Hey TV watchers! My name is Michel Ghanem, and I’m a freelance television critic and writer based in Vancouver, Canada. Some of you may know me by my Instagram moniker,TV Scholar, where I’ve been sharing the shows I’m watching on social media and in mySubstack newsletterwith a television-loving online community.
I watch approximately 160 seasons of TV a year, and am grateful every day that I get to live and breathe a medium I love so much. I’m thrilled you’re here to embark on this journey with me onTrust Me, I Watch Everything.Every two weeks, I’ll be sharing the shows worth your TV time and how to tune in.
'Tis the season for hard-hitting dramas. I like to remind folks that the Emmy consideration deadline is at the end of May, which is why you might find yourself inundated with new shows this month. Some weekly highlights include HBO’s long-awaited new season ofEuphoriaand AMC’s bet on a new flashy drama withThe Audacity.Over on streaming, Dan Levy and Rachel Sennott have cocreated a very entertaining dark comedy withBig Mistakes, and there’s a new season of theBeefanthology drama.
Finally, if you’re looking for a hidden gem to sink your teeth into, consider AMC’s excellent and underratedHalt and Catch Fire, a drama set in the 1980s about the computer revolution. It is one of my favorites. Otherwise, there’s much more to consider adding to your watchlist below.
⏰ Tune in
My recommendation:Euphoria
Why you should watch it:The return of Sam Levinson’sEuphoriais a bizarre television experiment. In a lot of ways, it’s too big to fail. Zendaya, Jacob Elordi and Sydney Sweeney have been catapulted to award-nominated levels of fame since the early days of this HBO teen drama. It returns four years after its last season, and you might be left wondering …why come back at all?
We catch up with these characters after a significant time jump. We are no longer getting drunk and high at high school parties. Rue (Zendaya) is now in her 20s and facing the consequences of the $10,000 missing suitcase she’s been running from since high school. Her drug dealer, Laurie (Martha Kelly), has come back to collect on it (plus interest) a few years after graduation, which gets Rue involved in drug muling across the southern border.
Meanwhile, her ex-classmates Cassie (Sweeney) and Nate (Elordi) are exploring OnlyFans as a new income stream, Jules (Hunter Schafer) is a sugar baby and Maddy (Alexa Demie) is the agent of an actor who’s starring in a soap that Lexi (Maude Apatow) is working on as an assistant director (under the purview of the director, played by Sharon Stone).
What madeEuphoriastand out in its two seasons, aside from the lewd sex and drugs of it all, was a clear-eyed take on addiction and recovery excavated from Levinson’s own personal experience and written into Rue’s arc. Colman Domingo returns as Rue’s sponsor, Ali, this season, and that continues to be a successful dimension of the show.
Otherwise,Euphoriamight be biting off more than it can chew by trying to spin up the most outrageous plot it can think of in the hopes it might distract from the fact that we didn’treallyneed this to return. Critics were only given the first three of eight episodes, so we’ll have to see how it all shakes out.
How to watch:New episodes ofEuphoriaair Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO andstream on HBO Max.
Watch on HBO Max
My bonus recommendation:The Audacity
Why you should watch it:After being the home ofThe Walking Deadfor the last 15 years, AMC is finally betting on something new and returning to its roots of flashy prestige, with the help ofSuccessionwriter Jonathan Glatzer.
We find ourselves in Silicon Valley and following Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen), a very stressed-out tech company CEO who does ayahuasca casually on a school night when he needs a revelation. He’s not particularly happy, and he’s mulling over the various illegal ways he can get his company’s stock valuation up, but he’s actually sitting on a gold mine: His company, Hypergnosis,is like a nightmare out ofBlack Mirror.
Imagine an algorithm that could spit out the dirtiest details about you based solely on your interaction with the internet. By collating personal and financial information, his company’s program can essentially tell you anything you need to know about a person, down to their sexual proclivities (I should probably be reading terms and agreements more carefully). In the best scene in the pilot, he uses that information to blackmail his therapist, JoAnne Felder (Sarah Goldberg), when she starts questioning his white-collar crimes.
It’s a juicy start to the series, and AMC is invested — they’ve already renewedThe Audacityfor a second season. The problem is, it might take a while to really get invested here: The cast is huge, there is a lot of Silicon Valley nonsense going on and everything feels a bittooglossy. It’s missing some of thatSuccessiongrit. But it has a hook just timely enough to keep me watching while the other pieces fall into place.
How to watch:New episodes ofThe Audacityair Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on AMC andstream simultaneously on AMC+.
Watch on AMC+
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My recommendation:Big Mistakes
Why you should watch it:How does an anxious gay pastor and his sister handle getting accidentally wrapped up in organized crime? Well, there’s only one way to find out. Dan Levy and cocreator Rachel Sennott bring their wit and comedic charm to Netflix’s latest dark comedy, which is a surprising delight — if you can handle the chaotic rollercoaster of burner phones and secrets.
In his first leading TV role sinceSchitt’s Creek, Levy stars as Nicky, a pastor who has to keep his boyfriend hidden away from his more conservative congregation. Taylor Ortega plays his sister, Morgan, who is trying to adjust to life as a public school teacher back home in upstate New York after a failed acting stint.
Things go haywire when their mother, Linda (Laurie Metcalf), asks them to stop by a nearby jewelry store to pick up a cheap necklace for their grandmother, who’s nearing her last breath in hospice. Yusuf (Boran Kuzum), the cranky shopkeeper, refuses to sell a necklace Taylor has her eye on, so she swipes it anyway.
Naturally, the necklace has great value and was being hidden in plain sight. To return it to its scary owners, the sibling duo has to procure it from their dead grandmother’s body, and eventually get blackmailed into other crimes. The thing is … both Nicky and Morgan actually begin to enjoy their new hustle, which gives them the confidence boost they've been craving to live more authentically in their regular lives.
SometimesBig Mistakesdefinitely stretches believability. But part of the fun in watching this show is just the chaos of it all — there is alotof yelling from all involved, and the tasks the siblings are asked to do get progressively more challenging (and thus more dangerous). It wouldn’t be abig mistaketo consider throwing on these quick and fun half-hour episodes.
How to watch:All eight episodes ofBig Mistakesarestreaming on Netflix.
Watch on Netflix
But that’s not all …
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Margo’s Got Money Troubles: An adaptation of Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 bestseller of the same name, this family drama by David E. Kelly stars Elle Fanning as the titular Margo, who’s struggling to make ends meet as a single mother when she considers OnlyFans as a potential revenue stream. Michelle Pfeiffer plays her mother. This is sure to be one of the buzzier series of the spring. — New episodes stream every Wednesday on Apple TV.
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Beef: The first season of this popular anthology drama was critically acclaimed for its wild twists as the story unspooled. It returns for more of that, this time starring Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny as a young couple who witness a violent altercation between another couple (played by Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan) at a country club. — All eight episodes are streaming on Netflix.
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Kevin: An animated comedy series about a cat? Sign me up. Kevin (voiced by Jason Schwartzman) is a house cat who’s ready to make it out into the world on his own when his owners split up. Outside of his cozy apartment, Kevin has to contend with a hostile New York City environment that’s not made for cats and figure out how to build community along the way. Cute! Additional voices are provided by Aubrey Plaza, Amy Sedaris and Whoopi Goldberg, among others. — All eight episodes are streaming on Prime Video.
💎 Hidden gems
My recommendation:Halt and Catch Fire
Why you should watch it:It has been nearly a decade sinceHalt and Catch Fireaired its finale, and it still stands as one of AMC’s most underrated dramas — and a testament to what a show can achieve if given the space and time to do it.
Created by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers, the period drama begins at the computer revolution of the 1980s. The first season revolves largely around Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) and Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy), who both work at Cardiff Electric and try to reverse engineer an IBM PC.
Unfortunately,Haltis an example of a show having a mediocre first season that takes a while to find its footing. You can tell AMC was trying to find a successful follow-up toMad Men, and the show just didn’t quite gel despite strong performances and an intriguing setup.
The second season is an immediate improvement thanks to a slight pivot from a focus on a computer’s hardware to building the next great computer game, and the show pushes a few previously sidelined characters to the forefront: Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis), a punk programming prodigy, and Gordon’s wife, Donna Clark (Kerry Bishé), who launch a gaming company together.
Their friendship, and the connection between the four lead characters, deepens over the course of three seasons, building on conflict and careful character development. It had an extremely low viewership back when it was airing and only has a single Emmy nomination (for its opening title sequence), and yet it is widely regarded by critics as one of the best series of the 2010s. If you like deep, compelling character arcs, consider watching.
How to watch:All four seasons ofHalt and Catch Firearestreaming on AMC+and forfree with ads on the Roku Channel.
Watch on AMC+
That’s the end of this week’s episode, but there’ll always be more TV to watch. I’ll be back on May 4 with new recommendations.
Think there’s something missing that deserves my TV time? Let me know what else I should have on my radar in the comments below!
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