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.

Brolinoscopy

At some point, maturity is realizing that one needn't stick with a TV show exclusively to make "hole" puns. Clearly, I haven't reached that point. Amazon's Josh Brolin's Hole returned for a second season this week, with seven new episodes focused on the mysterious nature of the hole in Josh Brolin's prairie backyard. If you found the first season to be hole-y without merit, this season is much more effective at giving answers and directly addressing where (or when) Josh Brolin's hole goes, the ramifications of having a supernatural hole on your property and more. I like that Josh Brolin's Hole  isn't just aping one Taylor Sheridan show — Yellowstone was everybody's season one comparison — but rather his entire oeuvre, only wilder. Sometimes it really works. The fourth episode, focused on Tamara Podemski's Joy and directed by Reservation Dogs veteran Blackhorse Lowe, is actually really good and the cast remains solid. Still, this hole is not crater than the sum of its parts.

A Spoonful Weighs a 'Bridgerton'

For much of the first episode of the new season of Bridgerton, everybody seems very bored and very worried that the social season won't yield enough titillation. For around three episodes, I agreed. The core couples were all dull and the various balls and flirtations and risqué canoodling felt repetitive — as our Angie Han put it, "more familiar than thrilling." But the season gets better, in large part because Nicola Coughlan is so good and her Penelope is so central to the season's action. The season's surprise MVP, though, might be Jessica Madsen, whose Cressida Cowper gets Cordelia-ized in a transition from one-dimensional villain to key participant in the ensemble.

Straight Trippin' 'Zoo'

Bronx Zoo '90: Crime, Chaos and Baseball , Peacock's new documentary from feature helmer D.J. Caruso, is a 50-minute documentary that instead runs three episodes because nobody at Peacock wanted to say, "If you're doing a documentary about the 1990 New York Yankees, why are the last 30 minutes about the team after 1990? We know there was a dynasty." So instead of being a tightly focused doc for every sports fan, this is mostly for Yankees devotees, especially if you bristle at the uncomfortable interaction between run-of-the-mill misbehavior (drugs, bad attitudes, egos) and actual criminality. Should Mel Hall, currently serving 40+ years in prison for sex crimes, really be doing jailhouse interviews for a documentary that generally finds amusement in more frivolous behaviors? It's also frustrating how many important figures to this story are absent either because of death (George Steinbrenner) or unmentioned reasons (Dave Winfield and countless others). 

Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar

Apple TV+'s The Big Cigar is half Argo-style heist hijinks focusing on a pair of white Hollywood producers fabricating a movie as a cover to smuggle Huey P. Newton (André Holland) to Cuba in 1974 and half rushed history of Newton and the Black Panther movement, with a tacked-on message about police violence. Neither half is really successful. Those actually interested in the history of police violence in the United States can watch Yance Ford's  Power , newly released on Netflix. Our Jourdain Searles calls the 85-minute documentary "essential viewing."

Mō' Gun

As has been rumored for several weeks, FX has renewed Shōgun, or at least official announced plans to pursue plans to develop two additional seasons of Shōgun, which is close enough to the same thing. So, if you're somebody who has been waiting to see if there would be more before committing to the first season… You're slightly odd! But you're also in luck. The full season is on Hulu. The next season may exist someday, long after Shōgun  has competed for Emmy attention as a drama series. For more on this semi-renewal, as well as upfronts analysis, listen to this week's TV's Top 5 podcast. And for even more upfronts coverage, be sure to read Mikey O'Connell's missives from Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Amazon and more!

Honoring Roger Corman

A pioneer of independent cinema, a giant in the world of B-movies and perhaps the most influential mentor figure in Hollywood history, Roger Corman died last weekend at 98 and left a mark that stretches far beyond the hundreds of movies he produced and directed. Between Tubi and Pluto, you can find a solid assortment of Corman classics including Machine-Gun Kelly, 1960's Little Shop of Horrors, adaptations of The Raven and The Pit and the Pendulum, and Death Race 2000 . But Corman was more than just a schlockmeister. His New World Pictures banner provided distribution for an assortment of international classics including Akira Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala, Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris and Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers, all on Criterion Channel.