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.

Empire of the Sunja

Apple TV+'s adaptation of Min Jin Lee's tremendous novel Pachinko is a generation-spanning story of a Korean immigrant family, transplanted to Japan during that country's colonial rule. Showrunner Soo Hugh's biggest structural change from Lee's sprawling, linear book is weaving its three timelines together, which helps underline the excellence of Jeon Yu-na, Kim Min-ha and Yuh-Jung Youn's performances as primary protagonist Sunja. It's visually spectacular and emotionally epic, and the show's opening credit sequence is an all-timer. After checking out the first couple of episodes, check out last week's  TV's Top 5 podcast for a wide-ranging conversation with Hugh. 

'Starstruck' in the Middle with You

Love is in the streaming air this weekend, and it comes with a British accent. Bridgerton returns for a second season on Netflix, and it's notable that, as our Angie Han puts it, the new season misses the "rampant horniness" of the first. Jonathan Bailey and Sex Education veteran Simone Ashley have solid bickering chemistry, off in their own adaptation of Taming of the Shrew. But I much prefer the wonderfully zippy six-episode second season of  Starstruck  on HBO Max, which continues its screwball rom-com hijinks and proves, once again, that star and creator Rose Matafeo is an irrepressible force of Kiwi likability. For more of Matafeo, she's our guest on this week's TV's Top 5 podcast.

Are You the Kyiv-Master?

By now, assuming you've been paying any attention at all, you presumably know that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky got his start as a popular comic actor and that one of his key credits was the sitcom Servant of the People, about an ordinary man who — after a populist rant goes viral — is elected president of Ukraine. But have you watched Servant of the People? After a brief window of unavailability, the first 23 episodes are back on Netflix and… it's fine! Certainly dramatic irony gives the semi-frequent Putin jokes added sting and the nonstop mockery of the corrupt oligarchs was and is scathing. The insight into the Ukrainian spirit has great value, even if attempting to find deeper understanding of Russia's current invasion is a bit like trying to understand Ronald Reagan's actions in Grenada by watching Bedtime for Bonzo.

Sweet Child O' Mine

HBO Max's comedy series Julia, featuring Sarah Lancashire as the iconic TV cook, premieres next week, and while it never quite finds dramatic stakes, Lancashire and several co-stars — David Hyde Pierce, Bebe Neuwirth and Fiona Glascott in particular — are excellent. For a little added context, the PBS Documentaries add-on on Prime Video has made episodes of The French Chef, as well as several other Child classics, available, while Food Network and Discovery+ just debuted the competition series The Julia Child Challenge . If you have AMC+, though, you're probably better off getting more Lancashire in her masterful performance in the gripping police drama Happy Valley.

Drive My Oscar

After weeks of discussion dominated by subjects like categories being presented outside of the main telecast, peculiar choices of presenters and whether or not the star of  West Side Story was even invited to attend , the 94th Academy Awards will finally take place on Sunday night. Of the 10 best picture nominees, only Belfast and Licorice Pizza and King Richard (ironic, since its initial HBO Max streaming window was blamed for lackluster box office) aren't currently available for streaming. HBO Max still has West Side Story (also on Disney+), Nightmare Alley (also on Hulu), Dune and Drive My Car. Netflix has The Power of the Dog and Don't Look Up, while CODA is on Apple TV+. If I had a vote, it would be for Drive My Car, David Rooney's preference as well, while Scott Feinberg is predicting CODA for the win.

This Week's THR Staff Pick 

Deputy awards editor Beatrice Verhoeven raves, "I get so excited for The Dropout to air on Hulu every week that I legitimately count down the hours until it drops. It might be because I’m not as familiar with the Theranos story as others might be, so this is all relatively new and exciting for me, but I also think it’s Amanda Seyfried’s best performance of her career. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I truly cannot believe this happened, and find myself watching and shaking my head as the story unfolds."