Cleveland Plain Dealer's Scores

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For 299 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 37% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average TV Show review score: 69
Highest review score: 100 The Plot Against America: Season 1
Lowest review score: 0 Hot Properties: Season 1
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 194 out of 194
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 194
  3. Negative: 0 out of 194
194 tv reviews
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  1. The Young Pope: Season 1
    The problem with The Young Pope is that it never artfully draws you in deep enough to care. Created and directed by Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino ("The Great Beauty"), it is drearily paced, choppy and often self-consciously bizarre. It's beautiful to gaze upon, filled with sumptuous shots that look like majestic oil paintings. And the supporting cast is impressive.
  2. Mars: Season 1
    What Mars lacks in consistency, it makes up with scope and scale.
  3. Conviction (2016): Season 1
    Coercion might be the only way to get an audience for this incredibly labored legal drama.
  4. Timeless (2016): Season 1
    A wildly uneven action-adventure-fantasy drama from executive producers Eric Kripke ("Revolution," "Supernatural") and Shawn Ryan ("The Shield," "The Unit"), it awkwardly follows a scientist, a soldier and a history professor pursuing the mysterious criminal who stole a secret time machine.
  5. Frequency: Season 1
    Peyton List stars in this immediately riveting mix of police drama and time-bending fantasy.
  6. No Tomorrow: Season 1
    While unquestionably a strange brew, No Tomorrow also is quite bewitching. It's fun falling under its spell.
  7. The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again
    Visually very different from the film, TV's Rocky Horror Picture Show also boasts superior choreography and wildly inventive costuming. It's a wonderfully dark castle packed with twisted delights.
  8. Divorce (2016): Season 1
    The major characters, one and all, are extremely well acted, but the winter of their middle-age discontent produces a comedy that leaves the viewer a little cold.
  9. Goliath: Season 1
    Thornton is sensational as the shattered Billy McBride, a one-time star litigator who took the ruins of his life and crawled into a whiskey bottle. When he's not on screen, you grow impatient for his return.
  10. Mr. Robot: Season 2
    There are moments (like the aforementioned withdrawal episode) where you think about giving up on it. But those thoughts disappear once the show's surprise is revealed and Elliot recognizes his true purpose. That leads to Season 2's premiere being a thrill ride. ... Mr. Robot has the potential to be [as good as "Breaking Bad."]
  11. Orange is the New Black: Season 4
    The remarkable thing is that, even with a bigger cast, Kohan never sacrifices a whit of clarity or energy. Orange Is the New Black is as fresh and as vital as ever, and you don't always see that in a fourth season.
  12. BrainDead: Season 1
    Beneath all of the insanity, BrainDead again and again demonstrates it has a brain in its head. It's goofy-good-time stuff, all right, yet it has a point.
  13. Roots (2016): Season 1
    It is packed with towering performances that boldly and magnificently reinterpret characters who have become part of our national folklore.
  14. Houdini & Doyle: Season 1
    The depictions of Houdini and Doyle never seem authentic. The mysteries aren't particularly riveting. And the mix of fact and fancy is anything but magical.
  15. Penny Dreadful: Season 3
    Already TV's most literate and stylish horror drama, "Penny Dreadful" is adding new and intriguing elements to the ambitious structure as the third season begins.
  16. The Night Manager: Season 1
    Writer David Farr updated le Carre's novel with expert care, and his script is stunningly realized by a sensational cast guided by the unerring direction of Susanne Bier. Indeed, just about everything goes right in this sexy, riveting and suspenseful miniseries.
  17. Confirmation
    It's quite a good one. It boasts a brisk pace, strong direction by Rick Famuyiwa and a superb cast led by Kerry Washington as Hill and Wendell Pierce as Thomas.
  18. Jackie Robinson: Season 1
    From the first frame, it's clear that Jackie Robinson is a genuine labor of love. The warmly crafted two-part, four-hour PBS documentary from filmmaker Ken Burns positively glows with its admiration for the man and his accomplishments. ... Another mighty home run for PBS.
  19. Fear the Walking Dead: Season 2
    The stumbling spin-off makes a wearisome return by quickly reverting to that frustrating first-season form.
  20. Outlander (2014): Season 2
    The marvelously textured performances and addictive narrative remain the most compelling reasons to watch Outlander.
  21. Mr. Selfridge: Season 4
    Mr. Selfridge has some enticing items to tempt those shopping for a quality viewing experience. At the top of this list is the gift that keeps on giving: Jeremy Piven's wonderfully textured portrayal of Harry Gordon Selfridge.
  22. Heartbeat (2016): Season 1
    Plenty of fascinating medical material here for a series. And yet, Heartbeat botches the job, because the dialogue, direction and supporting characters are wearisomely artificial.
  23. And Then There Were None (2016): Season 1
    Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this stylish, wonderfully atmospheric British production is how fresh it seems. It's not as if this is a tale rarely told.
  24. The Americans: Season 4
    The Americans stands tall in a crowded field of quality dramas. It keeps getting stronger and stronger, a realization underscored by the arrival of the fourth season.
  25. Underground: Season 1
    The writers do take the occasional misstep along the trail. The series has it didactic moments, to be sure, as well as the occasional cartoonish character (usually among those chasing the runaways). But these drawbacks are more than offset by the riveting narrative, the outstanding lead cast and a seamless weaving of the greater historical context into the ongoing story.
  26. House of Cards (2013): Season 4
    There is a razor-sharp focus, as well as a renewed sense of purpose, in the six new episodes Netflix made available to critics in advance of the fourth-season premiere.
  27. Prey (2016): Season 1
    Once this crime thriller lures you in and really gets going, it's an off-to-the-races ride that never forgets to delve deeply into the dark sides of the central characters. Derivative? Yes, but in endlessly sly and fascinating ways.
  28. Becoming Mike Nichols: Season 1
    The documentary not only is a moving tribute to the prolific director who died at 84, it's a reminder of what's too often missing from so much of television and pop culture--conversation... real, in-depth, smart, respectful, insightful conversation.
  29. The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story: Season 1
    Travolta's cartoonish Shapiro is the exception, after all, and even most of the peripheral performances court favorable verdicts.
  30. The X-Files: Season 10
    This first hour is all about reinvention. It's a rather clunky attempt to remake the 1993-2002 vehicle in a manner that will please loyal fans and new viewers. The second episode, with guest star Doug Savant ("Desperate Housewives"), pushes this redesigned vehicle into a higher gear.... Now this is the X-Files we fondly remember. Can they push this to yet a higher gear? Why, yes, they can, and they do with the third episode.
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