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.

Way Down in the Hole

It's both boring to say that The Wire is the best television show ever made and it's accurate, though I find that when you say "best" it freaks people out and makes them assume you're assigning homework. David Simon's exploration of struggling institutions — the police , politicians, newspapers, unions, educators — in Baltimore is also among the funniest, most suspenseful and generally most exhilarating shows ever made, and once you've been exposed to the show's impossibly deep ensemble cast, you'll forever associate them exclusively with The Wire, no matter how many blockbusters or award-winners they star in. Why am I telling you to watch The Wire, available to stream on HBO Max? Do I really need a reason? OK. Fine. The Wire premiered on June 2, 2002. Happy 20th birthday to McNulty, Bunk, Omar, Bubs, Wallace, Avon, D'Angelo and too many other classic characters to list.

Peaks and 'P-Valley'

Starz's P-Valley, which made my Top 10 way back in 2020, returns for a second season on Friday night before heading to its normal Sunday home. Creator Katori Hall's Mississippi Delta strip club drama remains a show with a voice and attitude all its own and a great cast led by Nicco Annan's instantly iconic Uncle Clifford. The new season picks up midway through 2020 and makes smart and dramatic use of the early stages of the COVID pandemic and the summer's racial injustice protests. It's good stuff and well worth catching up on if you missed the first season. Plus, Hall is our guest on this week's TV's Top 5 podcast, discussing her decision to keep the colorful, frequently outlandish show grounded in our difficult reality.

Ode to 'Boys' 

Our Angie Han loved the third season of Amazon's The Boys, calling it "as gleefully brutal as ever, with (slightly) more heart," though she notes that new addition Jensen Ackles is "somewhat underused." I wish the show were a bit more clever and a bit less glib in its satire, which usually just involves making references to things and letting the in-the-know audience giggle appreciatively. Speaking of "gleefully brutal," AMC+'s medical dramedy  This Is Going to Hurt features a rarely better Ben Whishaw as a doctor in the OBGYN ward at a National Health Service hospital. It's a tough watch, especially if C-sections and unfortunately prolapsed anatomy makes you uncomfortable, but it's also scathingly funny and, by the end of seven episodes, deeply emotional.

Booster Shot

Familiar TV scene-stealer Joel Kim Booster turns screenwriter and leading man in Fire Island, a modern-day queer spin on Pride and Prejudice that also features Bowen Yang and Margaret Cho in its cast. Our David Rooney praises the performances, a script rooted in personal experience and the light touch of director Andrew Ahn in this Hulu release. Is it a coincidence that Netflix chose to counterprogram Fire Island with the return of Floor Is Lava? Almost certainly, but here's wishing you an incendiary weekend anyway!

'Hustle' and Flo

Early buzz on Adam Sandler's latest Netflix offering, Jeremiah Zagar's Hustle, has largely been positive. Rooney praises the basketball comedy for its "characters worth rooting for" on top of its inspirational sports movie moments. While you're waiting for the June 8 premiere … why not check out some movies featuring Florence Pugh (who has nothing to do with Hustle)? Look, I made a pun and I'm standing by it even if Florence Pugh streaming options are weirdly light. There's Black Widow on Disney+ and The Little Drummer Girl on AMC+ and if you have Showtime, Midsommar is OnDemand there. Or maybe now's the time to check out her first filmed acting gig in 2014's The Falling, which is on Tubi among other places.