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THE PAPER doesn't need to become THE OFFICE to be successful, and in season 2 it finally seems to understand that well enough to stop reminding us so often that the connection exists, and the result is a more confident workplace comedy built around people becoming great at the jobs they originally stumbled into.

Twenty-three seasons into a television series, simply continuing to function would qualify as an accomplishment. NCIS: SEASON TWENTY-THREE does considerably more than that. Rather than treating its age as something to hide, the season repeatedly reaches into the show's history, pulls old relationships and unfinished business back into the present, and uses them to remind us why these characters have survived for more than two decades.

When you put Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson together on screen, you don't really need any help convincing anyone they're friends. BROTHERS understands that from the jump and skips the unnecessary effort that you’d normally need to fabricate their connection, and instead asks how much trouble it can cause when their very real relationship gets dropped into a completely fictional mess. To be honest, when I first read the synopsis for the series, I thought it was a typo; I love how layered and meta the idea is.

There may not be another actor working today who can complain as entertainingly as Billy Bob Thornton. Give him bad news, an impossible business problem, an irritating family member, or somebody who doesn't understand the oil industry, and LANDMAN can happily spend several minutes letting Tommy Norris explain exactly why everything is terrible. Thornton somehow makes that entertaining long after the novelty should've worn off, which remains one of the biggest reasons this show works at all.

Back in the day, there was a time when TV didn't need to convince you that every comedy was redefining the format. Sometimes funny people were enough, and PERFECT STRANGERS understood the assignment. Eight seasons and 150 episodes later, the moving pieces behind the show become incredibly easy to recognize. Bronson Pinchot and Mark Linn-Baker remain funny enough together that recognizing why doesn't necessarily stop it from working.

Three seasons into TULSA KING, Dwight Manfredi doesn’t just feel like a New York gangster stranded in Oklahoma. Tulsa belongs to him now, or at least he certainly acts as if it does, and that change gives Season Three a different feeling from the fish-out-of-water comedy that originally made the series so easy to enjoy. Dwight has a business, employees, allies, rivals, family, and enough people expecting a cut of something that his exile has effectively become another criminal kingdom.

Harry Da Souza spends a lot of his time in MOBLAND walking into rooms where everyone else has already made the worst possible decision. Tom Hardy plays him like a man who has accepted that this is his life, calmly surveying whatever disaster the Harrigan family has created and figuring out how many threats, favors, lies, or bodies will be required to make it disappear. This isn’t to be confused with the 2023 John Travolta and Stephen Dorff film MOB LAND (although, yes, this is confusing.)

LAST SEEN has the kind of premise that could become ridiculous almost instantly if that emotional foundation isn't there. Eleven years after Ian Ridley's young daughter Maggie disappeared, the former detective is working as a police dispatcher when a terrified teenage girl calls for help. Ian hears something nobody else can hear with the same certainty.

STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES premiered on September 8, 1966, and 60 years later all 79 episodes return together on Blu-ray in commemorative packaging celebrating the series that started everything. Six decades of STAR TREK TV, movies, characters, conventions, collectibles, and generations of fans can all be traced back to these three seasons. Watching them now, it’s remarkable not only how influential the series became but how entertaining so much of it remains.

By the time CHAD POWERS ended its first season, the disguise had already stopped being the whole joke. Russ Holliday could keep fooling strangers, but the people who actually knew Chad were getting close enough to notice that something didn’t add up. Season 2 picks up that pressure rather than finding six new ways for a wig and prosthetics almost to fall off, and that gives the series a little more substance. Russ is no longer simply trying to get another chance at football. He has built relationships as Chad, enjoyed success as Chad, and discovered that people may actually prefer the person he becomes when he isn’t being Russ.

Lucy Lawless can walk Alexa Crowe into a room full of suspects and make it seem as though she’s already figured out which three people are lying before anyone has finished introducing themselves. Five series into MY LIFE IS MURDER, that confidence has become the show’s greatest advantage. Alexa is smart without constantly needing the scripts to announce it, sarcastic without becoming exhausting, and just difficult enough that the people around her have learned when to push back. Lawless knows this woman completely by now, and Series 5 gets plenty of mileage from watching a performer this comfortable with a character.

Kayce Dutton has always felt more natural when he has a purpose, rather than when he’s tasked with carrying on his family legacy. MARSHALS recognizes that, removing the Yellowstone Ranch from his life and giving Luke Grimes a character who can move forward without being pulled back into the same Dutton family conflicts every episode. The problem is that the new job waiting for Kayce feels much more like a traditional crime drama and is far removed from the world we first met him in.

REACHER: SEASON THREE puts Jack Reacher in an unfamiliar position. Instead of charging directly into trouble, he has to work undercover inside a criminal organization, forcing him to hold back when nearly every instinct tells him to do the opposite. That restriction gives the season a stronger foundation. Reacher remains capable of dismantling almost anyone placed in front of him, but he can’t operate entirely according to instinct. He has to maintain a cover identity, earn the trust of people he intends to expose, and decide when violence will protect the operation rather than satisfy his anger.

ALLEY CATS refusing to turn the animals into adorable little humans (well, for the most part). Gus and his friends scratch, hunt, fight, sleep wherever they can, and approach most living creatures as possible food or competition. They can discuss death, relationships, and the meaning of existence, but those conversations never stop them from behaving like cats.

The third season gave Ted Lasso an ending everyone deserved. Ted returned to his son, Richmond continued without him, and nearly every major character stepped toward a future that no longer required the series to follow along. Bringing everyone back three years later could have exposed the conclusion as a temporary pause inserted before Apple backed another truck of money onto the pitch. The first four episodes of Season 4 understand that concern, and the best decision they make is refusing to pretend it doesn’t exist. Jason Sudeikis thought TED LASSO was done after season three, and it wasn’t until he knew more stories needed to be told.

FUTURAMA no longer has to prove that it can return from cancellation. At this point, resurrection has become part of its production cycle. The harder question is whether another season can justify diving deeper into Fry, Leela, Bender, and the Planet Express crew after they’ve already received several perfectly good endings. Across the first six episodes of Season 14, the answer is an encouraging yes.

Gotham doesn’t become safer when Batman “begins.” It becomes stranger, as ordinary corruption gives way to criminals who understand that a memorable identity can be as powerful as a gun. BATMAN: CAPED CRUSADER enters its second season with the city adapting to its masked vigilante, while Bruce Wayne remains several steps behind everyone else in understanding what Batman is doing to him.

FURIOUS does something unique; it takes anger and puts it under a microscope. Who gets to carry it, who gets punished for showing it, and who learns to turn it into a weapon. That gives this eight-episode drama more of a charge than the usual hunter-and-hunted thriller setup. The series still has crime scenes, bodies, agency friction, and the pull of two women moving toward each other from opposite sides of the law. Underneath all of that, though, FURIOUS is most interested in what happens when justice starts to look too small for the damage being measured. And in the end, the series makes you question everything that came before it in the best way possible.

Hank Hill doesn’t retire so much as relocate his sense of duty from one job to every problem within walking distance. That’s the joke running through KING OF THE HILL: S15, a season that understands Hank was never only a propane salesman. He’s a man who needs a fence, rules, a neighbor doing something wrong, and preferably all four before breakfast. Retirement hasn’t loosened him up. It’s just given him more time to notice everything.

A good Agatha Christie mystery doesn’t need to jump from one idea to the next to feel dangerous. It needs suspicion in the walls, politeness with a pulse beneath it, and enough side-eye to make everyone look guilty for at least a moment. MURDER IS EASY has all the pieces for that kind of story, and sometimes it pulls them all together beautifully. The trouble is that the case itself never becomes as gripping as the world around it.

I came in cold here, which I typically don’t do. I hadn’t watched the first 11 seasons, nor even read about the series. A twelfth season of a mystery show is less a test of surprise than of trust. By this point, audiences know the roads, the faces, the tone, and the mathematical impossibility of one small town producing this many corpses without every resident moving somewhere safer. THE BROKENWOOD MYSTERIES: SERIES 12 understands that and leans into it with the confidence of a show that no longer has to introduce itself.

AUTONOMOUS has the kind of premise that doesn’t need much explanation before the discomfort starts working. A couple gets into a self-driving rideshare cab called a Gomo, only to realize they’re trapped inside with no way out. That’s it. A car, confinement, two people losing control, and the horrible feeling that technology built for convenience has become a moving prison. For a micro-horror series, that simplicity is the hook and the challenge. I would suggest watching this on your phone. You can watch it in a normal web browser, but vertical media definitely feels more at home on a phone.

LUCKY understands that the most dangerous lie isn’t the one you tell someone else. It’s the one you keep telling yourself because your entire life falls apart the second you stop believing it. Anya Taylor-Joy automatically elevates anything she's in; the second she appears on screen, she’s able to carry a scene with her mere presence alone, and this is no exception!

NCIS: TONY & ZIVA carries the weight of unfinished business, and that matters more than the hacking plot, the European locations, or the franchise branding wrapped around it. Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David were never just two characters people liked on NCIS. They became one of those long-running television relationships built from arguments, interruptions, almost-confessions, missed timing, and years of audience patience. Bringing them back together was always going to come with expectations the series couldn’t ignore.

The best reason to watch RIDE OR DIE isn’t the assassin hook, the European chase scenes, or the promise of two movie-star personalities dropped into an action-comedy setup. It’s the simple pleasure of seeing Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham share space as two women whose friendship has enough mileage to make the ridiculous parts feel less disposable. The show has bullets, disguises, criminals, law enforcement, histories, and at least one massive lie sitting between its leads. All of that matters. None of it matters as much as whether Debbie and Judith feel like they could’ve actually survived decades of friendship before the plot started shooting at them.