Fronted by Zoe Saldana and Nicole Kidman, Taylor Sheridan’s action thriller about a CIA program focused on covert female infiltrators hasn’t lost any of its defining traits: the operators on the ground are committed professionals, the more senior their superior the more compromised the motives, geopolitics serves as audience scare tactics, and every episode needs a gearing-up montage that is shot with fetishistic devotion. It doesn’t always make sense, but the narrative hums along.

The key change is the setting, with Middle Eastern terror cells being replaced by Mexican drug cartels. This is familiar ground for Sheridan. The Yellowstone creator’s breakthrough as a writer was 2015’s Sicario, Denis Villeneuve’s narcos horror about female endurance. Here, after a provocation on American soil, the CIA are once more operating where they shouldn’t, with Saldana’s Joe McNamara on the ground with her team and a new undercover operative.

The first four episodes often feel like different projects – mostly good ones – chopped together. Sheridan, who does the majority of writing and directing, gives us Zero Dark Thirty silhouettes, power trip theatrics, and the repetitive tug of Joe saving America but worrying that her family life is suffering. Decisions for his female characters are passionate yet binary choices, but Lioness isn’t slowed by anything. That includes ducking the show’s concept – the new Lioness is a long time coming.

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Disney+

Bruce Springsteen’s director of choice, Thom Zimny, does a capable job on this tour documentary, which charts rock & roll’s abiding spirit returning to stadiums with his backing band after a six-year absence. Using archival concert footage as both a contrast and a means of emphasising the passing of time, Road Diary has a celebratory backbeat and nervous melody – the question that lurks behind every gig and every exultant move is whether the ageing group, which has already lost cherished members such as saxophonist Clarence Clemons, has almost reached the end of the road?

The Lincoln Lawyer (season 3)
Netflix

While the season-long plots have a hefty quota of duplicity, cover-ups and initially confounding twists, this David E. Kelley legal drama about a scrappy Los Angeles lawyer, Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) remains a straightforward proposition. It knows the show it wants to be and mostly delivers, never growing too contemplative or exploring the contradictions of the characters, especially women, that pass through Haller’s world either privately or professionally. Shout out to Australian actor Angus Sampson, who continues to make the most of playing Haller’s gruff private investigator, Cisco.

The Office
Amazon Prime

My take on the Australian variant? Relax, it’s fine. Given the standing the British and the American editions of The Office hold, revered mockumentary and beloved sitcom respectively, any attempt to make a local edition is fraught with risk. But Julie De Fina and Jackie van Beek’s adaptation mostly sits in a familiar space defined by Australian habits and the show’s familiar character outlines. Notably, Edith Poor is first-rate as Lizzie Moyle, the wound-too-tight eccentric dedicated to the company’s cause. But if I had to choose, I’d still opt for Fisk.

Somebody Somewhere (season 3)
Binge

It’s not too late. You can start this masterfully bittersweet American comedy about the struggle to accept what has to change in your life now and still be up-to-date by the time the weekly episodes of the third and final season conclude in early December. I’m not convinced creators Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen can neatly tie together everything that fortysomething friends Sam (Bridget Everett) and Joel (Jeff Hiller) have to deal with, but then again absolutes have never held sway on this show. I just hope we get more series like this.