Vice Principals

Sunday at 8 p.m., HBO

Walton Goggins. I’m a fan. There’s something deeply amusing about the way he deploys his character’s Southern accent in this new comedy. As scoundrel vice principal Lee Russell at a South Carolina high school, he sing-songs his sentences, masking Lee’s aggression with a silky smooth lilt. I could watch Goggins go over the top for hours on the show, as he seethes with envy and scorn behind his happy pink pants and bowties. He brings his ability to play sadism — so clear in his intense and memorable work as Shane Vendrell on “The Shield’’ and as Boyd Crowder on “Justified’’ — into his comedic stylings. “Vice Principals,’’ from Danny McBride (above left, with Goggins) and Jody Hill, the guys behind “Eastbound & Down,’’ is hit or miss but likable enough. It’s an obvious comedy about ignorance, masculinity, insensitivity, ambition, and delusion, like “Eastbound & Down,’’ and it’s enjoyable if you don’t expect too much from it, also like “Eastbound & Down.’’

Stranger Things

Netflix

This series is clearly inspired by Steven Spielberg’s early-career suburban movies, Stephen King novels, and “The X-Files,’’ among other influences. But it doesn’t seem derivative, as it shifts from a “Stand By Me’’-type kids story to a monster horror flick to a paranoid thriller and back again. Set in 1983, the central story is the disappearance of the youngest son of Joyce, played by Winona Ryder. Joyce falls apart more with each passing minute that Will is gone, and she begins sensing his presence in her home. Is she going crazy? Meanwhile, Will’s pals, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas — all bike-riding Dungeons & Dragons geeks with big imaginations, like the geeks in “Freaks and Geeks’’ — are secretly searching for their friend. What I like most about “Stranger Things’’ is the way the creators, the Duffer Brothers, never short-shrift the emotional content of the show, in favor of thrills and CGI. They know the frights won’t truly register if we don’t much care about the people — particularly the kids — whose well-being is at stake.

Animal Kingdom

Tuesday at 10 p.m., TNT

Part of the reason I’m in full addiction mode on the middling “Animal Kingdom,’’ from “Shameless’’ and “ER’’ producer John Wells, is Ellen Barkin. She’s enjoyably twisted as Smurf, the matriarch of a crime family of, essentially, hunky young men who like to surf when they’re not thieving. Like Jean Smart’s Floyd in “Fargo’’ and Katey Sagal’s Gemma in “Sons of Anarchy,’’ Smurf runs the Southern California business with an iron first and a lot of mind games. But Barkin brings distinctive twists, too. Smurf is happy to cook a family dinner for her boys and their girlfriends. She is happy to hang around the backyard pool with them. She easily becomes a maternal woman — but only because it helps her manipulate and not because she’s at all maternal. Also, she brings an unsettling sense of sexuality to her interactions with her sons and her newly arrived teen grandson. Barkin deploys just the right amount of incestuous flirtation with these handsome men — enough to be thoroughly creepy but not so much that it seems absurd or gimmicky.

Born This Way

Tuesday at 10 p.m., A&E

The first season of this reality series about young adults with Down syndrome wasn’t bad. It avoided many of the potential pitfalls of a reality show such as this one — that, like some of TLC’s series about people with disabilities, it will condescend to or exploit its subjects for reality-coarsened viewers; that the participants won’t fully understand the way they’re going to be edited into character types; that it will ignore the complexities of having Down syndrome or parenting a child who has it. The show managed to stay dignified and realistic (in a reality-TV kind of way). The second season begins this week, as the cast prepares for the Down Syndrome Association of Orange County’s red carpet ball.

MATTHEW GILBERT