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.

Dino Might

A well-deserving winner for outstanding animated program at last year's Emmys, Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal  is like nothing else in its genre. I could tell you, "Oh, it's the story of a caveman named Spear and his dinosaur buddy named Fang," but that would so wildly undersell the eye-popping animation, the cleverness of its dialogue-free pantomime, the layers of its rich sound design or Tyler Bates and Joanne Higginbottom's score. The new season started Thursday on Adult Swim and it follows immediately from the 10-episode first run, all available on HBO Max. Just know that while Primal is colorful and funny and occasionally sweet, it's also utterly brutal in its violence and its depiction of a semi-historical moment in which blood-spurting death lurked behind every corner. 

Newman's Own

Ethan Hawke's six-part The Last Movie Stars looks at the complicated and epic romance between Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, featuring endless clips from their decades of collaborations, as well as audio assistance and Zoom cameos from a bunch of Hawke's A-list buddies, including George Clooney voicing Newman and Laura Linney voicing Woodward. One of the documentary's key goals is to put Woodward on the map as an actress for a younger generation that mostly knows her in conjunction with Newman, which makes it minorly infuriating that none of Woodward's four Oscar-nominated films, including her winning role in  The Three Faces of Eve, is available to stream. You can, however, stream A Kiss Before Dying (Amazon), The Long Hot Summer (HBO Max) and Paris Blues (Tubi). Many classic Newman films are also absent from streaming, but HBO Max has Sweet Bird of Youth, Empire Falls and Nobody's Fool. I really wish HBO Max had done better preparing complementary films to go with the documentary.

'Gray' La Vie

Between photos from the Barbie set and a press campaign to explain why Buzz Lightyear doesn't sound like Tim Allen, Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans have spent the summer in headlines, but will their new zillion-dollar Netflix spy thriller shift the conversation? Our John DeFore says that The Gray Man is full of "very expensive action that doesn't always pay off," comparing the Russo brothers' globe-trotting drama to the James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises, albeit not in a wholly complimentary way. Our Lovia Gyarkye is more enthusiastic about Amazon's  Anything's Possible, which marks a "sweet and blazing" film directing debut for Billy Porter, praising its treatment of the rom-com genre, as well as its well-used Pittsburgh locations.

That's a 'Rap'

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone? Actually, I already knew what we had in Desus & Mero, which didn't make it hurt less when Showtime unexpectedly announced this week that the late night comedy show wouldn't be returning to complete its fourth season while its stars go their separate creative ways. Maybe if Desus & Mero  had gotten a little more awards attention — it snagged a Writers Guild of America win, but zero Emmy nominations — Showtime might have fought harder to keep it around? Check out episodes OnDemand and judge yourself for never having watched previously! Speaking of unique voices deserving of more respect and adulation, the final season of Issa Rae's HBO comedy Insecure picked up only three Emmy nominations (and her episode of Apple TV+'s Roar received none), but Rae has moved on quickly with HBO Max's newly released Rap Sh!t , which Gyarkye called "anthemic," "glossy," "entertaining" and full of jokes that "pack a punch."

My Favorite Lear

Technically, Norman Lear's 100th birthday is next Wednesday, but when you're a Television Academy Hall of Famer, Kennedy Center Honoree and a World War II hero, you deserve to celebrate for a full week, if not more. You can help the topical television titan celebrate his centennial with episodes of All in the Family (Amazon), Sanford and Son (Amazon), Good Times (Amazon) and The Jeffersons (Amazon). That's a lot of Amazon. You can also watch the first three seasons of Netflix's One Day at a Time  reboot on, naturally enough, Netflix. Lear has been making audiences laugh and shaping our national conversation for more than 60 years. He's one of a kind.

This Week's THR Staff Pick

This week was the 15th anniversary of the series premiere of Mad Men, the advertising drama that began the process of transforming AMC from "That Remember WENN network” to a hub of quality programming. Exemplary for its production design, astonishing dialogue and one of the best ensemble casts ever mounted for television, Mad Men is currently streaming on AMC+ and, if you like your vee to be free, on Amazon's FreeVee platform. Oh and Remember WENN is available on Plex.tv.