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.

Empanada Surf

Sure, Amazon may spend billions on stuff like Lord of the Rings: Whatever the Subtitle Was and Citadel, but I'm much more interested in the service's recent run of low-budget, genre-bending efforts at half-hour social commentary. While The Horror of Dolores Roach isn't, for me, on the same level as I'm a Virgo or Swarm , this Washington Heights-set take on the tale of Sweeney Todd offers Justina Machado a fine starring vehicle, and its perspective on gentrification and artisanal empanadas has a lot of merits until it devolves into nonstop shouting for its final three episodes. Our Angie Han thought the pro-cannibalism message was handled better in Yellowjackets, but she calls Dolores Roach "a sizzling fast-food snack."

'Threads,' White and Blue

The debut of Mark Zuckerberg's new data-grabbing social media platform sparked a new wave of attention for the 1984 apocalyptic British telefilm Threads, from writer Barry Hines and director Mick "Volcano" Jackson. The project, about build-up to a nuclear attack and then its aftermath in Sheffield, is a rather stunning narrative/documentary hybrid, not quite as good as Peter Watkins' The War Game, but far superior to ABC's comparable The Day After. While Meta's Threads is available on your phone and computer, this Threads  is streaming on Tubi, and it goes from deliberate slow-burn to stunning speculative nightmare over a swift 100 minutes. Also, for those interested in the new social media platform, Evil is streaming on Paramount+. I kid! Find me on BlueSky.

One 'Last Call' for Alcohol

I spent much of the four-hour running time of Anthony Caronna's Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York  imagining the HBO programming debate regarding whether this documentary blend of true crime and LGBTQ+ history should air during Pride Month — and how they came to the answer, "No, but one week after (Sunday, July 9) is fine and won't feel exploitative." It's a slightly awkward blending of elements at times, but the exploration of crime, murder and New York City's gay scene in the '80s and '90s delivers the mysterious tension of a trashier serial killer exposé along with a much more sensitive and thoughtful portrait of a community, its relationship with the NYPD and the press, and a harrowing chapter many viewers will know nothing at all about.

All I Need Is a 'Miracle'

I really liked the first season of the Simon Rich-created Miracle Workers when it premiered back in 2019. Despite returning stars Daniel Radcliffe, Steve Buscemi and Geraldine Viswanathan, I found the second season hugely disappointing and skipped the Oregon Trail installment entirely. I liked the idea of the upcoming fourth season — End Times is Mad Max meets The 'Burbs  — so I checked out the three episodes TBS sent to critics, and it's a goofy pleasure, probably less spiritually rich than the first installment but full of oddball references and a loosey-goosey charm. It’s like watching a group of friends hanging out and occasionally reciting dialogue somebody shouted them from off-camera. End Times premieres Monday, and the three previous seasons are all on Max.

'Mission' Fairly Possible

A couple of weeks ago, everybody was rewatching the Indiana Jones films ahead of Dial of Destiny, which has then disappointed at the box office. A current rewatching marathon is happening for the Mission: Impossible films, but I somehow suspect that Dead Reckoning  will find a larger theatrical audience. I've already been working my way through the first six movies on Paramount+. For my money, the original movie has the best set piece (Tom Cruise dangling in the computer room), Ghost Protocol is the best overall film, and the third movie — the most expensive Alias episode ever made — has the best villain. Man, I miss Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Mess Around and Find 'Out-Laws' 

The weekend's biggest new streaming movie title is The Out-Laws, an Adam Sandler-produced film that our Jordan Mintzer suggests strands co-stars Pierce Brosnan and Ellen Barkin in a sea of high-concept comedy and stale antics. Go back and watch the early seasons of The Vampire Diaries  — it's all streaming on Peacock, and once you get past the first handful of episodes it gets really good for a while — and tell me Nina Dobrev didn't deserve a larger career than this.