Apple TV+ period drama The Essex Serpent draws to an orderly close this week after five episodes of disorderly conduct, serpents (both metaphorical and real ones), love, death, betrayal, discovery and friendship.

The miniseries ends on a note that’s a bit of a letdown for how nicely it treats its pack of sinners, but I guess sometimes you have to give “the people” what they want. Ultimately, a great old-school tale of adventure and lust settles for neatness. Though that’s a hair upsetting to me, it was well worth the time it took to get here.

Now and Then, the delightfully trashy Apple TV+ series about guilty friends committing new crimes to cover up old ones, heads straight into the gutter of desperation this week.

Sofia’s loan is due. Marcos’ wife is leaving him. Pedro’s lover is in jail, and he wants to throw the campaign. Ana is watching her future slip away. Hugo’s still in a coma. And Flora is off the case.

No one’s coming to these poor sinners’ rescue.

Physical, Apple TV+’s series about a fitness pioneer and the collection of damaged people in her orbit, hits the fairgrounds for a protest, a demonstration and a cat fight this week. Dramatic stasis and some awkward meetings fill a rootless episode of the enervating drama.

Unfortunately, there’s just no getting around the hollow center of this show: Aerobics don’t make good TV.

This week on Tehran, the Apple TV+ spy thriller narrows its options until there’s only one thing remaining: Mossad agent Tamar and Revolutionary Guard leader Faraz, face to face, heading to a party to carry out an assassination.

If she fails, dozens of people will die. If she succeeds, her target will be dead — but so will Faraz (and probably his wife).

The season’s penultimate episode rests on a climactic car race, with Tamar’s boyfriend Milad making life-or-death decisions and her hands tied. This slightly dodgy second season still time to straighten itself out.

Apple TV+ alt-history space saga For All Mankind splashes down in the go-go ’90s in its not-really-merited third season. After another decadal jump, Nirvana is king, Bill Clinton is running for office, and we’re apparently going to Mars.

This show’s absurd single-mindedness has not been softened by its premature renewal for a fourth season, by which point presumably we’ll be traveling to the sixth dimension on a rocket sled while Avril Lavigne runs for Congress. Anyway … let’s rip off this Band-Aid.

Apple TV+ bought the rights to Sugar, a new genre-bending mystery series starring Colin Farrell and created by Mark Protosevich.

There was a lot of interest in the project, with Netflix also reportedly bidding on it.

Say things went sideways and you somehow ended up in prison, sentenced to 10 years. But authorities offer you freedom if you do just one thing for them. Transfer to a super-max facility for the criminally insane. Befriend a serial killer who may soon get out. And get him to confess more of his crimes.

Would you do it?

If the trailer for Apple TV+ psychological thriller series Black Bird is any indication, maybe don’t do it. That thing, promoting a true story brought to the screen by crime novelist Dennis Lehane, looks brutal — and potentially riveting.

Iranian spy chief Faraz loses everything as Mossad agent Tamar plans to do just the same thing in this week’s high-strung episode of Tehran. Having had two attempts to kill Mohammadi thwarted by circumstance, Tamar is ready to risk everything to kill him if she must.

Meanwhile, Milad finds himself at the end of his tether, Marjan must flee the country, and absolutely nobody’s cover is safe.

As the second season of the Apple TV+ spy thriller winds down, the show sticks to its best tricks: simply showing the nuts and bolts of spycraft and broken allegiances.

Apple TV+ period drama The Essex Serpent is in sullen repose this week as Stella gets bad news, Cora is in mourning for a relationship that never was, Martha has to decide who or what she really wants, and Will denies himself the pleasures of the flesh.

After last week’s wild party, the miniseries stumbles a little for the first time. Still, The Essex Serpent — based on the bestselling novel by Sarah Perry — manages to be a graceful and bewitching thing, as usual.

Panic is the name of the game on this week’s sexy and tragic installment of Now and Then on Apple TV.

Flora’s losing her grip on the investigation — and her own moral authority. Hugo’s in a coma, Marcos is being bugged, Pedro and Ana are looking down the barrel of an audit and jail time (and that’s not even for the killing).

The show’s balance of murder, mayhem, bedroom-hopping and politics has been at a low boil all season, and it looks like it may be ready to blow its top and spill all over the kitchen floor.