should also rejoice because season two gives Sasha (Timothy Sans giving us heartfelt goof) plenty to do, opposite wife Esther (Jackie Thon, saddled with bangs). He’s just as charming as ever, while Esther moves beyond simply being an impediment to Joanne and Noah’s happiness. She becomes a full person, wrestling with her own problems even as she stays true to the prickly if fiercely loyal woman we met in season one.

The parents also continue to delight. As Sasha and Noah’s mom, Bina (Tovah Feldshuh), is a force of traditional Jewish culture and values. Her costuming is particularly evocative this season, reminding us of her generation’s values. While Joanne and Morgan’s mother, Lynn (Stephanie Faracy), is hardly the family rock, she still delivers beats both comedic and sincere.

Further rounding out the show’s universe, Leighton Meester, Seth Rogen, and Kate Berlant all make strong guest appearances, playing to their strengths.

Such a stacked supporting cast gives Joanne and Noah perhaps a little too much leeway to be boring. Yes, the central couple does some work on their communication and themselves, but they remain largely stuck. The final episode does promise a reset, but so did the finale of season one. Still, I’m hopeful about season three finally delivering what fans of this show have been waiting for.

In terms of plot and purpose, this installment is essentially a placeholder. But hanging out with these two families is still mostly fun, if sometimes a bit frustrating. And as long as you’re tuning in just to be with these people, to perhaps laugh at their escapades, to maybe learn a bit about Judaism if you’re a goy, then you’ll be satisfied. In its second season, “Nobody Wants This” remains a pleasure, if a flawed one, much like the characters it follows. Maybe that’s what it’s going for.

Season two is currently streaming on Netflix.

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There are times in a TV critic’s life when a series to which they are assigned inspires them to write reams of text, sometimes because said series is good, sometimes because it’s bad. Then there is what I like to call critic purgatory, when the series inspires nothing. Neither impressive nor dreadful, the series is adrift in the doldrums of artistry. If they handed out Emmys for dull television, then I am certain “Hostage,” a limited British series now airing on Netflix, would make a clean sweep. 

The bromidic particulars: British Prime Minister Abigail Dalton (Suranne Jones) is dealing with the National Health Service’s critical shortage of cancer drugs when she learns her doctor husband, Alex Anderson (Ashley Thomas), has been kidnapped in French Guyana while working with Doctors Without Borders. The kidnappers issue a demand: either Dalton resigns from her post, or her husband and his colleagues will die. By a strange coincidence, Dalton is attending a summit with French President Vivienne Toussaint (Julie Delpy) on that very day!

Though sympathetic to Dalton’s agony, Madame la Présidente wrangles the situation to her advantage, agreeing to have French forces rescue Anderson in exchange for some eyebrow-raising concessions. But just as the rescue operation is scheduled to begin, Toussaint is blackmailed with a damning video, and she aborts the mission. Both she and Dalton must navigate a deadlock, in which they weigh family, country, and personal ambition against one another. There is plenty more going on, but embargoes prevent me from discussing any of it, because the plot details of a Netflix series must be protected like the details of nuclear treaties, even though it will be on the service by the time you read this review.

Actor Anna Chancellor once said that, unlike, say, Dame Judi Dench, she can’t “turn a piece of poo into a silk purse.” That’s not to say the cast of “Hostage” doesn’t try. There’s a spiky vulnerability in Delpy’s otherwise confident demeanor that could have blossomed into something more interesting, and Jones, too, tries to balance Dalton’s desperation with a steely exterior. It simply does not work because the characters lack the time or room to develop. Lucian Msamati (who gave it his all as Cardinal Adeyemi in “Conclave”) does try to liven up the proceedings as Kofi Adomako, Dalton’s chief adviser, with a certain slithering quality to his body language that could imply either treachery or loyalty. I know Ashley Thomas is capable of more (he had a damn good time playing a steampunk lawyer in “Great Expectations”), but all he gets to do here is rage and cry.

Visually, “Hostage” looks exactly like “Bodyguard” or “The Diplomat,” Netflix’s other series involving powerful women and complex choices. (Sometimes these similarities border on the literal, as Jones and “Bodyguard” lead Keeley Hawes could pass for twins.) The cinematography lacks even the barest hint of flair or style; the dialogue, direction, and editing are equally ordinary. Creator Matt Charman, who penned all five episodes, is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (“Bridge of Spies”), but whatever talent he has is not present here. One wonders why political dramas are afraid to take any formal risks.

It is not a complete wash, however. The only member of the crew who tried to have any fun is costume designer Annie Hardinge. She immediately differentiates Toussaint and Dalton, dressing the former in bold colors and long, ornate earrings, while the latter is dressed in conservative prints and silhouettes and wears small, circular earrings. Skilled directors and writers could use these touches to further bolster the writing, especially when a show like “Hostage” needs so much help to disguise its consistent flaws. In the end, it’s a bland series that, to borrow a phrase from “The Simpsons,” tried nothing and is all out of ideas.

Three out of five episodes screened for review. Now on Netflix.

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The new Netflix laugher “Leanne” is … fine. The Chuck Lorre sitcom stars Leanne Morgan of the Netflix stand-up special, “Leanne Morgan: I’m Every Woman.” Fans of that hour will find many of the same themes and even some of the same jokes in the 16-episode first season, the first eight of which Netflix made available for critics to screen.

If you liked the stand-up, it’s probably because of Morgan’s voice–her unique and utterly relatable takes on aging, marriage, and parenting. That voice is in full effect in “Leanne,” which is why the series works as often as it does.

Being new to Morgan’s work, and not squarely in her demographic, it took me until the end of the second episode to so much as crack a smile. Forty minutes is a long setup, but the show gets better from there, welcoming in even an audience that may find Leanne’s suburban Tennessee foreign. Part of the initial problem is that Leanne and her fictional sister Carol (Kristen Johnston) open the series in full ham mode, making ridiculous faces that aren’t realistic, endearing, or funny. As we get to know them, though, their grimaces become less distracting, just part of the show. It also helps that Leanne escapes the one-note of her jilted housewife character as she starts to explore and even enjoy her newfound freedom.

Once you get on the wavelength of her show, Morgan has a lot of charm and presence. And once we’re through the setup in the initial episodes, the show gets underway with brisk jokes and set pieces, finding humor in things like people in their late 50s getting high.

None of it is cutting-edge, but that’s OK. It has a comforting (even if sometimes foreign) feel to it, and a strong supporting cast bolsters Morgan’s sometimes self-conscious performance. Celia Weston and Blake Clark play her aging parents and invite us to join in on the fun of their kooky and crochety characters. Bringing his signature mix of resignation and mischief, Ryan Stiles plays Leanne’s wayward husband and reverberates at just the right frequency. Jayma Mays plays Leanne’s busybody neighbor (fellow church member and exercise class participant), delivering a somehow grounded and exaggerated performance simultaneously. This trick achieves what Morgan and Johnston attempt from the get-go, but don’t always muster–a character who knows what show she’s in and invites folks to laugh both with and at her.

I also appreciate Annie Gonzalez being there—she plays Leanne’s daughter-in-law, Nora. And while Gonzalez eats whatever material she’s given (and this show is no exception), her character exposes some of the problems with “Leanne.” You see, Nora is the nag, bringing down everyone’s good time by pointing out the problems with football (concussions!), for example, and generally being a party-pooper. It doesn’t matter that she’s right–the show is against her, portraying her husband as hen-pecked and trapped in a move that is both retrograde and unfunny.

Likewise, Morgan makes numerous jokes about her body, both in the sitcom and her stand-up. But while she radiates confidence on stage, undercutting her supposed insecurities, the same is not true in the situational comedy. There, the fictional Leanne is brought low by her worries about her body, and so laughing at them feels not conspiratorial but somewhere between fraught and cruel. In addition, these jokes about aging (and the loss of beauty that accompanies it) feel tired. They’ve been done, and with the We Do Not Care Club making headlines for its capturing of a new cultural zeitgeist, this sitcom had the opportunity to find fresh jokes about menopause. It does not, in keeping with its favoring a traditional broadcast TV sense of humor over taking any chances.

It’s no “Abbott Elementary” or “The Office” or “Rosanne.” I can’t imagine it in any awards conversations. But it’s not trying to. Its goal is comfort TV, and “Leanne” mostly achieves that. Bless its heart.

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