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.

Fielder of Dreams

It takes Nathan Fielder's new HBO comedy The Rehearsal an episode or two to settle into the rhythms of its truly bizarre premise, in which the Canadian comic and small business advisor uses actors, re-creations and an impressive budget to help ordinary people stage and re-stage difficult life events until they get it right. Once The Rehearsal locks in, though, the series is uncomfortably funny, unexpectedly poignant and unlike any show currently on TV (though it's a bit like  How To With John Wilson, which Fielder executive produced, as well as his acclaimed debut series Nathan for You). Both How To and Nathan for You are streaming on HBO Max, and if you like them, you'll probably get a kick out of The Rehearsal — and vice versa.

The Maisel-less Ms. Marvel

Disney+'s Ms. Marvel completed its six-episode season — whether that’s a "first" or "only" season is unclear — this week. If you were holding off for a binge, it ended up solidly worthwhile, in many ways the most successful stand-alone (even if you know that it will eventually lead to The Marvels on the big screen) Marvel series that Disney+ has done. Led by a thoroughly charming and increasingly confident performance by Iman Vellani, Ms. Marvel  worked first and foremost as a coming-of-age story, touching on Muslim life in New Jersey and the 1947 Partition of India. On this week's TV's Top 5 podcast, which does include some spoilers, series creator Bisha K. Ali discusses the challenges of telling a superhero origin tale with several twists that were very personal for the show's diverse writing staff.

Emmy-Charmed Kinda Life

This week's TV's Top 5 also features a LOT of discussion of this week's Emmy nominations, as Lesley Goldberg breaks things down by numbers and I sound off on the surprisingly populist nominee slate. If you haven't watched Succession, Ted Lasso and The White Lotus, the three leading nominees are available to stream on HBO Max, Apple TV+ and HBO Max again, respectively, while  Only Murders in the Building (Hulu), Hacks  (HBO Max) and Euphoria (HBO Max yet again) had strong showings as well. For more Emmy coverage, Angie Han and I dive into the highs (Rhea Seehorn!) and lows (no Better Things or Reservation Dogs?) from a critical perspective, and Scott Feinberg offers his awards-centric analysis.

Austen City Limits

Our David Rooney admits that when it comes to Carrie Cracknell's Persuasion, "Jane Austen purists will be aghast," but he praises Dakota Johnson's performance as "incandescent" and says the Netflix adaptation is bold enough to get away with its myriad liberties. Also new to streaming this week is Hannah Marks' Don't Make Me Go , which launches on Amazon Prime this Friday after a festival premiere at Tribeca last month. The tear-jerking road trip dramedy stars John Cho and Mia Isaac as a father and daughter traveling from California to Louisiana for his college reunion, though Angie warns that the film has a "misguided third act choice" that leaves a "distinctly sour aftertaste."

'Oz,' the Great and Influential

HBO's Oz premiered 25 years ago this week, and while Tom Fontana's prison drama never quite received the respect it deserved, more than 19 years after its last episode it feels like a blueprint for many of the prestige dramas that followed it in terms of its numerous antiheroes and boundary-pushing approach to language, violence and sexuality. The full series is available on HBO Max and while many of its storylines are so murky as to be unwatchable and certain representational aspects unquestionably dated, the ensemble is astonishingly good, and so many key figures of peak TV had pivotal early roles here. Cast standouts include Harold Perrineau, Rita Moreno, Lee Tergesen, Chris Meloni and, especially, J.K. Simmons and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. 

This Week's THR Staff Pick

Speaking of Emmy nominees, business writer Caitlin Huston has been finishing off Apple TV+'s Severance, up for drama series and 13 other trophies. She raves, "I couldn’t stop watching Severance . It’s one of the rare shows that made me yell at my television in shock and surprise. What’s so compelling about it, to me, is the way in which this dystopian series feels so eerie and unsettling, yet relatable. I binged my way through the first season and still have so many questions I need answered in the second: Where does Patricia Arquette’s character go next? Why all the melon? And, what, exactly, is a wellness check?"