With the trashed audience scores you'd be forgiven for thinking something has changed with The Boys. But the only thing that has changed is the show runner trying to distance himself from a part of his audience for his career.

Here's a Stan Edgar moment. No one wearing a red hat can damage that career. However, those in the entertainment industry unsophisticated enough to believe the show runner wrote this show for "undesirable people" can. So, in that position, you produce the work you always have, reaffirm your support for...whatever, and move on.

This season, Homelander is still trying to cauterise the parts of himself that react to others' disappointment. As he runs on adulation that's not possible. While Homelander sees his emotions as an impairment, Billy Butcher is only able to keep moving because of his cold rage. Butcher has nothing else in his life. If either man was happy there wouldn't be a show. That's always been the show.

Yes, the other characters have stories to tell, but those are just distractions. This is a story about two broken men building up to a merciless showdown. I expect the audience scores to remain in the toilet next season as well but people will watch it because the show itself has not changed. It has exemplary acting and top-notch production value.

This is one of the better fiction series currently airing. A reworking of the novel of the same name, and drawing from Anne Rice's body of work, a wonderful sense of unease flows from the screen. This isn't a show that tries to be clever, it is clever. It can also be funny, dreadful, supernatural and humane.

The dialogue crackles as an older Daniel Molloy, his body failing him, trades venomous barbs with art world magnate Louis de Pointe du Lac. Louis might be immortal but his psyche hasn't aged well. There are cracks in the foundations and this second interview is Louis' attempt at a talking cure. The hostility flows in equal measure to the hypocrisy as both men excavate Louis' past of blood and fire.

Louis needs someone to understand his thoughts. His daughter, Claudia, lacks interest in such endless conversations while his lovers Lestat and Armand choose not to or cannot see his point of view. Molloy in his youth was more modern than them. In his older years he's more worldly. To the vampire he is enjoyable and infuriating. But he is not a fixed point and has grown and changed. The vampires are all stuck. Claudia is stuck with an underdeveloped body, while the other two are stuck with pettiness and pain.

The vampire leads, male and female, are handsome. Their acting is great with Claudia's outbursts almost operatic in their portrayal of the emotions involved. The sets and cinematography make the show look bigger than its budget. Though with the limited number of locations and theatrical blocking, with the use of an actual theature, you see the budget wall at times.

I watched the 1994 movie and enjoyed it but I have not read the books. Too many novels and not enough personal motivation. Approaching this as a viewer with no interest in the purity of the source material I can say that this is an enjoyable series that deserves another season. But just one. We don't all need to be Louis's therapist for as long as he lives.

This is a kids show. The plot nor the characters have any sophistication and the story operates on a level just above a 90s television sitcom. Instead of twin sisters separated at birth and reunited as teenagers it's twin sisters separated as children and reconciled in their early twenties. Neither set of reunited siblings can wield a lightsaber so it's not that far away from the TV show Sister, Sister. It's Sister, Sister: A Star Wars Young Adult series.

While I expect a flap about the show's checklist diverse cast from those who make money from YouTube video ads breaks, the true issue is the lack of diversity in the story. The first two episodes are a simplistic crime procedural without stakes or a sense of threat. We get two assassinations in the first two episodes. They're nothing. In episode 2 of Shogun an assassin slices her way through people and paper walls to get to her target. It's on screen for seconds. It's horrifying. That couple of seconds of screen time in Shogun is more compelling than the first two episodes of the Acolyte.

For a streaming show, the production value is fine. The acting is not memorable and there's an over reliance on reusing classic Star Wars phrases absent in other Star Wars streaming shows that I find puzzling. It is like the writer convinces herself she's a fan too but needs the audience to know it if they suspect she isn't.

I understand Disney looks at Star Wars as a property, sees the median age of its fans as 40 and its viewer demographic as male. The company worries the franchise has no future as those men age. With Disney being the largest seller of entertainment merchandise for girls, expanding Star Wars as a property for girls in their early teens makes sense for the company. But it makes for poor viewing for their current audience.

I think Disney could get a larger female audience for Star Wars. But only if they moved in a True Crime direction. God knows why women of all ages enjoy guzzling down stories of brutal murders but the stats show the audience for that stuff is 85% female. No one wonders how to get more men to watch that. Where's Making a Murderer: A Star Wars Story, Disney?

The bottom line. The Acolyte is Star Wars for a female YA fiction audience. If you're not into that you're better off watching something else for your Star Wars fix. Like Andor. Again. Until season two comes out.