John Powers

The new season of the Netflix's wonderfully entertaining historical soap opera carries Queen Elizabeth II's story into the mid-1960s and '70s, when Britain's post-war afterglow has faded.

Critic at large John Powers has speed through both seasons of Jack Ryan, which he says serves up something reassuringly nostalgic.

Rather than rehash the 1980s superhero comic, series creator Damon Lindelof preserves the original's mood, themes and tricky structure — but uses them to tell an engrossing, totally new story on HBO.