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.

No Time to Aes Sedai

I'm sure there are harder jobs — coal mining, truffle hunting, brain surgery, teaching — but there's still a high degree of difficulty in attempting to adapt or readapt a property with a fanatical following for TV. There are two big adaptations this week, and neither has earned rave reviews, in part because both feel more dedicated to delivering a complementary experience to established fans than making great television. Angie Han's bottom line for  Cowboy Bebop , Netflix's adaptation of the beloved anime, calls it "cheap and artless." I'd add that it's airless; there's no creative oxygen keeping this one going, no matter how good stars John Cho and Daniella Pineda might be. I felt similarly about Amazon's adaptation of Robert Jordan's epic Wheel of Time fantasy franchise. Jordan's world is so big and complicated that it's an achievement to get the story on the screen at all, but this version is visually shoddy and dramatically lifeless. I suspect both will still leave some devotees satisfied, if perhaps not enthusiastic. 

'Sex Lives' and the Single Girl

This is one of the most packed TV weekends in recent memory, and while fan devotion might be pushing Cowboy Bebop and The Wheel of Time to the top of many lists, there are other — dare I say better —shows not to miss out on. From creators Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble, HBO Max's The Sex Lives of College Girls  is a truly likable, amusingly salacious look at … well … exactly what the title says. Our Angie Han notes that the early episodes aren't fully settled in tone and voice, but she praises the show's potential and the performances of the young ensemble featuring Amrit Kaur, Pauline Chalamet and Reneé Rapp, among many others. I agree. There's enough Undeclared and Greek and Dear White People here to make it work, and the cast is super. There's an even more youthful ensemble doing tremendous work in AMC+'s postapocalyptic Italian fairy tale Anna , about a young woman (great newcomer Giulia Dragotto) and her struggle to protect her younger brother after a global pandemic. It's a nightmarish, whimsical, sometimes hopeful slice of magic realism.

F Is for Finale

Although it has existed in the shadow of the acclaimed likes of BoJack Horseman and Big Mouth, F Is for Family  has long been one of Netflix's best adult cartoons and, really, one of its best comedies of any kind. Bill Burr and Michael Price's semi-autobiographic glimpse at Burr's '70s upbringings has, from its very first episode, been a paragon of how to blend coarseness — the show features some of the funniest swearing on TV — and well-earned family heart. The final season, which features patriarch Frank Murphy (Burr) coping with the death of his estranged father, features the usual assortment of politically incorrect period dramatic irony, great voice work — particular shout-out to Joe Pera, unmistakably Joe Pera-y as Frank's new boss — and general mayhem. The satisfying concluding run lets the show give one last nod to co-star Michael K. Williams, lets viewers listen to Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love" eight more times, and does justice to the dysfunctional Murphy saga.

G Is for 'Great'

If you're like me, you periodically ponder the lack of awards attention for the first season of Hulu's very funny, very fictionalized take on the life of Catherine the Great. You think, "Well, at least Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning got Emmy nominations," and you realize, "But wait! They DIDN'T!" And you get angry. The second season of The Great remains a showcase for Hoult's uncanny ability to make all manner of disreputable behavior seem weirdly lovable, and for Fanning's ever-more-confident take on Catherine's youthful rise to power. It's clever, silly, raunchy and often delightful. Check out last week's TV's Top 5 podcast for our chat with series creator Tony McNamara. And while I'm plugging podcast conversations, if you enjoyed the premiere of Showtime's Yellowjackets, definitely listen to our conversation with creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, whose dynamic as married writers is a real hoot.

'Boom' With a View

If that's not enough TV for you, it's also a pretty solid week to stream new films. Our Stephen Farber says that HBO Max's King Richard, featuring Will Smith as father to eventual tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams, makes for winning family drama, even as it's overlong and occasionally formulaic. Awards guru Scott Feinberg has been more enthusiastic , touting the film as an Oscar frontrunner since its Telluride launch. Lin-Manuel Miranda's feature directing debut,  Tick, Tick… Boom!, based on the late Jonathan Larson's semi-autobiographical musical, has been generating a lot of love from once-and-future theater kids, though our Justin Lowe deemed the Andrew Garfield vehicle, "stylish but sterile." And if that's STILL not enough, HBO's latest Music Box anthology documentary, Jagged,  is now on HBO Max and elsewhere. Give it a look and scratch your head about why Alanis Morissette has decided to distance herself from the project, even though it's basically a love letter.

This Week's THR Staff Pick 

Executive editor David Katz enthuses, "As with its previous iterations, Narcos: Mexico season three has a cringey voiceover, plenty of well-worn gangland tropes, and some plot telegraphing as subtle as the clothing worn by its drug kingpins (this time it's set in the early '90s). But that plot is based on real-ish events, which very frequently involve acts of violence that lead to the sudden death of a protagonist, meaning the tension here is always seat-of-your-pants. Plus, the acting is often great and occasionally brilliant. So like the addicts who fuel the whole vicious drug ecosystem the show chronicles, I binge, and encourage you to do the same."