Welcome to Now See This, THR chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg’s weekly viewer guide newsletter dedicated to cutting through the daunting clutter of the broadcast, cable and streaming TV landscape! Comments and suggestions welcome at daniel.fienberg@thr.com.

'Saints' Goes Marching Into Streaming

So I realize that in last week's newsletter I forgot to recommend that you binge the entire run of The Sopranos ahead of HBO Max's debut of the long-awaited prequel film, The Many Saints of Newark. I'd tell you that it's OK, as long as you remember that "Tony" and "Paulie" and "Silvio" are important people, but I've been waiting to watch this weekend. Just as a warning, our David Rooney calls Many Saints "entertaining, but inessential," which was how I felt when Breaking Bad, another prestige TV classic, got its own follow-up film,  El Camino. 

Wheel of 'Tom'

Look, I'm not trying to tell you to just spend your entire weekend on HBO Max, but the second-best thing I watched this week — the best is a long-awaited return of a certain Emmy-winning dark comedy — was Ten Year Old Tom, a perplexingly hyphen-free new animated comedy from Steve Dildarian, the deadpan auteur behind HBO's The Life & Times of Tim. As I said in my review, if you liked Tim, you'll like Tom. And if you haven't watched Tim, it's been newly added to HBO Max as well!

'Maid' To Order

Actually, it's a really good weekend of streaming options. Netflix's Maid features a star-confirming performance from Margaret Qualley, who has always had screen presence to burn, but has never been asked to so totally carry a project. Her expressiveness and adroitness with unexpected humor help make this examination of poverty avoid feeling miserable. Our Angie Han correctly points out some of the series' limitations, while also calling Maid "riveting" and raving about how watchable it is. Meanwhile, Netflix also has the new Jake Gyllenhaal thriller  The Guilty, though our Michael Rechtshaffen warns that some of the tension from the Danish source material has been lost in translation.

I Spit on Your Musgraves

Not particularly hot take: Sometimes NBC's Saturday Night Live isn't very funny, and its cast is consistently miscategorized by the Emmys, making a mess of everything. That being said, sometimes Saturday Night Live is still quite amusing, and I always love checking out the shape of a new cast. Saturday's premiere will offer a glimpse of how integral the now-departed castmember Beck Bennett and director Don Roy King were — no offense to Lauren Holt, who left before she became even marginally integral — and to meet new featured players Aristotle Athari, James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman. Oh, and Owen Wilson will be hosting, with Kacey Musgraves as musical guest.

Time to Kill Waiting for 'Time To Die'

Look, I said I was sorry for not recommending a Sopranos rewatch last newsletter! In the interest of atonement, let me help you get ahead on some viewership. CBS' Ghosts is a fairly likable new comedy featuring the always appealing Rose McIver and Utkarsh Ambudkar, but if you want to be that snob comparing the American version to the original, that BBC hit is on HBO Max. Before next week's premiere of Apple TV+'s Acapulco, make sure you've watched star Eugenio Derbez in CODA, also on Apple TV+ (and listened to the Mexican superstar's podcast interview with our Scott Feinberg). And as much as I'd like to tell you to marathon all the James Bond movies before the release of No Time to Die, they're really hard to find on free streaming, though Skyfall is on Hulu!

This Week's THR Staff Pick 

Of a newly renewed Netflix hit, senior writer Gary Baum raves, “There are many reasons to enjoy the third season of Sex Education, which continues to winningly meld the tender and the lewd. One is to gawp at its cleverly blurred aesthetics: Can that really be present-day? That’s an awfully Americanized British suburb! Another is to admire its pastiche of talky-teen dramas, from the John Hughes oeuvre to Dawson’s Creek right up through Normal People  (Maeve’s Marianne-style blunt-bangs-and-messy-bun, her Connell-esque prospect of studying abroad in America).” [This is a good place to plug this week's TV's Top 5 podcast interview with Sex Education creator Laurie Nunn.]