Westeros confidential

“Game of Thrones” is back; “Mike & Molly” are out.

“Game of Thrones”

Sunday, April 24 (HBO)

Season Premiere: What comprehensive information do I have on the Season 6 premiere of “Game of Thrones”? None. What critical motivation do you need to watch it anyway? None. In 2015, HBO mailed out DVDs of the first four episodes of Season 5 for review. Those episodes were immediately uploaded to torrent sites by people who are likely members of the Television Critics Association, an elitist club of tubbies that I, a TV reviewer with “GoT” discs in-hand who did not rip ‘em and ship ‘em to the pirate-verse, have been previously denied entry into. This time around, HBO is allowing zero access, releasing only a plot synopsis for Season 6’s premiere: “Jon Snow is dead. Daenerys meets a strong man. Cersei sees her daughter again.” Yeah.

“Silicon Valley”

Sunday, April 24 (HBO)

Season Premiere: After narrowly beating the Hooli lawsuit last season, the Pied Piper gang has fired Richard (Thomas Middleditch) as CEO, but at least offered him a lesser role as CTO. Erlich (T.J. Miller) and the O.G. Pied Piper team are questioning their loyalty to the company and, even worse, their new heavy-hitter CEO (Stephen Tobolowsky) is bent on transforming their ramshackle startup into a slick enterprise, whether they like it out not (mostly not). Winter is coming hard in Season 3 of “Silicon Valley,” moving it away from just an insider-tech cult item and closer to the real world of real consequences — but, fortunately, Miller’s Erlich is as unreal as ever.

“Veep”

Sunday, April 24 (HBO)

Season Premiere: We’re entering Season 5 of “Veep,” and there are still those who think the last thing Julia-Louis Dreyfus did was “Seinfeld.” While “Veep” isn’t the new “Seinfeld” — that would be “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” a far superior comedy to “Seinfeld” — it is a hysterically accurate portrayal of vein-blowing frustration with the idiocy of daily life in, and out, of Washington D.C., with more F-bombs and slashing insults than HBO has seen since “Deadwood.” More so than “House of Cards,” this is the fantasy election cycle in which former Vice President Selena Meyer (Dreyfus) is desperately clinging to the presidency that was handed to her — and that’s more entertaining than our current real political sitcom.

“Mike & Molly”

Monday, April 24 (CBS)

Spring Premiere/Final Episodes: Six years ago, I wrote an investigative piece about a plausible “Mike & Molly” conspiracy theory that it’s really a leftover UPN sitcom from 1998, recycled and repackaged for 2000s CBS. The facts: UPN and CBS were/are owned by the same corporation; the laugh track is cranked to tellingly ’90s levels; “Mike & Molly,” despite featuring talented comic actors, is painfully unfunny. Maybe the theory is true, maybe not, but “Mike & Molly” still sucks, but not as hard as most sitcoms CBS has introduced since 2010, most notably “The Odd Couple” and “Rush Hour.” CV

Bill Frost writes about television for Salt Lake City Weekly, talks about it on the TV Tan Podcast, and tweets about it at @Bill_Frost.