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Sebastian Maniscalco’s latest stand-up special, filmed at the United Center in Chicago, feels like an artist out of sync with the world he’s performing in. For a comic who once thrived on observational precision—mocking modern quirks and social absurdities with sharp hits—IT AIN’T RIGHT instead comes across as a relic from an earlier era of stand-up. The polish is there, the energy is undeniable, but the content feels more like a time capsule from the 2000s than a reflection of 2025.

Some older television physical media releases feel like nostalgia pieces; others feel like a long-overdue act of preservation. ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: THE LEGACY COLLECTION is firmly in the second category. This enormous 34-disc set doesn’t simply gather random episodes—it restores a landmark in television history. It reminds viewers just how ahead of the curve Hitchcock was in shaping the anthology format. In all my years since creating Overly Honest Reviews, I’ve covered countless restorations from boutique labels, but few releases arrive with this level of scale and cultural weight. This isn’t an accessory to Hitchcock’s filmography; it’s a foundational pillar that helped define suspense storytelling on television, and this box set treats it that way.

From the opening gunshot echoing across the Aegean, THE ASSASSIN makes one thing clear — this isn’t your standard spy thriller. Keeley Hawes stars as Julie, a retired contract killer trying to live quietly on a sun-drenched Greek island, only for her estranged son Edward (Freddie Highmore) to arrive with questions that crack open her carefully sealed past. What begins as an awkward family reunion quickly unravels into an international chase, testing both their survival skills and their ability to trust each other.

THE MIGHTY NEIN marks the next step for Critical Role’s expanding universe. Following the success of THE LEGEND OF VOX MACHINA, this animated adaptation of the tabletop campaign dives headfirst into darker, stranger, and more emotionally complex territory. Where VOX MACHINA leaned on boisterous energy and humor, THE MIGHTY NEIN sharpens its focus on fractured characters and the messy “humanity” behind their heroics. The result is an eight-episode first season that balances adventure, absurdity, and anguish in equal measure.

Season Eight of RICK AND MORTY proves that even interdimensional brilliance can hit a bit of a snag (relative to its norms). The show’s identity is so deeply ingrained in pop culture that its latest chapter feels almost self-aware of its own longevity. Every explosion, philosophical quip, and dissection of family dysfunction feels polished but routine, as though the creators are revisiting once-revolutionary ideas that now function more as comfort food than daring innovation.

Prime Video clearly wants to broaden the entry points into Gotham, and BAT-FAM embraces that idea with both arms and a batarang. Carrying forward the energy of the holiday special MERRY LITTLE BATMAN, the series shifts into a more episodic rhythm — family first, crime-fighting second, and comedy leading the charge. It’s a tonal departure from the brooding Batman mythos most fans know, but that’s the point: this isn’t a story about The Dark Knight lurking in the shadows. It’s about a father trying to make breakfast while supervillains lurk outside — often at the same time.

DOWN CEMETERY ROAD is like a lingering echo — soft, deliberate, and full of buried truths that refuse to stay hidden. Apple TV+ continues its fascination with morally complex thrillers by adapting Mick Herron’s debut novel, turning the sleepy streets of Oxford into a stage for obsession, guilt, and reckoning. It’s something slower and heavier — a meditation disguised as a mystery.

In BROADWAY BOOKS: THE TIPPING POINT, writer-director Carianne King transforms the crumbling foundations of retail culture into the setting for one of the most self-aware and quietly hilarious pilots of the year. Set in a Manhattan bookstore caught between gentrification and extinction, it captures that unmistakable New York energy where hope and futility share the same shelf. It’s a series born from the trenches of part-time jobs, artistic compromise, and that singular mix of intellectual pride and exhaustion familiar to anyone who’s ever spent a paycheck on coffee and a book instead of rent.

ANNE RICE’S TALAMASCA: THE SECRET ORDER shows up with an unusual mission: to expand Rice’s Immortal Universe beyond its familiar bloodlines and covens, into the minds of those who’ve spent centuries watching from the shadows. It’s part gothic mystery, part supernatural espionage thriller — and against all odds, it mostly works. This six-episode series finds a balance between character-driven tension and world-expanding spectacle, creating something that feels both familiar and new around every corner.

DEVIL IN DISGUISE: JOHN WAYNE GACY makes an early promise—it’s not here to mythologize a murderer. It’s here to look at the people left behind, the ones who refused to stop asking questions. Instead of another “monster study,” the series reframes the story through victims’ families, determined investigators, and a city that failed to see what was in plain sight. It’s a patient, unsensationalized retelling that trades spectacle for consequence, and in doing so, finds a rare kind of power: empathy without indulgence. (There’s still plenty of Gacy for the diehards out there, and I would argue this was one of the most chilling portrayals put to screen.)

There’s a reason the Peanuts holiday specials burrow so deeply into memory: they treat childhood with the seriousness it deserves. Underneath Snoopy’s doghouse theatrics and Lucy’s sarcasm is a worldview that accepts disappointment and still chooses kindness. PEANUTS: 75TH ANNIVERSARY ULTIMATE TV SPECIALS COLLECTION captures that tone across forty remastered TV specials, wrapping decades of televised memories into a single set. It’s less a “product” than a trip on nostalgia—the kind of release that restores a family tradition.

SOLAR OPPOSITES: SEASON 6 arrives knowing it’s the end, and that shapes everything from the opening jokes to the final note. Stripping the family of its diamond-making machine is the right constraint for a show that’s often delighted in wild gadgetry—by putting the brakes on unlimited sci-fi spending, the season forces Terry, Korvo, Jesse, and Yumyulack to face who they are without instant fixes. It’s a clever narrative throttle: when you can’t buy your way out of a mess, you either adapt or implode. Across ten episodes, the series' final season leans into that mandate with tighter episodes, meaner in the best way, and surprisingly reflective without losing the show’s signature energy.

The story is simple, but the execution walks a tightrope: MURDAUGH: DEATH IN THE FAMILY dramatizes a well-documented tragedy without pretending the audience is coming in cold. That changes how suspense functions. Instead of asking what happened, the show keeps asking why and how—how influence hardens into impunity, how denial becomes a survival tactic, how a community can be both complicit and wounded by the same story. Grounding those questions is a character-forward approach that turns headlines into a lived-in world.

ROBOT CHICKEN has always been a sugar-rush of stop-motion mayhem—blink and an entire sketch can go off the rails. Collected as a complete-series set, the show’s two decades crystallize into a collection of pop-culture obsessions: toys, comics, late-night TV, forgotten cereal mascots, video-game NPCs, and every blockbuster myth we’ve collectively carried around since childhood. The stop-motion craft, the tactile charm of roughed up action figures, the caffeinated timing—none of it should age well, and yet it does, because the core is specificity. The jokes don’t just reference the satire; they reconstruct tiny universes with the zeal of kids on a bedroom floor at 2 a.m., then torch them for a punchline.

FAMILY GUY may be past its 25th birthday, but this Halloween special proves the Griffins can still make mischief feel fresh. A show that’s never shied away from blending parody with musical theater, FAMILY GUY doubles down on that formula in its new Halloween one-off, A LITTLE FRIGHT MUSIC. Debuting exclusively on Hulu, the special serves as a mission statement for the series' enduring appeal: irreverence delivered with precision, bolstered by a willingness to skewer both pop culture and suburban mundanity. For a series now past its 25th anniversary, the decision to anchor a holiday special in original music is both a nod to its history and a reminder that the show can still surprise.

MAIGRET opens with a promise: a character defined by patience and empathy dropped into a present-day Paris that rarely slows down. That recalibrating is the series’ thesis. Rather than treating modernization as a gimmick, it utilizes the contemporary setting to test what actually makes Jules Maigret distinctive—the way he listens, the space he creates for people to reveal themselves, and the stubborn insistence that justice must fit the human contours of a case, not just the letter of the law. The result is a character-driven crime drama that prioritizes quiet moments and builds its momentum through observation rather than shock.

The Walking Dead franchise has built its reputation on balancing the terror of the undead with the moral collapse of the living. DEAD CITY SEASON 2 continues in that tradition, taking the uneasy partnership between Negan and Maggie and placing it under even greater strain. Returning to the ruins of Manhattan, the season escalates the war for survival with new enemies, fractured alliances, and a cityscape that feels more dangerous than ever.

Buster Keaton’s name is synonymous with silent comedy; his stoic expression and inventive stunt work have carved a permanent place in cinematic history. Yet by the late 1940s, his career was in decline. The golden era of silent film had ended, his star had faded, and his appearances were reduced to stage tours, occasional shorts, and guest roles. Then television arrived. For Keaton, the new medium offered something he thought he might never have again: a showcase for his own comedy. THE BUSTER KEATON SHOW, airing from 1949 into early 1950, gave him that chance. Though the series itself was short-lived, it remains an intriguing artifact of both television’s infancy and Keaton’s resilience as a performer.

Two identities. One sideline. Zero shame. CHAD POWERS begins with a premise that might have stayed a one-off viral sketch, and instead expands into a multi-episode half-hour series that balances comedy, sports satire, and a surprisingly earnest look at second chances. Eight years after a career-ending mistake, quarterback Russ Holliday reinvents himself as “Chad Powers,” a swaggering (albeit awkward) walk-on at South Georgia, a team desperate enough to embrace anyone who looks like a savior.

THE LAST OF US: SEASON 2 tightens its focus. Five years after the first season’s finale, the show returns with a run of seven episodes and a story that refuses to flinch. If the initial outing centered on the hope between two survivors, this chapter is about what it costs to protect a lie—and what revenge demands when that lie collapses. The season makes hard, sometimes polarizing choices, but it also finds a dark, somber clarity about grief, loyalty, and the way violence echoes long after the trigger’s pulled.

Some stories feel too far-fetched to be real, but COCAINE QUARTERBACK: SIGNAL-CALLER FOR THE CARTEL proves that truth can be more over the top than fiction. This three-part Prime Video documentary traces the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of Owen Hanson, a Southern California native whose trajectory from walk-on football player at USC to international drug trafficker reads like a cautionary parable about ambition, ego, and temptation.

I had heard about this series for years, but this was my first time diving in, so, of course, I had to binge it all! The return trip to Mike White’s luxury pressure cooker trades cabanas for kombucha, repositioning the show’s signature social X-ray inside a Thai wellness resort that promises transcendence while serving the same old human mess. Season 3 doesn’t try to reinvent the series so much as refine its favorite maneuver: assemble combustible personalities, apply the slightest pressure, and watch entitlement dress itself up as enlightenment. The setting may sell serenity, but the show understands that people who book “transformational experiences” tend to arrive pre-transformed into exactly who they will remain.

Few animated shows have survived as many cancellations, revivals, and resurrections as FUTURAMA. After more than two decades, the series continues to prove that it thrives on unpredictability. Season 13 is a confident continuation of the show’s ability to merge science fiction satire with absurd, although mostly family-friendly comedy. It’s a season that dares to be both silly and smart, sometimes struggling, but still delivering a nostalgic yet fresh experience that feels like exactly what fans signed up for.

The 1980s were a fertile ground for detective shows on television. Yet amid the sea of trench coats and car chases, SPENSER: FOR HIRE distinguished itself with a mix of toughness and refinement. Based on Robert B. Parker’s novels, the series followed private investigator Spenser (Robert Urich), a former cop whose fists were as quick as his wit, and who navigated Boston’s underworld with intelligence, honor, and a surprising dose of introspection.